The Didache and the Lord's Prayer

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I found a curious quote found in the Didache, believed to be dated sometime between the year 50-70:

8:2 And do not pray like the hypocrites, but rather as the Lord commanded in the gospel: Our Father in heaven, holy be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us enough bread day-by-day. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

What Gospel? The Lord’s Prayer can be found in Matthew and Luke. Does this suggest an early date for the Gospels or does the word, “Gospel” translate to good news and can thus be attributed to oral transmission?

It’s interesting how it states, “In the Gospel” as if a document, a “Gospel” exists already.
 
Although many modern commentators believe that the Gospels were written by “schools” quite a few years AFTER the deaths of the Apostles, I personally believe, from reading the Bible a number of times, that the Apostles either personally wrote or personally dictated their books (Gospels) and letters. So, I believe they’re written NO LATER THAN 50 AD and probably EARLIER for most of them.

My opinion comes from the Greetings and the Salutations of the books and letters.

Even the first part of the Gospel of Luke was an interview of Our Lady Mary, IMO, during her lifetime.
 
dronald said:
8:2 And do not pray like the hypocrites, but rather as the Lord commanded in the gospel…

What Gospel? The Lord’s Prayer can be found in Matthew and Luke. Does this suggest an early date for the Gospels or does the word, “Gospel” translate to good news and can thus be attributed to oral transmission?
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This is a VERY interesting question.

Biblical scholars have long speculated that there was an early Gospel, commonly named “Q” (after the German word, quelle, meaning “source”), which, along with the Gospel of Mark (considered the oldest of the Canonical Synoptic Gospels, even though Mark was a pagan convert) made up much of the subsequent accounts of Matthew (who was a Jew, but is not generally regarded as the same Apostle Matthew) and Luke (a pagan convert).

Perhaps this passage in the Didache refers to this ancient (but lost) Gospel, “Q.”

But, what is very interesting to me, is that I have never seen this passage of the Didache cited in support of this linguistic theory. You raise a VERY interesting question which seems to support the idea of a Gospel source that has not survived from antiquity - a bit of (possibly) supporting evidence of this theory which I have never encountered (though I have studied this question in some detail).

Yet, the Didache clearly pre-dates the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, so the writer could not have been referring to either Gospel. The Gospel of Mark (which might have been written before the Didache) does not contain the Lord’s Prayer.

This is a VERY interesting question.
 
It IS a very interesting question! And I love to find new things revealed through the words.

But, doesn’t gospel ‘just’ mean ‘good news’?

But WHAT Good News! 🙂
 
Isn’t it likely that εὐαγγελίῳ is a word in common Koine parlance in the Apostolic Age, which quickly gained currency among early Christians, and came to be retroactively applied to the four Gospels?
 
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel” - a command given to the Apostles long before anything was written down. “Gospel” = “good news” = what was proclaimed by the Church from Pentecost onward, including the accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching. There is no reason that the word “gospel” in the Didache has to be referencing a written record.

The insistence among some scholars that there MUST have been written documents that were the sources for the books that became the Bible comes from a fundamentally modern construct that regards oral transmission as inherently unreliable.

Jesus never wrote anything, and he never instructed the Apostles to write anything. The written records were made to preserve the eyewitness accounts, and thanks be to God that they were. But the Gospel was and remains what is *proclaimed *by the Church.

JMHO
Sally
 
dronald said:
I found a curious quote found in the Didache, believed to be dated sometime between the year 50-70:

8:2 And do not pray like the hypocrites, but rather as the Lord commanded in the gospel: Our Father in heaven, holy be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us enough bread day-by-day. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

What Gospel? The Lord’s Prayer can be found in Matthew and Luke. Does this suggest an early date for the Gospels or does the word, “Gospel” translate to good news and can thus be attributed to oral transmission?

It’s interesting how it states, “In the Gospel” as if a document, a “Gospel” exists already.
Click to expand...
In today’s (our) thinking and upbringing, when we see or read the word 'gospel"…we take it to mean one of the gospels in the Bible.

Gospel, in apostolic times, did not mean written gospel…but the good news of salvation of Christ.
 
pablope said:
In today’s (our) thinking and upbringing, when we see or read the word 'gospel"…we take it to mean one of the gospels in the Bible.

Gospel, in apostolic times, did not mean written gospel…but the good news of salvation of Christ.
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👍 And the “good news” included not only Jesus and the salvation He obtained for us, but everything He said and did, everything He taught. Thus, the Our Father was part of the good news/gospel. It was transmitted orally before it was written down.
 
I think it’s safe to say the Didache was written after the gospels. It is full of quotes of the gospels. Mostly Matthew.

www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm

What I find kind of interesting is that it uses the “for Yours is the power and the glory for ever”, at the end of the “Our Father”.

And also again during the Eucharistic Liturgy.

" for Yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever"

Indicating this is an early Christian liturgical prayer.
 
bsroufek said:
Although many modern commentators believe that the Gospels were written by “schools” quite a few years AFTER the deaths of the Apostles, I personally believe, from reading the Bible a number of times, that the Apostles either personally wrote or personally dictated their books (Gospels) and letters. So, I believe they’re written NO LATER THAN 50 AD and probably EARLIER for most of them.

My opinion comes from the Greetings and the Salutations of the books and letters.

Even the first part of the Gospel of Luke was an interview of Our Lady Mary, IMO, during her lifetime.
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In the opinion of many…👍
 
NHInsider said:
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel” - a command given to the Apostles long before anything was written down. “Gospel” = “good news” = what was proclaimed by the Church from Pentecost onward, including the accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching. There is no reason that the word “gospel” in the Didache has to be referencing a written record.

The insistence among some scholars that there MUST have been written documents that were the sources for the books that became the Bible comes from a fundamentally modern construct that regards oral transmission as inherently unreliable.

Jesus never wrote anything, and he never instructed the Apostles to write anything. The written records were made to preserve the eyewitness accounts, and thanks be to God that they were. But the Gospel was and remains what is *proclaimed *by the Church.

JMHO
Sally
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I believe this is the best answer here, so I’m not here to answer with anything else…I just thought I’d post a link for more reading in the Catholic Encyclopedia in case anyone wants to go read about the Didache and what dates they place it at and why:

newadvent.org/cathen/04779a.htm

Someone has already posted a link to the text, but I didn’t see a link to the explanation of the Didache.
 
It had always been my understanding that the Didache was contemporaneous with John’s gospel therefore was written after Matthew, Mark and Luke.

There was one non-theological point that all early Christians were wrong about. They expected the almost immediate return of Jesus. Once the eyewitnesses (the Apostles and disciples) began to die, the need to write things down became vital. It would not at all be surprising if a collection of stories and sayings of Jesus was circulating among the various communities but it should be noted that such a collection is still a matter of speculation and not an established fact.
 
jaeger1946 said:
It had always been my understanding that the Didache was contemporaneous with John’s gospel therefore was written after Matthew, Mark and Luke.

There was one non-theological point that all early Christians were wrong about. They expected the almost immediate return of Jesus. Once the eyewitnesses (the Apostles and disciples) began to die, the need to write things down became vital. It would not at all be surprising if a collection of stories and sayings of Jesus was circulating among the various communities but it should be noted that such a collection is still a matter of speculation and not an established fact.
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Not to be too argumentative, but the very notion that something has to be WRITTEN and PRESERVED in order do be “fact” is a modern construct.

Can we not “prove” something if we can’t “document” it? . . . (not claiming we can, just pointing out the conundrum . . .)
 
I wasn’t trying to distinguish between written tradition and oral tradition. As St. Paul said, whether Timothy learned Paul’s teaching in writing or orally, the important thing is that he knew from whom the teaching came. The Deposit of Faith handed on to the Church was handed on in both forms and we can be sure of it because we know from whom it came.

I was only trying to make the point that some scholars have speculated that a collection of Jesus’ sayings, which they call Q (for Quelle, the German word for source) may have existed prior to the writing of the gospels and may have been a source of material used by the synoptic gospel writers. My point was simply that such a collection, whether handed on orally or in written form, remains a matter of speculation.

The Didache, like so many writings of the early church, show just how Catholic the first Christian communities were.

I am interested in another question though. In Colossians 4:16, Paul mentions a letter that he wrote to the Laodiceans. If a copy of that letter that proved to be genuine should ever turn up, should it automatically be included in the canon of scripture?
 
jaeger1946 said:
I am interested in another question though. In Colossians 4:16, Paul mentions a letter that he wrote to the Laodiceans. If a copy of that letter that proved to be genuine should ever turn up, should it automatically be included in the canon of scripture?
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It’s in my copy of the Vulgate, and the English can be seen here.

Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, gives the relevant reasons why it isn’t part of our canon. Some do include it, though.

III Corinthians was also included by Armenians. It seems to have been omitted from the more recent Armenian canons, though.
 
jaeger1946 said:
I am interested in another question though. In Colossians 4:16, Paul mentions a letter that he wrote to the Laodiceans. If a copy of that letter that proved to be genuine should ever turn up, should it automatically be included in the canon of scripture?
Click to expand...
This is one of those delicious questions to introduce into sola scriptura discussions. If it were possible to affirm that a newly-discovered document was written by one of the Apostles, would it become part of the Bible?

The obvious answer is no, because if the Holy Spirit had intended the document to be part of the canon, it wouldn’t have been lost for the first 2000 years of the Church. But for Catholics, we know how the canon came to be, and we have a process by which an authoritative decision could be made. For Protestants, whose theology requires that Scripture attests to its own table of contents, the discovery would doubtless lead to a new and exciting round of schisms . . .

Of course it would be FASCINATING to read a newly discovered apostolic document!

Sally
 
Here is a site themostholyrosary.com/mystical-city-vol-iv.pdf that states the supposed revelation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Venerable Mary of Agreda. Click on Vol. 4 “The Coronation” then go to page 480. This is where the account of how the Gospels came about. Who over saw the writings: when the Gospels were written; who wrote the Gospels; what language they were written in; and where they were written. But of course this comes from personal revelation, we can’t take it for truth. But, very interesting, non-the-less.
 
There is not a concensus among scholars concerning the dating of the Didache. The estimates range from the year 50 to 150. Therefore, it is very possible that it was written after the Gospels.

Peace

Jim
 
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