These kingdom values seem upside down to most people. Can a person be a follower of Christ without following Christ? Jesus ' teachings are so revolutionary. What if Jesus really meant every word he said? Hi, Dean. Hey. Good to see you again. Well, since we last talked, I hear you've had quite an interesting trip overseas, and it's somehow tied in with the Didache. So maybe you could tell us all something about it. Yeah, that's great.
What it was is my yearly trip that I go with Christian Aid Ministry over to Greece, and I do that. And now this time, my son, Christian and Paulette, are over in Istanbul with e-impact. And so they're doing a marketing thing over there. And so I thought, oh, this would be a good chance for me to check out Constantinople, Istanbul. Always wanted to go there and there's so much history there.
And actually, you know, when I started to look into things to see, to make sure you know how it is when you go places, make sure you're not missing something. Boy, it just started going to one level after another. I mean, the place is amazing. You think about it.
I mean, first of all, you got the whole Constantine coming there, which really just turns this into a pagan slash Christian empire, complete with giant naked statues of himself and, you know, obelisk and all this kind of a thing, and all those things are still there. So, you have that whole level. You have the whole Justinian and the level of, you know, Theodora and all that stuff that went on with him and the Justinian Code and his era. Oh, before that, you have Chrysostom.
Here you have Chrysostom and he was there and I found it's a different time. Maybe we'll talk about it sometime. I was able to locate the column that got him in trouble when Eudoxia wanted to put a statue of herself and he started complaining about it. This is what got him exiled the second time and literally found that column still there with her name on it and everything. It was tremendous.
But one of the things I wanted to make sure that I was doing, and particularly since I knew that we were going to kind of focus on this apostolic fathers, you know, series, what's the primary? What's the first? You know, the chief work of the Apostolic Fathers would be the Didache. So I just started thinking, you know, I'd really love to just to be and see where this famous library was, you know, that there were this Didache was discovered.
So I started to try to look at it and I found it actually much more difficult than I thought. So I'll tell you this, and it's almost like it verges on a little bit of mad scientist type of thing. So I apologize, you know, of the different levels that I found, but I'm very blessed with what it did, how it finally worked out. So I eventually went on to like my different social media accounts and different type of things there.
And I'm in ones that are a group with like scholars and different things like that, or people that are just history geeks like myself. And I started to try to locate this place. Well, first I googled it. I tried to go into forums and tried to find where this library was, and I couldn't find it. So I finally started asking the questions online. I asked this question, where exactly so the person who found it was his name was Philotheos Bryennios, and he's the bishop who discovered this in 1873.
Okay, can I stop you there? Can I stop you there? So Dean, just to bring our listeners totally on board. Right, right. So, the thing that always interested me about the Didache, the discovery, is that it was not an archaeological find, right? Yeah, right, right. Exactly. Yes.
It was there all those centuries in a monastery, and no one recognized it, but they knew there was such a thing because the early Christians quote from it, they referred to it, and so they knew it was there that this document, but they didn't realize they had a copy of it right well. I mean, literally hundreds of years. I mean, it was part of the early canons, as you know, you know, it was it was listed there.
And it's amazing when you look at it because I think particularly for our interest with the historic faith, it presents a Christianity that's very simple. Yes. Very Christ-following, and without all the extra baggage that comes along with Christianity for centuries later. And so, I think for us, the Didache is actually very important. Yeah, and so you're right. But this was known that we had that, but totally gone. Totally gone. And it was just remarkable that this then was a discovery.
So, yeah, so the way I worded this, I'm gonna switch over to my note screen here. I said, " Where exactly did Philotheos Bryennios find the Didache manuscript? Can anyone assist me? " I said this to all kinds of different scholarly groups. I'm planning a trip to Istanbul in August, and there's a particular, and is there a particular place? I'm particularly looking for a place where he actually discovered it. I'm on a quest to find the spot that the codex was that was unearthed by Bishop Bryennios in 1873.
