Matt Larsen on the Didache

Readers of my blog know about my fascination with the Didache. I had promised to write a series of posts about it here, but alas all I’ve churned out so far is a bibliography. Well, Matt Larsen, a guest writer on Tolle Lege! has begun a series of several posts on the Didache.

Matt argues that using a rhetorical-critical approach to the text will not only help one better appreciate the text as it stands, but serves as a corrective to some of the tendencies of previous scholarship that focused too much on its sources than its final product. I agree with Matt on the use of rhetorical criticism. I also look forward to seeing how he hashes out his theory that the Didache contains “a strong polemical, defensive rhetoric claiming to be the continuation of the true Israel, not a false, rogue Messianic sect and certainly not a new religion, but a very very old one.” The subject of my Master’s thesis actually dealt with this topic in part, and so it should be nice to see how he works this out. I do hope he writes a post on his methodology because “rhetorical criticism” is a very broad category.

Though I think looking at the text as a whole using a literary or rhetorical approach is very valuable, I still think that the old Wissenshaft methods of source, form, and redaction are still worth using and applying to the Didache. I would disagree with his statement that “[s]ource criticism has left the poor Didachist as a confused compiler who had no theology to offer his readership.” But that’s for another post.