Torah for Gentiles? What the Jewish Authors of the Didache Had to Say
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In the matrix of nascent Judaism and Christianity, the Didache is a Christian-Jewish voice seeking to mediate the Torah to its gentile recipients in a manner appropriate for them. Steering diplomatically between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Law-observant Jerusalem church and Pauline dogma, the Didache is very clear that gentiles do not need to convert to Judaism. On the other hand, the author argues, the Torah, and in particular the second Table of the Decalogue, is universally applicable to everyone, Jew and gentile. While gentiles are not required to keep commands specific to Israel, the Deuteronomic paradigm of the "Way of Life" versus the "Way of Death" is applicable to all. Jesus said "my yoke is easy." The Didache mandates bearing the yoke of the Lord in order to attain perfection. The yoke it advocates is not as "easy" as one might suppose, yet both Jews and Christians would recognize its morals as largely the same as those that underpin Judaeo-Christian values today. Further, they reflect the requirements that Christian Jews saw as necessary for participation in the Christian community, in a day when that community still looked very much to its Jewish progenitors.
- Presents a slight revision of the author's doctoral dissertation
- Seeks to demonstrat that the Didache affirms the authority of the Torah
- Provides a work that is particularly relevant to the contemporary Messianic Jewish movement
Part One: Didache and Torah
- The Didache and the Torah: A Literature Review
- Text and Transmission
Part Two: A Comprehensible and Authoritative Teaching
- Crisis and Community
- Two Ways and the One Way of Torah
- An Authoritative Torah and Teacher
Part Three: Torah for the Lord's Community
- The Two Ways Choice
- The Sectio, Jesus, and the Torah
- The Sectio and the Two Ways
- The Torah and the Two Ways
- The Yoke of the Lord
- The Two Ways Disciple
- Conclusion
In this stimulating and original monograph, Nessim argues that the author of the Didache mandated the same Torah followed by the Jewish people for gentiles, insofar as it was deemed to apply to them. The claim is controversial, but in arguing it, Nessim touches on an array of issues pertinent to the study of Jewish and Christian identity and their relationship to each other.
—James Carleton Paget, University of Cambridge
Much has been written since the rediscovery of the Didache on its relationship to Judaism and Torah, but most of the work has been piecemeal, focusing on particular texts and problems. . . . In this book Daniel Nessim has provided a plausible and holistic account of its background in the historical context of the failed revolt against Rome and its aftermath in Antioch, drawing particularly on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish sources. He locates the struggle in the emergence of the earliest movement of Jesus believers around the position of Torah, God’s covenant with Israel, and continuing Jewish ethnic identity in mixed communities of Jesus believers. . . . His study provides intriguing possibilities for rethinking relations today between Jesus-believing Jews and gentiles who identify with and wish to live and worship in common with them.
—Jonathan Draper, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
A fresh and measured study of how the Didache understood the application of the Torah to Gentile followers of Jesus and Jews respectively. I highly recommend it!
—David Rudolph, The King’s University, Southlake, Texas
- Title: Torah for Gentiles? What the Jewish Authors of the Didache Had to Say
- Author: Daniel Nessim
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: March 2021
- Pages: 288
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Resource ID: LLS:TORAHFORGENTILES
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2021-06-24T20:49:28Z