Can anybody help me? Because this is what it says in the introduction to the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and I quote, " In 1873, Philotheos Bryennios, the headmaster of the higher Greek school at Constantinople, but now Metropolitan of Nicomedia, discovered a remarkable collection of manuscripts in the library of the Jerusalem monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople. And that's what it says you know in the introduction to the Ante-Nicene Fathers. You can see that in our you know sets there.
So, of course, what do I do first? I go and look up, all right, well, then I'm just going to go find the Jerusalem monastery, the most Holy Sepulchre Constantinople. There's not one. It never existed. There never was a monastery there. I was like, OK, so then there must be some, you know, changing of language through the years and everything. So I kept writing on my quest here. I said, my first problem is that Constantinople never had a church of the Most Holy Sepulchre.
So then I got on these Orthodox sites and one guy said that during the Ottoman era and before that patriarchs had locations from their main spots like embassies. And what they were called in Greek was a metochion. And this is what this was. And sure enough, he was right. And this gave me my first clue. This Metochion was a embassy of the Jerusalem monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople. Okay, okay. I had wondered why is it the patriarch of Jerusalem? What's he doing in Constantinople?
I was trying to figure all that out. It was crazy. To this day, to this day, the church there that's below the library is still owned by the Most Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem place and has the archbishop of the Jerusalem patriarch and all that over it instead of the Greek. Now, which gives it a bit of more challenge, it's hard enough. I sympathized a lot when I was there. It's hard enough to be Greek Orthodox in Istanbul today.
But not far from this is where the famous ecumenical patriarch resides, is not far up the street. 15-minute walk from this library is where the but this place, still, the church and the library is still owned by, to this day, from Jerusalem. So that was the first clue. And I said, " Okay, great. So this is going to help me. " And so then I still kept asking around.
Couldn't the first guy that I asked, I looked at, so, okay, once I exhausted the Greek Orthodox sites and the history geek sites and all that, I started saying, " Okay, I'm going to write some of these professors who've written books on the Didache. " And the one that I liked the best, I don't know if you've ever read the one by O'Loughlin. Tom O'Loughlin from the University of Nottingham wrote one called the Didache A Window on the Earliest Christians.
And again, kind of like typical, he does you know looking at that this lets us know about the early church. But what I liked about his book, he kind of does it in like a storytelling form of the discovery of this thing. So, okay, great. Well, he's telling me all this story about how, you know, Bryennios' found this document. So, hey, I'll ask him. Sure enough, I finally got response from him, which a lot of people I wrote, I did not. I wrote, of course, I wrote Greek Orthodox churches in Turkey. I translated them.
There was a new library in Istanbul. I translated it with Google, translated into Turkish, didn't get anything. But this guy wrote me back. It was very friendly, very helpful. And he said, " You know, actually, he never found it. " He went there, looked around, never found it, and he said he even went to Jerusalem where he was trying to find where the document's been moved to, and they wouldn't let him see it.
So here's a guy who actually wrote a book on the Didache and Professor in Nottingham, and he never found it. So, at this point, I was thinking, eh, this is not looking too good. It's not looking good that I'm going to find this. So, I kept, though, looking and then all of a sudden, through a Reddit post in a oh, a biblical documents group that I joined, and a professor in England named Alan Garrow, G-A-R-R-O-W, who had the Reddit name of Mr. Didache. No less.
He, I guess, probably has searches or he does Didache stuff all the time, obviously. And then he keys me in. He said, " Hey, I visited back in 2004. " And I think he actually went since then as well. And he said, " I found it. I was there and I'll even give you the Google image post and the street that you can kind of hone in on where it is. " Like, " Whoa, this was great.
" And then what really made it was he gave me a picture, old grainy picture of him at the library with actually what it was was the Archbishop of the Jerusalem patriarch there with him showing him the library back in 2004. Let me just interrupt here. So correct me if I'm wrong, but what you were looking for was the library or monastery or whatever it was, kind of like an embassy. The actual Didache manuscript is back in Jerusalem, right? That's what this one professor told me. So yeah, I think so.
