Join us on the St Shenouda Podcast as we uncover the Didache, an indispensable ancient Christian treatise known fully as "The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations". Dating potentially as early as the first century CE, this brief, anonymous text offers a powerful glimpse into the practical life and rituals of the earliest Christian communities. Scholars consider the Didache the foundational example of the genre of Church Orders, functioning as a pastoral manual concerned primarily with orthopraxy—how Christians ought to behave.

This remarkable document, which might predate several New Testament books, is divided into four main sections:

1. The Two Ways: Discover the foundational ethical teaching contrasting the Way of Life and the Way of Death. This core instruction draws heavily on Jewish tradition and the Sermon on the Mount, covering everything from loving your enemies and practicing the Golden Rule to avoiding jealousy, anger, and arrogance. Crucially, the Didache provides explicit, detailed prohibitions against abortion and infanticide.

2. Ritual Practice: Examine instructions for Christian sacraments. Learn how Baptism was to be performed using the Trinitarian formula ("in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"), ideally in "living water" (running water), but allowing for pouring water thrice upon the head if necessary. We explore the command to fast on the fourth day (Wednesday) and the Preparation (Friday), deliberately differentiating from the practices of "the hypocrites"—a tradition still preserved in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Furthermore, the text commands praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day.

3. Liturgy and the Eucharist: The Didache is the earliest text to refer to the central act of worship as the Eucharist ('Thanksgiving'). It provides primitive prayers for the cup and broken bread and mandates that only the baptized may partake. It instructs Christians to gather every Lord’s Day to break bread after confessing their sins and reconciling with any who are "at variance".

4. Community Leadership and Eschatology: Find out the guidelines for testing itinerant apostles and prophets (they must not stay longer than two days or ask for money), and the early appointment of local bishops and deacons. The treatise ends with a warning to remain watchful for the imminent Coming of the Lord, predicting the appearance of false prophets and the world-deceiver (Antichrist).

While the Didache was ultimately not accepted into the New Testament canon by most Fathers, it holds a high status, even being included in the broader canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church [23, 50b], and was widely read and considered authoritative in the Early Church. Tune in to understand this pivotal text that defined early Christian communal life and left an enduring influence on subsequent Church Orders