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About this book

Didache

About this book

Closing Advice on the Two Ways

Chapter 6

1 Be careful that no one leads you astray from this Way of teaching, for those who do so are teaching you without God. 2 If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect;⁠ but if you cannot, do what you can.⁠ 3 Regarding food, eat what you can tolerate, but always avoid food that has been offered to idols, as it represents the worship of lifeless gods.

Texts in conversation

Compare Acts 15:29 and Didache 6:3

New Testament · Early Christian

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Summary

In Acts, the Jerusalem church asks gentile believers to follow a few necessary rules, such as avoiding meat sacrificed to idols. In the Didache, an early church manual, that one rule is now the minimum, and those who do more are called perfect.

Passages

Acts 15:29

New Testament
28 For it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these necessary rules: 29 that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well. Farewell.
70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Acts

Didache 6:3

Early Christian
1 Be careful that no one leads you astray from this Way of teaching, for those who do so are teaching you without God. 2 If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you cannot, do what you can. 3 Regarding food, eat what you can tolerate, but always avoid food that has been offered to idols, as it represents the worship of lifeless gods.
90–120 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Didache

References

“... After the Jerusalem church adopted the three pre-rabbinic Noachide laws as a code of conduct for gentile believers, the Decree circulated separately in the early Christian communities in an oral and/or written form. It was probably known to the community in which Did 6:2-3 was created and it is likely that the prohibition of idol food was worded in terms of the Decree in order to confer on this basic obligation the undisputed status which the apostolic decision widely enjoyed. The reduction of the number of basic obligations to the mere rejection of idol food indicates that this commandment was the primary issue for the author of Did 6:2-3 and for his community. Yet, it is obvious that this prohibition represented the minimum standard. The real way to "perfection" is to submit to the whole Law, including the specifically Jewish precepts such as the observance of food laws, sabbaths, and festivals. The composer of Did 6:2-3 was an exponent of a group of Jewish-Christians who remained within the ambit of Tora-observance. Compliance with the entire Tora is the ideal but the text shows a tolerant attitude to those who are not capable of bearing "the whole yoke of the Lord." ...”
Huub van de Sandt and David Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, Section 3: Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature 5 (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2002), 269.

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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Acts 15:29 and Didache 6:3

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