Now they have hidden some stuff now in the Jerusalem patriarchy. There's some documents there and they have some big relics there. I mean, as a matter of fact, in 2004, this place right up the road, the Ecumenical Patriarch Church, got back Chrysostom's bones. So in 1204, the Fourth Crusade, the crusaders stole Chrysostom's bones along with a lot of other stuff, took it to a different place, Venice, and some of it somehow ended up in Rome.
And Pope John Paul the Second out of a feeling of trying to be more ecumenical and everything said, " You know what? It's time to give Chrysostom back to them. " And they actually gave it back. And so now he's there. The bones of Chrysostom is actually up the road there. I didn't actually make it in time to see it. It's there next to Basil and different things that they have, you know, relics up there. So they do keep some pretty big stuff there. Now the library is vacant. It's no longer anything in that.
So yes, what I was trying to find and dreaming to have was just a picture of this library. I'd always imagined, " Where is it? " you know And I kind of start imagining, you know was it near the Hagia Sophia? Was it over here? Was it over there? And this whole Fener region of Turkey is where a lot of the Greek Orthodox stuff was and is to this day in this region. So yes, I was trying to find that. Is there a place or is it just total ruins now? Is it destroyed? Or is there anything left of this ancient library?
And that's what I was looking for. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, so, okay, so you actually find it, as am I understanding? Were you able to go inside? Okay, so yeah, so I actually found it. And so what I found out through him, and then once I had the name of the church that I found through his Google image, it was a name that had like Metochion in it, and I matched the Google image off a street view. And then I googled that church in Turkish and found some people then talking about it.
And sure enough, there's a guard that sits in front of the church every day from 2:00 to 5:00, a guard. And they actually only opened the church formal the whole actual church building once a year. The patriarch from Constantinople from Jerusalem will come over on St. George's Day, which is a church to something of Saint George, and they'll open up the church and let you in. But they still the courtyard and everything. And so you got to go there between two to five.
You'll be a guard there and you ask him to show the ground. So Christian, my son who's over there, I said, hey, check this out you know for me. So I'm going to be on time. There was a restaurant across the street. So we went across the street, talked to the guy at the restaurant. He goes, yeah, yeah, there's a guy here. Come back at this time, and I'll help you if you have any problems. So the Turkish guy at the restaurant then helped us out. So all right, Christian made it in.
And so then I said, okay, with Christian, make it in, I'll make it in. So sure enough, I got there, got back with Christian and the whole group, and we went in. He's illiterate, I think, even in Turkish. So I used my Google Translator app to talk to him, but he couldn't read the screen. He would make me play it. Okay, so back and forth, we're going it in. It's beautiful. I have some pictures. And he took us around to the actual church there and showed us. And I had to look through a keyhole.
He said, yeah, through the translation. He said, yeah, you know, they only open this once a year. And I'm looking through that keyhole. And then he takes me over and he points to this bowl and he says through the translating thing, this is for dog food that if you can donate some money for the dog food, we have a dog here and then he keeps watch over the place. Otherwise, the people would kill me and they would take over this place and the guard dogs keep it safe. And I said, okay, fine.
I put some money in there, you know. But then looking around, this didn't match the picture. This did not match the picture of the professor, Mr. Didache, who gave me the picture. So I was like, " Okay. " So I showed him the picture that off my phone and he goes, " Oh. " He said, " Yeah, that's over there. " And I was like, " Okay, well, can you take me where that is or show me where it is? " And then I thought, " Okay, the journey's not over. I'm gonna have to find out where this is.
" ' Cause we're not in the library. We're in the church monastery, but I still haven't seen the library. So, he goes, " No, you could maybe come back on Monday when I'm not here. " And I said, " Well, I'm leaving tomorrow. I can't do this. " And I realized, okay, so I give him about, I don't know, $25 worth of Dog food? Lyra, not dog food money. And he goes, " Okay, I'll show you. " He took me around and he showed me the library.
And I mean, all he did was walk me up the staircase, which was, you know, pretty high for him. And we walked through there and there we were. And it matched the picture. I'm looking at it and it feels amazing. So we walk through, he shows it to me, we walk out, then there's another guard up there, a guard family, who live in this old house that's there. And he said for me to have tea with her. He told me that I should pay her some money for the tea. So I gave her the naturally, naturally. So I do that.
