Social memory and the Didache.

This article explores the Didache as a written artifact of social memory documenting the socialization program of a particular network of Israelite Jesus people. Drawing on the work of sociologist Jeffrey Olick, I define more precisely his concepts of (a) memory genre as a mnemonic practice and/or image of the past that is available to a particular group at a specific moment in time, and (b) genre memory as the memory of previous commemorations: the ongoing discourse that occurs by means of particular memory genres. Using these concepts heuristically, I demonstrate that the Didache functions to establish, reinforce, and maintain social identity among non-Israelite recruits by incorporating a specific Jesus group memory genre, the sayings of Jesus, into a more widely known Mediterranean memory genre, the two ways discourse. The Didache's integration of these two emerges as a distinctive genre memory differing significantly from other articulations of the two ways tradition because it is shaped both by the group's socialization needs and by memory genres and genre memory associated with the Davidic kingdom, which provide the lens for this group's understanding of Jesus and his purpose.

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In their 1998 article, Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins define social memory studies as "a general rubric for inquiry into the varieties of forms through which we are shaped by the past, conscious and unconscious, public and private, material and communicative, consensual and challenged" (112). They insist that social memory refers to "distinct sets of mnemonic practices in various social sites, rather than to collective memory as a thing" (112). Social memory for Olick and Robbins is thus a process that "works differently at different points in time" (122). It is deeply implicated in the formation and perpetuation of personal and social identities, is subject to contestation, and is characterized by both malleability and persistence (122). In other words, our sense of who we are personally and socially emerges from the images of the past that we inherit and manipulate and argue about.

In a later article, entitled "Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany," Olick argues that "commemorative images of the past not only reflect the commemorated event and the contemporary circumstances, but are path-dependent products of earlier commemorations as well" (381). He proposes that the mechanism of this path dependency is "genre memory" (391). There are "several different genres of memory, and different genres are appropriate to different occasions" (Olick, personal communication, November 10, 2004)." Within the context of official German commemorations of the past, for example, Olick has identified "normal legitimation," "German suffering," "German guilt," and "German traditions" as genres that shape recurring commemorations at different times (1999: 384). Genre, for Olick, includes both form and substance, i. e., the specific themes and tropes associated with particular generic forms (personal communication, November 10, 2004).

Olick does not, in his article, define or distinguish conceptually between genre memory and memory genre. As he admits in a personal communication (November 10, 2004), he devised the pair as a "play on words to make a nice title." But perhaps there is more here than just that. In my reading of Olick's work a memory genre seems to refer to those mnemonic practices together with the images of the past that are available to particular social groups at specific moments in time (1999: 383). German suffering or German guilt would be an example of such a memory genre. Genre memory seems to relate to what Olick (1999) calls the "memory of commemoration," i.e. the reality that "earlier commemorations shape later ways of seeing, whether or not subsequent speakers are aware of any specific earlier commemoration" (383). Genre memory then would refer to past and present tellings and retellings of a particular memory genre, such as German suffering or guilt, i.e. the ongoing discourse that occurs by means of these genres.

Olick's theoretical work is rooted in a diachronic case study of commemorations of May 8, 1945--the day that marked the end of World War II in the Federal Republic of Germany. He concludes that while present "circumstances shape commemorative choices and reactions to them ... those circumstances also include the ongoing discourse.... It is the inextricable interplay of past and present, discursive history and contemporary context--accomplished through genre memory--that produces images of the past and reactions to those images" (1999: 399). Paying attention to genre memory, i. e., the memory of commemoration, enables Olick to assess more clearly how and why commemorations change not only in response to changing socio-historical contexts but also in reaction and response to each other.

What is the relevance of these insights for the work that we do as scholars of texts produced by the earliest Christ-followers? Our database consists of a relatively small set of documents whose origins and relationships are to a large degree conjectural. We cannot, therefore, replicate Olick's case study using our texts. Yet I do believe that social memory studies can provide another set of heuristic tools for exploring how and why our texts came to be the way that they are, as well as how and why we use those texts the way we do. Social memory studies enable us, not only to contextualize the documents that we work with as scripts for commemorative performances within particular communities, but also to explore how they work as commemorative scripts for both past and present audiences. To illustrate these claims I will attempt to apply these notions to the first part of the Didache, the "two ways discourse" focusing on 1.3b2.1, what Niederwimmer (68) calls the sectio evangelica incorporating materials from the sayings of Jesus.

