Didache

The Twelve Apostles (Pushkin Museum in Moscow)

The Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is a brief early Christian treatise, dated by most scholars to the late first or early second century.

Quotes

as translated by K. Lake, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 12-16

• Let your alms sweat in your hands until you know to whom you are giving.
  • 1.6

• You shall hate no person; but some you shall reprove, and for some you shall pray, and some you shall love more than your own life.
  • 2.7

• Where the Lord's nature is spoken of, there he is present.
  • 4.1

• You shall not turn away the needy, but shall share everything with your brother, and shall not say that it is your own, for if you are sharers in the imperishable, how much more in the things which perish?
  • 4.8

• If he ask for money, he is a false prophet.
  • 11.6

• And all prophets who teach the truth, if they do not do what they teach, are false prophets.
  • 11.10

• If the one who comes is a traveler, help this person as much as you can, but he shall not remain with you more than two days, or if need be, three. And if he wishes to settle among you and has a craft, let him work for his bread. But if he has no craft, provide for him according to your understanding, so that no one shall live among you in idleness because he is a Christian. But if he will not do so, he is making traffic of Christ; beware of such people.
  • 12.2-5

Opening

• There are two Ways,one of Life and one of Death; but there is a great difference between the two ways.
  • 1.1