But then while I'm up there, we're like on a we're like on a balcony. It was like a whole level. Actually, this was like a wall in the old days. And now it's kind of like that. And you can look down and I realize there's a coffee house right below the Didache. I'm thinking that would be a lot easier place for future people to come and see the library instead of going through all I'm going through. I couldn't get into the library anyway. All I was seeing was the outside.
If you could go down there, you could just look right up and maybe have a better view anyway. So in my mind, I'm thinking, OK, I got to check out this coffee house. So anyway, we had the tea and it was good. We gave the lady, you know, money for her tea and everything, and then we left. But on the way out, I looked up and over the door, there was this really strange, large inscription. And it was, you know, it was bigger than just a blessing or a, you know, a saint so-and-so. It was like, it was like big.
And Daniel can show the picture of this. It was like, it was kind of big. And I looked up and of course he wouldn't let me take a picture of it. I later got a picture actually from the Archbishop who sent me a picture. And as I looked at that, I was like, " What is that? " I asked the guard through the translator. He said, " Oh, just Greek. " " Just Greek. " He said to me, I was like, " Yeah, just Greek. It looks really big. I mean, there's a lot of words there.
" So anyway, I tucked it away for me to dig out, and so then got back down out. And that was the stop of my original journey there. And that part was amazing. But then it went down several levels from that. The next thing that I did was, okay, so let me find out this coffee. I didn't have time to go to the coffee house because, you know, with a group of people and, you know, and all this type of thing. So... So Dean, let me stop you a second. Okay. ' Cause I kind of lost... Okay, good, good, good.
This is getting random. It's a little mad scientist. You know, so yeah, this is good. Oh, you're enjoying your coffee. Okay, so explain again the connection between the coffee house and this ancient library owned by the patriarch of Jerusalem, where the Didache was found. So there is a nexus there. You lost me on it, though. Okay. So to kind of situate it and maybe I could show. So you have the monastery and it has a name, something like Metochion. It has something of that in its name. Okay.
Coffeehouse on the grounds of the monastery next door, next door through a wall. Big, big old ancient wall. And then upstairs from the coffee house, like like you had to literally climb up one level and another level is I got up to another level up there and that's where the library was. But then up there, there was like a balcony. I looked down and I saw a coffee house down there underneath the library.
So like we had gone around on the top, gone up from the monastery, and now looking down, I'm seeing, hey, there's a coffee house down there. And this would be a lot easier because somebody who's sitting there in that seat could look right up here and see the Didache library and not have to go through all that I just had to go through. And not have to pay money for the dogs and the... Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But as I looked that up, it got even more interesting. So I never heard of this guy.
It was a coffee house to Dimitri Cantemir Museum Library. And I asked some people there. So who's that? Oh, he's a musician. Oh, okay. Dimitri Cantemir Memorial House.
I looked the guy up and another whole level of interest comes out through this is that Dmitri Cantemir was some famous nobleman in the 1600s, early 1700s who worked like with the Russian people and then also had a gentle or a fragile relationship with the Turks at the time and the Ottomans, but he married into it in a proper way, and he built himself a palace in this spot. And he built himself a library on the top of his palace.
And so suddenly I started thinking, " Oh, I wonder if this guy did any theological works. " Sure enough, he did lots of theological works. He was one of these Renaissance guys that were collecting all kinds of manuscripts. He wrote things comparable religion between Islam and Christianity. He wrote all kinds of stuff. Ends up. He had artworks and manuscripts and all that in the library, but then he became too friendly during Peter the Great's time period.
And then with all the Turks trying to take over Vienna and all that that was happening during that time, which has an interesting connection through the Hutterites that were there in that area. Then he was arrested, put in jail. All of his stuff was confiscated. His library was confiscated and everything. So the question went to my mind, " Huh, I wonder if that's how the Didache got there in the first place. You know Did he buy it? " And then it get to the Jerusalem. And I started to try to look through that.