The Didache

The Didache contains one of the earliest and most fascinating treatments of the discourses and memory of Jesus. Originating in Syria during the second half of the first century, perhaps as early as 50-70 ce (Milavec: vii; van de Sandt & Flusser: 48-49), it is best described as a training manual for non-Israelite recruits who are being initiated into an already existing network of Israelite household-based Jesus assemblies (Milavec: vii; Draper 2000: 123). It purports to be the teaching of the Lord as given through the twelve apostles to the nations, and contains instructions for catechesis (1.1-6.2), baptism, fasting, prayer, the eucharist (6.3-11.2), tithing and leadership (11.3-15.4), and a concluding apocalyptic appeal (16.1-8).

The Didache comes to us as "voices from the past" (Foley; Jaffee), i. e., as a written text documenting the socialization program of a particular network of Israelite Jesus people. It was composed, performed and received both as oral performance and as written text preserving the teaching of Christ's apostles as remembered within this particular circle of Jesus followers. The Didache is a written artifact of social memory that preserves orally composed elements such as the discourses of Jesus, proverbial Israelite wisdom, and various prayers. The incorporation of these disparate elements of the composer(s)' heritage in the text transforms them into commemoranda in the form of teachings and rituals that when remembered and reenacted together decisively establish, reinforce, and maintain the social identity of Jesus-group members. For the teachers and ritual leaders who "read" the Didache, it functioned as a "voiced text" providing a script for oral performances in which recruits were initiated and integrated into their new social identity as Jesus people (Milavec: 715-25; Henderson: 283-306).

The Didache begins with catechetical instructions addressed to prospective non-Israelite recruits. These are introduced with the statement, "There are two ways, one of life, the other of death" (1.1) followed by a long series of does and don'ts characterizing the way of life (1.2-4.14), a brief description of the way of death (5.1-2) and a concluding instruction about the desirability of Torah observance (6.1-3). This "two ways" device was fairly widespread in the early Mediterranean world, represented for example by Xenophon's telling of "the choice of Heracles," in which he must choose between two paths symbolized by women named virtue and vice (Van de Sandt & Flusser: 58). The metaphor of the "two ways" also appears in a number of biblical texts. Van de Sandt and Flusser [58] list Deuteronomy 11:26-28; 30:15-19; Jeremiah 21:8; Psalm 1:6; 119:29-30; 139: 24; Proverbs 2:13; 4:18-19; 11:20; and 12:28--all of which refer to this choice but do not show the same basic structure. It is also found in the deutero-canonical book of Sirach (33:7-15), as well as in extra-biblical Israelite documents such as the Testamen of Asher (1.3-5), 1 Enoch (91:18-19; 94:1-4), the Book of Jubilees (7:26), the Treatise of the Two Spirits in the Manual of Discipline from Qumran (1 QS 3:18-4:26), and in Philo of Alexandria (Spec. Leg. IV, 108; Philo 8 (LCL 341: 73-75). In other words, the "two ways" topos might be described as a memory genre that was recognizable and comprehensible to both first century Israelites and non-Israelites. It was one way in which teaching about norms and values could be organized and transmitted. As such it could be and indeed was elaborated and developed by followers of Jesus for use in the teaching of non-Israelite converts (Milavec: 110-11). It is found not only in the Didache, but also in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the Doctrina Apostolorum, in the Canons of the Apostles, in the Arabic Life of Shenoute, and in Pseudo-Athanasius' Syntagma Doctrinae. What distinguishes the "two ways" of the Didache from these Jesus group texts is its inclusion of the sectio evangelica (Niederwimmer: 37).

The sectio evangelica consists of sayings of Jesus that are memorialized in Q as part of Jesus' inaugural announcement of the kingdom and its agenda. In Matthew's Gospel they form part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (5:1-7:29), while Luke incorporates the same teachings into Jesus' address from the level place (6:17ff). in the Didache Jesus' instructions to bless, pray and fast for one's enemies and persecutors, to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile, to give one's tunic along with one's cloak, and to give to everyone who asks are not introduced as the words of Jesus at all. They appear simply as teachings that flow from the words of the double commandment to "love first the God who created you, then your neighbor as yourself" (1.2). This is a significant omission and related directly to the way that Jesus himself is remembered within the community of the Didache as I shall demonstrate momentarily, but first a few comments about the sayings tradition.

