The First Christian Document?
Christianity as a world religion began when St Paul persuaded Jesus's Disciples, at a crisis meeting in Jerusalem, that you didn't have to become a Jew to be a Christian.Intrigued? The document in question is The Didache and the thesis is developed out of Garrow's doctoral work on The Didache (hence the term "Oxford academic" above), recently published as The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache (JSNTSup; London & New York: T & T Clark International, 2004). I have referred here before to Garrow's Didache Cube and I note that he has prepared some materials there to accompany the forthcoming programme:
An Oxford Academic, Alan Garrow, claims to have identified the record of that meeting.
Roger Bolton investigates
The First Christian Document?
I have to say that the thesis strikes me initially as highly unlikely, but I am always willing to learn. One thing about the blurb above concerns me a little, the notion that "St Paul persuaded Jesus's Disciples, at a crisis meeting in Jerusalem, that you didn't have to become a Jew to be a Christian". I doubt that Paul persuaded them of this -- it's not the impression given by Galatians 2 or by Acts 15. I don't think anyone significant was suggesting that Gentile Christians should be circumcised in the early years. It's why Paul is so outraged and surprised by this innovation in Galatians.
Did you ever form a firmer opinion on this hypothesis?
ReplyDeleteI happened across this old post of yours in my search for some commentary on the composition of 'Matthew without Q'.
Can you recommend any commentaries that on Matthew that treats the Q and M material on an equal footing, allowing both to be Matthean innovations or coming from a common source?