There's still some possibility. However, as I started to look that up, this area was an impressive education area to the Christian world worldwide. And the Greek Orthodox and the Jerusalem patriarch and the Greek patriarchs had a... You can still see this. This is called the Red Castle, a Red Palace or something above this. There was a gigantic seminary, and they had all kinds of manuscripts there and all this as well. But I watched a video of Dimitri Cantemir because I'd never heard of him.
And all of a sudden, and I was just trying to make out through you know the translation from Google what the guys were saying in Romanian. And all of a sudden, this guy with a completely American accent is talking about it, and I'm like, " Oh, I should find this guy. " He's a professor there in this area teaching. So I said, " Hey, curious, Dimitri Cantemir. " And by the way, there's this Greek plaque that's over the thing, which you happen to know what this is about. He writes me back and he gives it to me.
And it ends up... He gives you a picture of it, you mean? He gives me just a translation. Translation. The picture I actually got from the Archbishop. I finally got a response back from the Archbishop and he's writing and he's showing me that they've done amazing reconstruction to preserve this place.
And it wasn't for him and what the work that they've done that I think the place would be almost in ruin now, but they actually spent a lot of money and a lot of time to restore the library of when I was walking up and seeing that. So he gives me the translation, and I'll read it to you here because it's really a bit strange. It ends up being a curse. So again, and again, the picture that I got from the archbishop you can put up there, but it's there and it's carved in stone.
And I got this from this translation from a journal that this professor, Turkish professor, gave me, and it says this. This is a professional translation. It says, " The library was established by the care and the expense of the most blessed patriarch of the holy city of Jerusalem. That is of the eternally to remembered Kyr Dositheos and his grandson heir in dignity. " And he gives the name again. And then it says this, " Therefore, whosoever dares to deprive it of any book of whatever rank or condition may be his.
Let his part be joined to that of the traitor Judas and the others who crucified the Lord. And he who shall pardon the thief, let him also not be pardoned, and so let both be forever unforgiven and anathema. I'd sign 1720. And so I thought, wow, that's pretty impressive. I think I'm going to get a picture of that and stick it on every flash drive, a little miniature picture that I loan out, every book I loan out in the future. I was like, wow.
And so, but then here the chapter, it gets interesting again, is that this place, this very library, with that curse on it, is famous in the secular world, I find out, not for its discovery of the Didache, but for an ancient manuscript, which is one of the oldest manuscripts on earth of Archimedes, of his mathematical formulas and things that he had, and that this was discovered in 1899 or 18 something there.
And what they realized was that they had a prayer book, and somebody was looking at this prayer book, and it was looking strange, and some professor was looking at this, and saw that underneath the prayer book was another book. And so, then they started to discover that they had written the prayer book over this other manuscript, and this other manuscript was actually this most ancient document of the Archimedes, if I'm saying that right, document of this.
So, they discovered it there, but then, after World War II, when all the turmoil of turkeys getting taken over, this thing gets lost, and they don't have it anymore. It was stolen from the library. It turns up in 1998 in New York City and sold an auction for $2 million by an anonymous billionaire. And now it's out, and people discover what it is, and it's considered one of the most remarkable ancient discoveries of manuscripts of all times from this very library. Wow.
Well, maybe we should just talk a little bit about what the Didache is, why it was such an important find. Or am I cutting? Are you done close to it? Or you've got a little closer. The only thing I had is, I do think we should get to it. Enough of the mad scientist discovery on this stuff and talk about the Didache itself. But we could include also just there's the fascinating written account of Bishop Bryennios when he found it, but we can give that in its text form.
So let's get into it and start talking about it as well. Yeah, it's not how you say it in Greek, but it's the way we're all used to in English, saying it just means the teaching. And it probably, you know, I've gone back and forth in my mind, but I kind of now lean towards it's probably the oldest writing we have, Christian writing outside of the New Testament, and perhaps was written before the New Testament was complete.
Now, it's not an inspired writing, but a good chance it was written before, let's say, Revelation or the Gospel of John. You know, those last writings of John in the AD 90 to 95 period, either somebody contrived, you know, to make this look really ancient. The problem with that theory, which I don't think very many scholars hold to, is and there are a lot of fake things like that, is they are never good enough. They always let things slip about, you know, will the Blessed Mary, you know? Right, right.
Something like that that gives it away. I mean, this thing, it's like there's nothing contrived in there. It's such a simplistic kind of document. And, yeah, I mean, nothing that would make you feel it's contrived. The simplicity just really stands out. And the simple nature of Christianity at the point in time when it was written... Exactly, yeah.
So, yeah, it is remarkable, and it's probably I ought to read it, go back and read it once a year, just to remind me, because it's easy for me to get caught up into theology. I mean, I love theology, even though I know on Judgment Day, we are not going to be given a theological test and all that. It's more of an interest like we both have an interest in history. Okay, theology, I think we both have that.
But it's a reminder that, hey, you know, Christianity existed at a time when people, the average Christian held to the simplest theology. Exactly. And just go ahead. Okay, on that point, though, to me, I think that that is so profoundly important. David, one of my favorite books of yours, I think it's the most underrated of your books is, will the real theologian please sit down? And to me, it was when I read that it was profound to me because it really made me think on a lot of these theological things.
I mean, I love, just like you, I love to geek out on details of predestination or whatever, transubstantiation, minutiae, or whatever it is. But when it comes down to it, you know, what is the faith that was required for the believers in the early church? And this Didache, yeah, it seems to present to us a complete, you know, relatively speaking. I mean, an organic church had to still exist, but they presented us the things that they thought were important, you know? Yeah.
And, you know, that book, you know, will the Theologians, please sit down, was, to a large degree, a rebuke to myself. I mean, I wrote it as a rebuke to myself, because I realized, oh, David, you tend to get too caught up in theology. Not that it's not important, but it's easy to put it at too high of a level. And because, you know, just like you, I enjoy getting in there and talking about it.
We all want to know about eternal things, but it's easy to start thinking that the knowledge of theology is somehow brings you closer to Christ. Exactly, yes. And it doesn't. Either on this side, or it's not going to impress him and cause him to draw you closer. So I still spend a lot of time in theology, a lot of thought in it. But yeah, I try to remember, okay, David, this isn't the big thing.
And when you read the four gospels, the words of Jesus, you don't come away with a lot of theology from three years of teaching. The Son of God, our Creator is here on Earth. He wants to share with us what we need to know as humans. Yeah. He doesn't get into theology, you know? What we need to know is humans. So that's the point that I think hit me after reading your book there.
So it's like, you know, how many times on a spiritual journey when people like are having a journey of, you know, faith or whatever, you almost like cry out in the middle of your pilgrimage and say, " I wish Jesus would have just put it on paper or just made it clear what the things that are important so that I can decide if it's this or this or the other. " And it's like, you know, a voice kind of comes back to you and says, " I did. " It's called the Sermon on the Mount. It's, you know, read the earlier church.
That's what they're talking about. And then this is confirmed by the Didache. I mean, it starts right out and you're reading it. It sounds like Jesus, you know? Yeah, it is so funny because back in the years in Texas, when we were both quite a bit younger, I remember I'd lie awake at night thinking, why didn't he give us a statement of faith? Why didn't he lay all of this out, you know, the way Calvin did, and, you know, all of these... Yeah. And it's just like, why, Jesus? And it's like, like you say, I did.
I gave you what you needed to know. And you think you've got to go beyond something that was given you. So, yeah, last night I reread the Didache. It's such a short read. Yeah. And yeah, it just, it really impressed me. So it starts out, famously, and it's maybe about the first half of it is a discussion of the two ways. And this goes to Jesus ' words about the broad and spacious and the narrow and cramped way. I mean, this is directly Jesus. There are two ways.
When you see it on the tracks that are handed out nowadays and all that, the two ways are the narrow way is you come forward invite Jesus in your heart and get saved. That's the narrow way. The broad way are the people who haven't gone and said the sinner's prayer. That's not what Jesus says. Wow. It is not what He said. And so, the early Christians, you see this in the Didache, the Letter of Barnabas, which is also a very early writing. Again, the same theme.
