Didache

Early Christian tradition, which developed in the era of Second Temple Judaism, was strongly divided over the relationship between the Torah and gentile believers. The Didache, a compilation from the end of the first century that connects early Jewish-Christian tradition with later Christian tradition, provides an answer that seems at odds with the New Testament, particularly Paul's letter to the Galatians and the decision of the council in Acts 15. Its compiler very likely took the first six chapters from an earlier Jewish tradition about the two ways of life and death, based on Deuteronomy 30:15-19.¹ In Didache 6:2, the community is told that whoever can obey "the whole yoke of the Lord" will be perfect, while whoever cannot should do what they can. In Didache 6:3, which concerns the Torah's commandments about food, its members are told to do what they can, but never to eat food offered to idols. Other early Christian versions of the two ways lack Didache 6:2-3, which was very likely added for gentile believers, who, unlike observant Jewish believers, were probably not expected to obey all of the Torah's commandments about food.

In Jewish tradition, a “yoke” is a reference to the Torah or an interpretation of the Torah, as in the rabbinic phrase "the yoke of the commandments."² One interpretation teaches that the “whole yoke” is a reference to all of the Torah, including its commandments about food, which are the subject of Didache 6:3. This interpretation would then represent Jewish believers in Jesus who still obeyed the Torah and asked gentile believers to obey as much of it as they could.³ Another perspective is that the yoke is a more specific reference to the teachings of Jesus, representing his own interpretation of the Torah.⁴ In Didache 1:4, a saying that tells followers to turn the other cheek, much like Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5:39, ends with the same promise, "you will be perfect." In Matthew, Jesus also invites the weary to take his easy yoke (Matthew 11:29-30).⁵

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes to gentile believers whom other Jewish followers of Jesus were urging to become Torah observant, focusing on circumcision. Paul responds with fierce language, condemning those teachers and insisting that the Galatians are free and must never again submit to "a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). Any man who is circumcised, he adds, is obligated to obey all of the Torah (Galatians 5:3).⁶ In Jewish tradition, a yoke is a positive image of obedience to God, while Paul presents it as slavery.⁷ If the yoke in the Didache is also a reference to the Torah, then for Paul a gentile who obeys the Torah becomes a slave, while in the Didache a gentile who obeys all of it becomes perfect.

In Acts, some believers insist that gentiles must be circumcised and obey the Torah (Acts 15:1, 5). Peter replies by asking the assembly why they would require gentiles to do what Jewish tradition teaches they struggle with themselves, a yoke "that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear" (Acts 15:10). The council then compromises and asks gentile believers to avoid food offered to idols, blood, what is strangled, and sexual immorality, and to do nothing more than these "necessary things" (Acts 15:28-29). In Acts 15 and Didache 6, gentiles are asked to obey less of the Torah than Jewish believers. Acts and the Didache were written in Greek, and the council's ruling (Acts 15:29) and Didache 6:3 use the same word for food offered to idols, eidōlothyton, perhaps so that the Didache's rule would carry the council's authority. The Didache's community, however, is required only to avoid food offered to idols, and those who obey the whole yoke are told they will be perfect. In Revelation 2:14, eating food offered to idols is condemned together with sexual immorality, in language that seems to echo the council's ruling. That ruling very likely circulated apart from Acts and may have influenced the Didache's community that way.⁸ Another interpretation teaches that the Didache never refers to the ruling. The ruling's other three requirements are missing from Didache 6:2-3, and the yoke in Acts 15:10 resembles the Didache's yoke only in its language.⁹

In Didache 6:1, the community is told that anyone who leads them away from this teaching "teaches apart from God." Didache 6:2 opens with "for," and the people who teach apart from God may therefore be those who taught, as Paul did in Galatians, that gentiles could be perfect without obeying the whole Torah, although Paul is never named.¹⁰ Paul also tells the Corinthians that they may eat whatever is sold in the market (1 Corinthians 10:25), while the Didache's community is told never to eat food offered to idols. The compiler may not have known what Paul had taught the Corinthians.¹¹ The Didache contains no echo of Paul's letters, and its communities probably had no copies of them.¹²

Elsewhere, the Didache's community is told not to fast or pray like the “hypocrites,” very likely their Jewish neighbors (Didache 8:1-2). The compiler, who sets the community apart from them in this way, was perhaps not part of a Torah-observant group, and may have copied 6:2-3 from an earlier Jewish-Christian tradition. The compiler would then have interpreted the yoke as the teachings of Jesus, while for that tradition's authors it was very likely a reference to the Torah.¹³ Gentile men are never told to be circumcised in the Didache, although circumcision was central to Acts 15:1 and Galatians 5:2. If 6:2-3 represents a Torah-observant group, that group asked gentiles to obey as much of the Torah as they could without asking them to be circumcised.¹⁴