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About this book

Didache

About this book

What the Way of Life Forbids

Chapter 2

1 But the second commandment of the teaching is: 2 You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery;⁠ you shall not corrupt boys; you shall not commit fornication; you shall not steal; you shall not practice magic; you shall not use love potions; you shall not cause abortion, nor kill newborns;⁠ you shall not desire your neighbor's possessions. 3 You shall not commit perjury; you shall not lie; you shall not speak ill; you shall not bear grudges. 4 You shall not be double-minded or double-tongued, because that leads to death.⁠ 5 Your words shall not be false or meaningless but followed by actions. 6 You shall not be greedy or exploitative, nor a hypocrite, nor evil-minded, nor arrogant; you shall not plan evil against your neighbor. 7 You shall not hate anyone; some you will correct, some you will pray for, and some you will love more than your own life.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 20:13 and Didache 2:2

Hebrew Bible · Early Christian

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Summary

The Didache, an early church manual, contains an expanded form of the commandments of Exodus. In its list, murder comes before adultery, as in the Hebrew text rather than the Greek Septuagint translation.

Passages

Exodus 20:13

Hebrew Bible
13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Didache 2:2

Early Christian
1 But the second commandment of the teaching is: 2 You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not corrupt boys; you shall not commit fornication; you shall not steal; you shall not practice magic; you shall not use love potions; you shall not cause abortion, nor kill newborns; you shall not desire your neighbor's possessions. 3 You shall not commit perjury; you shall not lie; you shall not speak ill; you shall not bear grudges. 4 You shall not be double-minded or double-tongued, because that leads to death. 5 Your words shall not be false or meaningless but followed by actions.
90–120 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Didache

References

“... In 2. 2 the Didachist begins an exposition of the Way of Life with an expansion of the second half of the Decalogue. The ordering and wording of the elements from the Decalogue which are included in the Didache here bear some relationship to the list which appears in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ enumeration of these commands to the rich young man in Matt. 19, though it is not clear whether Matthew’s version is sufficiently different from the other synoptic versions for this to be significant in the present discussion. All three synoptics have the same order of the four commands mentioned, and this differs from that of the LXX versions of the Decalogue in both Exod. 20 and Deut. 5 by having ‘murder’ before ‘adultery’. However, the MT versions of both Exod. 20 and Deut. 5 agree with the synoptic versions in having the ban on ‘murder’ first. Hence it is not certain whether the Didache is here to be seen as dependent on the NT versions or simply on the MT version of the OT itself (or perhaps on a Greek version of the OT which was closer to the ordering of the MT than our LXX versions). ...”
Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, eds., The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 100.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 20:13 and Didache 2:2

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