HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Didache on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 100 AD (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles; compiled c. AD 100, range c. 50–150; anonymous, no single author) · Wikipedia
Summary: The Didache — the early church-order manual whose moral half is built on the Jewish "Two Ways" tradition — embeds a line of the deuterocanonical Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) in its catalogue of duties: "Be not a stretcher forth of the hands to receive and a drawer of them back to give" (Sirach 4:31), set among the same string of commandments as a paraphrase of the apostolic charge to raise one's children "in the fear of God" (cf. Ephesians 6:4). It renders no canon-list and uses no citation formula, so — like Clement and Polycarp — it is a witness not to a verdict but to the early practical use of a disputed book as moral authority. A real caveat tempers the force: because the verse stands inside inherited "Two Ways" material, the Sirach echo may travel as common ethical tradition rather than as a deliberate citation.

Claims & evidence

It embeds Sirach 4:31 in its catalogue of moral duties, beside an apostolic child-rearing charge

You shall not be undecided whether it shall be or no. Be not a stretcher forth of the hands to receive and a drawer of them back to give. If you have anything, through your hands you shall give ransom for your sins. You shall not hesitate to give, nor murmur when you give; for you shall know who is the good repayer of the hire. You shall not turn away from him that is in want, but you shall share all things with your brother, and shall not say that they are your own… You shall not remove your hand from your son or from your daughter, but from their youth shall teach them the fear of God.

— Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), ch. 4, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Roberts–Donaldson translation). The framed sentence — "Be not a stretcher forth of the hands to receive and a drawer of them back to give" — reproduces Sirach 4:31 ("Let not thine hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest repay").¹ It sits in an unbroken chain of moral commands that also folds in the apostolic charge to bring up one's children "in the fear of God" (cf. Ephesians 6:4, "bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord"), with nothing to mark the Sirach material off as lesser than the rest.² As in Clement and Polycarp, the deuterocanonical line is woven in as authoritative counsel, introduced by no "it is written."

Notes

• Witness, not verdict. The Didache enumerates no books of the Old Testament, so it renders no "Yes" or "No" on a canon-list. What it supplies is evidence of use: a Sirach maxim functioning as moral authority in a primitive church-order document, braided indistinguishably with the rest of its commandments — the datapoint that bears on the argument "Did the early church reject the deuterocanon…?" (assessed contested), since it predates every formal list and stands on the "using" side of the divide.
• The "Two Ways" caveat — weigh it down. The moral section of the Didache (chs. 1–6) is a Christian recension of an older Jewish "Two Ways" catechism, material it shares closely with the Epistle of Barnabas (chs. 18–20). Sirach 4:31 stands inside exactly this inherited block. So the echo is real, but its evidential weight is softer than a fresh, deliberate quotation would carry: the line may have reached the compiler as a fixed piece of common ethical tradition rather than as a verse he reached for and recognized as Scripture. The honest reading is the modest one — early practical circulation of Sirach's language, not a canon decision.
• Place on the timeline. The Didache's date is debated (estimates run c. 50–150 AD; many settle near c. 100), but it sits with the earliest post-apostolic witnesses — after Clement of Rome (c. 96) and beside Polycarp (c. 125), and well before Melito of Sardis (c. 170), whose list is the first to count the books and the first to leave the deuterocanon out. With Clement and Polycarp it forms the cluster of earliest Christian witnesses to the disputed books in practical use, before any Christian thought to draw up an Old-Testament catalogue.

Sources