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Didache

About this book
Teaching in the Didache and the Dead Sea Scrolls Probable

Baptism

Chapter 7

1 Regarding baptism, perform it like this: After explaining all these things, baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,⁠ using running water.⁠ 2 If you don't have running water, use any other water, and if you can't use cold water, then use warm. 3 If you don't have either, pour water three times over the head in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 4 Before the baptism, both the person conducting the baptism and the one being baptized should fast, along with anyone else who can.⁠ Also, instruct the person being baptized to fast for one or two days beforehand.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Didache 7:4 and Joseph and Aseneth 10:19

Early Christian · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

In the Didache, an early church manual, a new believer fasts for one or two days before they are baptized. In Joseph and Aseneth, Aseneth fasts for seven days before an angel comes to her, a display of piety that likely influenced Christian tradition.

Passages

Didache 7:4

Early Christian
1 Regarding baptism, perform it like this: After explaining all these things, baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, using running water. 2 If you don't have running water, use any other water, and if you can't use cold water, then use warm. 3 If you don't have either, pour water three times over the head in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 4 Before the baptism, both the person conducting the baptism and the one being baptized should fast, along with anyone else who can. Also, instruct the person being baptized to fast for one or two days beforehand.
90–120 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Didache

Joseph and Aseneth 10:19

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
16 And she also scattered ashes on the floor, and fell on the ashes and kept beating her breast constantly with her hands and weeping all night with groaning until the morning. 17 And, when Asenath got up in the morning and saw, and look, the ashes were beneath her like mud from her tears, 18 she again fell on her face on the ashes until sunset. 19 Asenath did this for seven days, not tasting anything at all.
100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Joseph and Aseneth

References

“... Pre-baptismal fasting was intended both as an act of penitence and a break with idolatry which freed the candidate from the power of demons. Fasting was practiced at Qumran, as in Rabbinic Judaism, but there is no evidence in either case that it was linked with purification by water. Such evidence is available from Jos. and As., which is a work of Jewish proselyte propaganda and may have been linked to the Essene movement. The original simple instruction concerning fasting has been expanded by the Christian redactor, and his concern for the pre-baptismal fast is evidenced in other early Christian writings. ...”
Jonathan Alfred Draper, “A Commentary on the Didache in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Documents” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1983), 167.

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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Didache 7:4 and Joseph and Aseneth 10:19

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