BNTS 2025: James' Missing Mirror

I'll be presenting at the Later Epistles Seminar, British New Testament Society, University of Manchester, 1-3 September, 2025

Abstract

​​There is every reason to suppose that James 1:21–25 refers, in different ways, to a single written authority. The “implanted word” is also the “word” the reader is enjoined to hear and do; which is also the mirror into which he or she may look; which is also the perfect law; which is also the law of liberty. This set of instructions was evidently well-known to the intended audience—they probably received it at baptism—but its precise identity has long since been lost to us.
In 1883, Philotheos Bryennios discovered a multi-layered text with two features of interest. Not only does the Didache’s “Two Ways” contain every command specifically referred to in James but also it serves as a pre-baptismal catechism—causing it to fit the description of an “implanted word.”
This paper, part of the Didache Discoveries​ project, argues that the lost foundational Scripture presupposed by James was the Apostolic Decree—a document hidden within the folds of Bryennios’ Didache.

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