Didache and Judaism: Jewish Roots of an Ancient Christian-Jewish Work (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Didache and Judaism: Jewish Roots of an Ancient Christian-Jewish Work J. Albert Harrill Marcello Del Verme Didache and Judaism: Jewish Roots of an Ancient Christian-Jewish Work New York and London: T & T Clark International, 2004 Pp. xv + 291. $100.00 (cloth), $29.95 (paper). This study calls for a reexamination of Christian origins in the context of specific Jewish movements that informed the composition of the Didache. Publishing for the first time in English, under the patronage of James Charlesworth (who provides the preface), Del Verme belongs to the "Italian School" (27, 114–15) advocating a hypothetical historical entity called "Enochic Judaism" within so-called Middle Judaism, which Gabriele Boccaccini has proposed to mixed reviews.1 This new reading hopes to "redeem the interpretation of the Didache" from errors claiming both literary dependency on the canonical Gospels ("an unjust New Testament mortgage") and the so-called separation of Christianity from Judaism before the time of the Didache, the final form of which the author dates to the second half of the first century (3–5). The first part (introduction and chapter 1), constituting nearly half of the book, explains the status quaestionis with an annotated bibliography that highlights the methodological "turning point" of the Italian School. This part is intended to serve as a vade mecum for future scholars. The second part (chapters 2–5) examines four specific passages of the Didache and identifies the community institutions, rituals, practices, and doctrines that underlay them as those of Enochic Judaism ("Enochic Essenism," distinct from "Qumram Essenism"). In chapter 2 the community of goods in Did. 4.8 is said to be not merely a redacted NT literary motif but a social description of an actual "economic and charity situation of the community very similar to that found among Essene groups which––in contrast to the Qumranites––lived scattered in the country, that is, in villages and cities of the Roman province of Judaea as reported by Josephus" (122, 135). "In fact, [End Page 117] religious and social structures and institutions were and remained fundamentally the same among numerous groups/movements of the Hellenistic Graeco-Roman period, and, consequently, behavioural 'models' (i.e., 'the ways') of the various Judaisms of the time could coincide" (136). Chapter 3 takes Didache 8 and argues similarly that the people called "hypocrites" for their tithes and fasts were Christian Jewish factions from a lost Jewish group (not Pharisaic) "belonging to Enochian Essenism (whether Qumranic or not), i.e., the so-called Enochians/Apocalyptics" (178). Thus, the text antedates Matthew (186–88). In chapter 4 we learn that the reference to sacerdotal offerings ("first fruits") in Did. 13.3–7 constitutes "evidence for the functioning of certain Jewish institutions" still in force after the destruction of the Temple in the Syro-Palestinian milieu, probably around Antioch (220). And, finally, chapter 5 explains that Didache 16 and 1–6 (the "Two Ways") connect because we find such association in the dualism of Enochic apocalyptic traditions (261–62). Rather than articulating an original thesis, Didache and Judaism rehearses a point of view with both the advantages and the shortcomings of this mode of scholarship. The book's theological-political tone does not attempt to hide its confessional agenda for modern Jewish–Christian relations (after the Shoah) and for world peace. All noble aims, of course, but my interest lies in the argument, which in the end falls short of persuasive power because of its circular reasoning, i.e., using the (hypothetical historical entity of) Enochic Judaism as "evidence" for arguing that the social movement of the Didache was "Enochian," and then using the Didache as evidence for arguing that Enochic Judaism was an established movement (e.g., 115 and 191 n. 5). Readers seeing serious problems with Boccaccini's reconstruction of Essene origins will most likely experience similar doubts about Del Verme's reconstruction of the Didache because all the findings derive their reasoning a priori from this totalizing hypothesis. It is at best an oversimplification, the evidence for which is entirely circumstantial. J. Albert Harrill Indiana University Footnotes 1. Gabriele Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (Minneapolis...