The sayings of Jesus were important enough to have become a memory genre of their own as exemplified by Q and its descendents. Matthew's contextualization of the sayings tradition within his particular narrative is in part path-driven by genre memories of Moses. It is also significantly shaped by Matthew's own socio-historical circumstances in which the interpretation of the Mosaic Torah is contested by rival groups. Matthew's Jesus speaks polemically in antitheses--"you have heard it said ... but I say ..."--in order to flesh out what truly honorable behavior exceeding that of Matthew's rivals, the scribes and Pharisees, might look like (Malina & Rohrbaugh: 42-47). Luke's version of the same discourse has no such antitheses but emphasizes issues more relevant to urban elites in the eastern Mediterranean for whom joining a Jesus group could result in social ostracism (Malina & Rohrbaugh: 250), and uses a prophetic genre of discourse that includes a series of "woes" not found in other treatments of Jesus sayings. The Gospel of Thomas emerging toward the end of the first century or beginning of the second may well represent an attempt to hang on to that earlier sayings tradition in the face of emerging narrative commemorations of Jesus (Valantasis: 13-24). Each of these texts represents instrumental changes in social memory as their writers intentionally manipulate the remembered words of Jesus in order to serve specific needs related to the social identities of local networks of Jesus people. The very fact that these diverse groups found the words of Jesus relevant and adaptable to their needs ensured their cultural persistence. An equally important area for further study would be the way that genre memories drive the various narrative commemorations of Jesus that survive in these texts.

To return to the Didache: here we see a treatment of the sayings of Jesus that is quite different. The sedio evangelica is not introduced as the words of Jesus at all but simply as the teaching that emerges from the words of the double commandment:

1.1 There are two ways, one of life, the other of death, and between the two ways there is a great difference. 2 Now the way of life is this: you shall love first the God who created you, then your neighbor as yourself, and do not yourself do to another what you would not want done to you. 3 Here is the teaching [that flows] from these words. Bless those who curse you....

The double commandment itself is treated in the same way. It is not introduced as scripture or commandment or law (Torah), again in contrast to the Synoptics, where it is explicitly identified as such. In Mark, a Torah expert described as a scribe asks Jesus which of the commandments is the greatest (Mark 12:28-34). In Matthew, it is a Pharisaic lawyer, again a Torah expert who asks Jesus the same question (Matt 22:34-40). In both instances Jesus responds by reciting the double commandment. In Luke it is the Torah expert--a lawyer--who recites the double commandment in response to Jesus' question, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" (10:25-27). In each of these cases the double commandment is explicitly identified as such and/or related to "the law" (Torah) which in Luke is explicitly identified as a written text. In the Didache, however, the double commandment defines "the way of life" (1.1) and is described simply as "words" from which the "teachings" that follow are derived (1.3a). Furthermore, the double commandment is recited in an abbreviated proverbial--i.e. characteristically oral--form that recurs only in Barnabas 19.2 (Niederwimmer: 64).

The composer(s) of the Didache appear to be working with oral expressions of the sayings of the Jesus and with Israelite "popular memory" (see Olick & Robbins: 126-27), rather than anything approaching the status of "official" texts.

These two "sources" are treated as complementary and are integrated into a single script. As a particular memory genre, the Two Ways discourse of the Didache differs from both its Israelite antecedents and its Jesus group contemporaries by its inclusion of the sectio evangelica. This peculiar articulation of this genre defines and distinguishes its author and audience from other Israelite (and Jesus) groups in its environment, a concern that is also evident in the Didache's directions not to pray and fast as the "hypocrites" do (Draper 1997: 54).

The sayings of Jesus are not memorialized in the Didache explicitly as the words of Jesus because of the way that Jesus himself is remembered in the text. We see this most clearly in the Eucharistic prayers which in the Didache do not commemorate the death of Jesus as they do in the Pauline and Synoptic traditions. What this community celebrates in their sacred meal is God's actions as made known through the revelatory work of Jesus. The before-meal prayers connect the cup of wine with "the vine of David your servant which you [the Father] made known to us through Jesus your servant" (9.2). The fragment of bread symbolizes the "life and knowledge which you [the Father] made known to us through Jesus your servant" (9.3). The after-dinner prayers thank the Father for the gift of the holy name "which you [the Father] made dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you [the Father] made known to us through Jesus your servant" (10.2). In these prayers Jesus, like David, is identified as a servant of the Father who is hailed as the God of David a few verses later (10.6).

