The Didache.

[DCHindley]

Your research on this has obviously been quite impressive, David.

I just realized that posting all that just placed me higher up in the "crackpot" index. cool! But I do think that this kind of scholarship should be looked into by anyone who wants to consider the early Jesus movement, which I conceive of as a movement of Judeans who followed the lead of a Galilean Judean named Jesus.

I know this is an assumption that needs to be proved, but it seems that if Jesus was universally accepted as a Judean, although one who happened to reside in Galilee, I can assume about him that he should have a Judean orientation of some kind. And yes, I do think that the prevailing Judean POV was expectation of realizing a blessed messianic age to come, so I am willing to entertain the thought that Jesus held such-like notions.

I don't know if he had put himself out as the anointed prince (messiah), or only spoke about what he thought this figure would be like, but he seemed to have a following among other Judeans, and I suspect also among some gentiles of the region extending up into lower Syria. What about a future blessed messianic age, for Judeans, would attract gentiles? I think a desire to participate in it is what motivated these gentiles, an idea that Jesus had not apparently forbade or perhaps even encouraged.

There is certainly a big difference between that kind of Galilean-Judean Jesus and the gentile oriented Jesus Christ of the Gospels, so this movement had to have exhibited several stages of development between the 30s and the 60s CE. But radical itinerancy caused by severe economic stress imposed on peasants by the evil Roman exploiters seems a little forced. I would expect that the war of 66-73 CE had far more influence on the transition than did the socio-economic pressures of evil proto-capitalists on the common peasants of Galilee.

Many of those proposals on the nature of radical itinerancy are now treated as if established fact, and used freely as assumptions. I am not suggesting that economic inequality was not present, but do question what those economic relations really looked like.

DCH

[John2]

Ben,

I appreciate your response. I'm not anti-layer when it comes to the Didache (or the gospels or the Torah or anything else that seems warranted), I just have doubts about any of them going back (in their written form) to pre-70 CE because of the existence of the Community Rule, which, in tandem with other Dead Sea Scrolls (mainly the Pesharim and the Damascus Document), sounds enough like Jewish Christianity to me to feel comfortable enough to go ahead and call it that (or at least proto-Jewish Christianity).

The reason is because I don't think there were two messianic Jewish sects called "the poor" and "the way" that practiced "the new covenant" in a place called Damascus led by a zaddik (or just one) with a hierarchical structure of twelve and three that was opposed by a guy that refuted the Torah (whatever one takes the Torah to mean here). But I guess that's what the carbon dating results mean and I shouldn't give these kinds of similarities any thought as far it having anything to do with what became Jewish Christianity post-70 CE.

But I'm a flexible guy on the carbon dating front in general. For instance, even though the oldest gospels are carbon dated to the second century, I'm not a stickler about it and maybe gospel fragments are earlier or later than their suggested carbon dates. I'm not making any special allowances for the DSS on that front. I just can't overlook all the interesting similarities between them and Jewish Christianity.

[Ben C. Smith]

But I'm a flexible guy on the carbon dating front in general. For instance, even though the oldest gospels are carbon dated to the second century, I'm not a stickler about it and maybe gospel fragments are earlier or later than their suggested carbon dates. I'm not making any special allowances for the DSS on that front. I just can't overlook all the interesting similarities between them and Jewish Christianity.

I cannot say I have kept up with the carbon dating of ancient manuscripts overall, but I did not think that any papyrus fragments had been dated to century II. Those fragments are usually dated by their script.

[DCHindley]

... I don't think there were two messianic Jewish sects called "the poor" and "the way" that practiced "the new covenant" in a place called Damascus led by a zaddik (or just one) with a hierarchical structure of twelve and three that was opposed by a guy that refuted the Torah (whatever one takes the Torah to mean here). But I guess that's what the carbon dating results mean and I shouldn't give these kinds of similarities any thought as far it having anything to do with what became Jewish Christianity post-70 CE.

I do not mean to intrude, as this was addressed to Ben, but where do you get Christians (or proto-Christians) who practiced a new covenant in a place called Damascus? I think the Community Rule and the Cairo [aka Damascus] Document used the term metaphorically, i.e., "in exile", but this may well have been where the sectarians who produced that document took refuge from the wicked priest.

I'd place this exile in Maccabean times or later 1st century BCE. Early Christians took refuge in Pella, in the Decapolis, during the Judean revolt of the 60's & early 70's CE, but that is not anywhere near the territories controlled by Damascus.

There may also have been dozens of such groups all organized along similar, and perhaps culturally traditional, lines. The CR/CD both have a term for the leader, which translates into Greek episkopos, "overseer", an organizational form which Christians also adopted (we now call these "bishops"). Little details like this get ignored by those who seek to date the pastorals from the Pauline corpus later than the teaching oriented epistles of Paul directed to congregations as a whole, on account of mention of bishops.

Are you following Eisenman here? I have his first book on James the Just but it is so huge that I am afraid to try to find the spot this may be discussed. I found his index a little hard to use.

DCH

[John2]

Ben wrote:

"I cannot say I have kept up with the carbon dating of ancient manuscripts overall, but I did not think that any papyrus fragments had been dated to century II. Those fragments are usually dated by their script."

Yeah, you're right. I just doubled checked it myself. I wasn't aware that it was based solely on paleography. Huh. Well, in any event, I'm flexible on carbon dating and paleography in general.

[Ben C. Smith]

The reason is because I don't think there were two messianic Jewish sects called "the poor" and "the way" that practiced "the new covenant" in a place called Damascus led by a zaddik (or just one) with a hierarchical structure of twelve and three that was opposed by a guy that refuted the Torah (whatever one takes the Torah to mean here). But I guess that's what the carbon dating results mean and I shouldn't give these kinds of similarities any thought as far it having anything to do with what became Jewish Christianity post-70 CE.

I admit I am not as familiar with that entire milieu as I ought to be. What I have read and thought about has often thus far been relegated to culturally based coincidence in my mind: for example, I bet the idea of 12 leaders struck a lot of people independently as a good idea at a lot of different times, simply because of the 12 tribes of Israel.

I can say that I am quite open to what we find in the Qumran scrolls having a lot to do with how Christianity started. I may simply require more education on the topic than I currently possess.

[John2]

DCH wrote:

"I do not mean to intrude, as this was addressed to Ben, but where do you get Christians (or proto-Christians) who practiced a new covenant in a place called Damascus? I think the Community Rule and the Cairo [aka Damascus] Document used the term metaphorically, i.e., "in exile", but this may well have been where the sectarians who produced that document took refuge from the wicked priest."

I think the expression "the new covenant in the land of Damascus" is only used in the Damascus Document, and while it's debatable what the term Damascus means, whatever it may mean it involves the practice of the new covenant. Blanton summarizes the situation here and says, "The most obvious interpretation of the phrase is that it refers to a city or region in Syria" (like in 1 Kings 19:15: http://biblehub.com/commentaries/1_kings/19-15.htm).

https://books.google.com/books?id=rdaTp ... us&f=false

But I think it could be a metaphorical exile too. And Eisenman points out that the first syllable in Damascus in Hebrew (dam) means "blood" and the last two (mesheq) are similar to mashqeh, "drinking" (http://biblehub.com/hebrew/4945b.htm) and share a root with shaqah, "to give to drink" (http://biblehub.com/hebrew/8248.htm), which I think is interesting if the Damascus Document is proto-Jewish Christian and a curious coincidence in any event.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZR57A ... us&f=false

[John2]

Ben,

Btw, thanks for the Garrow links. I looked over the article and will check out the book later (I also need to do some research on pseudo-Boniface). And it looks like Garrow will go into this, but I'm curious to know what parts of the Didache you think could be pre-70 CE.

[MrMacSon]

I can say that I am quite open to what we find in the Qumran scrolls having a lot to do with how Christianity started. I may simply require more education on the topic than I currently possess.

I'm not sure if you're reference there to 'the topic' is to the Qumran scrolls (I suspect it isn't; I get the impression it is to wider discussion you've been having with John2) but, to me, your reference to "what we find in the Qumran scrolls having a lot to do with how Christianity started" raises the issue that we (the world) does not have a good idea of what is in the entire corpus of the Qumran scrolls b/c they have, to date, been studied in a 'limited way'.

Is that correct?

[John2]

And regarding the use of "the way," as Bauckham puts it, "Although the Qumran community and the early Christians were certainly not the only Jews to focus their hopes on the Isaianic picture of the way ... they are the only two groups we know to have applied the image of this way to their own way of life."

https://books.google.com/books?id=U7-Qe ... re&f=false