Does the Original Didache lie behind both Acts and Galatians?

I propose that, beneath the surface of the version of the Didache discovered by Bryennios, lie two previously separate documents that were spliced together and then overlaid with later material. A conference presentation summarising this idea is available here: BNTS 2023

An argument for thinking that one of these two documents is the Apostolic Decree (referred to in Acts 15), is that it resolves the Acts-Galatians conundrum. A conference presentation on this topic is available here: BNTS 2017

A further exploration of this topic is now available as part of a Brill collection of essays in honour of Clayton Jefford. Here is the opening section (pp. 120-121) of my essay: "Salvation by One Step or Two?: The Didache, Acts and the Background to Galatians".

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​"Paul faced an extraordinary challenge. By some means, his opponents had persuaded the Galatians that their membership in the salvation group rested not on one step but two. These Christians had previously been so loyal that they would have plucked out their eyes for Paul’s sake (Gal 4:15), so how could his opponents have persuaded them that salvation required the extra step of full Torah observance, including circumcision? An indication of their method might perhaps be found in the fact that Paul describes the Galatians as foolish (3:1, 3) and as having been bewitched (3:1), persuaded (5:8), and confused (5:10) by his opponents. Paul apparently detects some element of deception. But what trick could have been used to convince these Christians to adopt a belief so utterly at odds with what Paul had previously taught? A clue might be found in the fact that Paul finds it necessary to urge the Galatians to reject the circumcision gospel even if it should appear that he himself is teaching it (1:8). This suggests that the circumcision party had somehow found a way to present their gospel as something that Paul himself endorsed. This would explain the otherwise inexplicable fact that Paul feels the need to provide specific evidence that he is not teaching circumcision: “why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision” (5:11).[1] But how could any of this have been possible? How could Paul’s opponents have perverted his gospel so convincingly that the whole community of Galatian Christians was taken in?

​As I attempt to answer this question, I begin by picking up a thread hinted at by Clayton Jefford in 1992:

[I]t is quite probable that the Redactor [of the Didache] was intimately familiar with an early version of the [Apostolic] Decree that was known and circulated within the community at Antioch. This version, which would predate the form of the Decree that eventually was incorporated into Acts, actually may have been preserved in Didache 6 in a more pristine state than the version of the Decree that appears in Acts 15. [2]

​Jefford holds back from suggesting that the Didache is the Apostolic Decree, but he does go so far as to suggest that both Luke and the author of the Didache might have had access to the original Apostolic Decree—with the latter preserving that text more faithfully than did Luke. This essay pursues that suggestion further. In what follows I will attempt to show that the Didache, in its original form, preserves the text of the Apostolic Decree directly and in full—and that it was Paul’s endorsement of this Apostolic Decree that enabled his opponents to present him as preaching the additional necessity of circumcision even though, in reality, nothing could have been further from his intention. ... "

PURCHASE AND ACCESS OPTIONS

​[1] Hans Dieter Betz writes: “What the Apostle has precisely in mind [in 5:11] will in all likelihood always be hidden from our knowledge. Presumably, he refers to matters known to the Galatians as well as to himself, but unknown to us. … If the Galatians had been told by the opponents that Paul preached circumcision, how could they believe it?” (Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 268).
 
[2] Clayton N. Jefford, “Tradition and Witness in Antioch: Acts 15 and Didache 6,” in Perspectives on Contemporary New Testament Questions: Essays in Honor of T. C. Smith, ed. Edgar V. McKnight (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1992), 75–89, here 88 … . See also Jefford, The Sayings of Jesus in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, VCSup 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 96–97.