Here we see again the mechanisms of social memory at work through genres of memory. One set of images of the past--one memory genre--that was available to first century Israelite groups revolved around David, the Davidic kingdom and expectations of its restoration. In the Didache it is genre memory, i.e. memories of commemorations of this tradition that shape its understanding of Jesus and his role. Just as David, the servant of God established a kingdom for God's people, so Jesus, the servant of God reveals knowledge of and commitment to the way of life for a renewed people of God soon to be gathered from the ends of the earth (9.4; 10.5). Jesus' role within this forthcoming assembly is never discussed; the one reference to him as the Christ or anointed one who reveals the Father's glory and power might suggest a kingly or prophetic role in the establishment or operations of a restored Davidic kingdom (Draper 2000: 148; Milavec: 666). Yet it is for the coming of the God of David that the group prays (10.6). This is a community that commemorates God's past kingdom-building work initiated through David while anticipating its forthcoming culmination as revealed through Jesus. The focus of the Eucharistic prayers is thus God the Father. Jesus is honored in these prayers only as the servant and revealer of life and knowledge that come from God. Similarly Jesus' words are memorialized as illustrations of commandments that originate with the Father. They are the "word of God" (4.1) made known by Jesus, the servant of God.

This is a community that does not commemorate the person of Jesus as much as the praxis of Jesus, or to paraphrase Milavec, the Didache people honor Jesus by doing what Jesus did--teaching the way of life and gathering for celebratory, life affirming meals that anticipate the coming of God's kingdom (391-92). Jesus' words and actions are remembered, repeated and re-enacted because they define the group's social identity as the church waiting to be gathered into the Father's kingdom. Jesus' words integrated into popular Israelite traditions understood by the group as the "word of God" (4.1) set the agenda for the group's way of life and mission in the interim--the initiation of non-Israelites into this kingdom movement.

This brief examination of selections from the Didache enables us to see social memory as it is being made, emerging from the composer(s)' integration of two memory genres: incorporating the newly emerging sayings tradition of Jesus into an already existing two-ways discourse, that is further shaped by the needs and concerns of socializing non-Israelites into this community. So while commandments from the second half of the Decalogue are included (2.2), others such as "honor thy mother and father" are excluded--possibly because these would create impossible situations for non-Israelite converts. How could one honor one's parents and their gods as filial piety demanded and yet pledge one's exclusive allegiance to the God of David? Recitations from the Decalogue are intertwined with six additional prohibitions forbidding pederasty and illicit sex, the practices of magic and making potions, abortion, and infanticide (2.2). These are activities that Judeans stereotypically associated with the polytheistic cultures surrounding them, and which many non-Israelites would have condoned (Milavec: 121-40). The end result is a new, distinctive version of the two-ways memory genre incorporating the community's Israelite heritage and its commitment to the way of life revealed by Jesus. As an articulation of social memory this Two Ways discourse functions as a model of the Didache community and as a model for shaping the social identity of non-Israelites wishing to join this group.

Works Cited

Draper, J. A. 2000. Ritual Process and Ritual Symbol in Didache 7-10. Vigiliae Christianae 54, 121-58.

1997. The Role of Ritual in the Alternation of Social Universe: Jewish-Christian Initiation of Gentiles in the Didache. Listening 32: 48-67.

Foley, J. M. 2004. Indigenous Poems, Colonialist Texts. Pp. 9-35 in

Orality, Literacy and Colonialism Antiquity, edited by J. A. Draper. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature (Semeia Studies 47).

Henderson, I. H. 1992. Didache and Oralily in Synoptic Comparison. Journal of Biblical Literature 111/2: 283-306.

Jaffee, M. S. (2004). Rabbinic Oral Tradition in Lale Byzantine Galilee: Christian Empire and Rabbinic Ideological Resistance. Pp. 171-91 in Orality, Literacy and Colonialism in Antiquity, edited by J. A. Draper. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature (Semeia Studies 47).

Malina, B. J., & R. L. Rohrbaugh. 2003. Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Second Edition). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Milavec, A. 2003. The Didache: Faith, Hope and Life in the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 ce. New York, NY: The Newman Press.

Niederwimmer, K. 1998. The Didache: A Commentary, translated by L. M. Mahoney. Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Olick, J. K. 1998. Social Memory Studies: From "Collective Memory" to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24: 105-40.

Olick, J. K., & J. Robbins. 1999. Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany. American Sociological Review 64: 381-402.

Valantasis, R. 1997. The Gospel of Thomas. London, UK/New York, NY: Routledge.

van de Sandt, H & D. Flusser. 2002. The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Ritva H. Williams, Ph.D. (University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), is Associate Professor of Religion at Augustana College, 639 38th Street, Rock Island, IL 61201. E-mail: [e-mail]. She is the author of Bishops as Brokers of Heavenly Goods: Ignatius to the Ephesians, pp. 389-98 in Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East, edited by Richard E. Averbeck, Mark Chavalas, & David Weisberg (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2002). Forthcoming (this year) is her study Stewards, Prophets, Keepers of the Word: Leadership in the Early Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers).