Didascalia: Essential Insights for Powerful Christian Teaching

Chapter 1

The Didascalia, or the Catholic Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and Holy Disciples of Our Saviour, is a Church Order, composed, according to recent investigations, in the first part, perhaps even the first decades, of the third century, for a community of Christian converts from paganism in the northern part of Syria. The work is modelled on the Didache and forms the main source of the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions. The unknown author of the Didascalia seems to have been of Jewish descent. A bishop with a considerable knowledge of medicine, he lacked special theological training. He makes ample use of Holy Scripture and borrows from the Didache, Hermas, Irenaeus, the Gospel of Peter and the Acts of Paul. The text can be reconstructed from the Apostolic Constitutions, a few Greek fragments, a complete Syriac translation, an old Latin translation of about half, and the Arabic and Ethiopic Didascalia that depend on the Didascalia Apostolorum.

Chapter 2

Some Contemporary Texts

Ammonius of Alexandria (200-230 A.D.)

Zostrianos (200-230 A.D.)

Three Steles of Seth (200-230 A.D.)

Exegesis on the Soul (200-230 A.D.)

Didascalia (200-250 A.D.)

Books of Jeu (200-250 A.D.)

Pistis Sophia (200-300 A.D.)

Tripartite Tractate (200-300 A.D.)

Hypostasis of the Archons (200-300 A.D.)