And then you see it all throughout Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Justin, not in the same words, but yeah, very similar thought. Lactantius even. I mean, he lays it out just crystal clear, and he's writing like in the early 300s. So, yeah, this state a theme of early Christianity until you get into the theological discussions beginning with Nicaea, and then they just keep going, and they keep getting more complex. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
And so, to just come back to that simplicity, and I was looking at this and it's like, anyone who's familiar with the sermon on the Mount realizes, " Okay, he's just basically going through the sermon on the Mount. " But interestingly, with some additional applications that the early Christians were dealing with, like, for example, he says, " Practice no magic, sorcery, okay, but then abortion or infanticide.
" So, you know, those thoughts would all be there in the Sermon on the Mount, but specifically, the early Christians were having to deal with this issue of abortion and infanticide. You know, infanticide was where the Romans, hey, they didn't take time to get an abortion, so we've got a baby here we don't want. We just stick it on the side of the road. It was perfectly legal, perfectly legal.
And, you know, they'd walk away and comfort themselves saying, " Oh, I bet some nice little old lady found my baby and has taken care of it, " you know, and everything is fine. Plato suggested in the Plato's Republic. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So it's interesting. I was noticing that it's not like he's adding things that are like human commandments. It's applications that were relevant in the day. And yeah, it is so interesting. And I think this is where I first noticed that abortion existed back then.
You know, when I was reading the early Christians that this was in the mid 1980s, I thought abortion was a current thing. It's like, wow, they were dealing with it way back in the first century. You know, it's not something new. It has been around. The early Christians saw it as murder. Christians today are not adding something or not creating some kind of new accusation. This is just what else is it, you know? Exactly. It's still a human being.
Whether it is inside the mother or outside the mother, it's still a human being and you're taking its life. Is there anything else, anything that catches your mind in the two ways that Yeah, you know, the point is, again, and I love your analogy of just handing out a track and having a sinner's prayer is, well, you know, that's a lot easier than loving your enemies, you know, doing good to those. And so the hard teachings, you know, the reality teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are so fundamental.
And you think, and I know you've suggested this in several of your teachings, just think if the church would have kept those things, anathema to those who don't love their enemies, anathema to those who don't who take people to court and sue them. I mean, what a different Christianity we would have than all the anathemas that they added on later on. But if on this whole thing, so I think also what I found encouraging for me through the years, so it has the sacraments.
Baptism and communion particularly are mentioned, but in a very simple form. If you could talk about some of that a little bit, and even the modes and the, you know, again, what happens from the church from there with communion and all those things get so scientific, it's amazing. Again, the Didache gives us something that's beautiful and very simple. Yeah, okay. Now, Dean as good Anabaptists. We don't say sacraments. Okay, you're right. Ordinance, ordinance. Yeah. Yeah, like you say, it is so simple.
And I remember reading this, and it knocked me over because I grew up, immersion was the only way to baptize the word baptizing. Yeah. Yeah, it means and it's clear from this, that's what it meant, immersion, because he uses it as a verb to mean immersion. And so I'm reading, yep, immerse, okay, good deal. And then he says, " Oh, if you don't have enough water to immerse, pour water three times in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. " And it's like, " What? " That's not dogmatic enough.
You know, and so many things I was dogmatic on, the ones closest to the apostles, where if it was valid to be so dogmatic, they would have been the ones most dogmatic. It's like, " Whoa, we saw Paul do this. We know how he baptized. " And it's like, " Yeah, the further back you go, the less defined theology, the less dogmatic people are on points that we have thought about and split and everything else. " So that was amazing to me.
And then the other thing that I did not know was they immersed three times in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. I thought, you know, what I had known was just a single immersion. Now, I'm not suggesting it's invalid if it was just one immersion, but that was new to me. You know, either pour three times if you don't have enough water or immersed three times. Now, what is this living water? And I'll just put you on the spot. Do you have any comment on that?
Yeah, I think the idea with that was that it was not a bath, that this was a river. As I've done the studies, I think Dix in the shape of the liturgy goes into some details on that living water. And so in those days, Roman, anywhere that Rome went, they went with the baths. And so it was part of just what it meant to be a Roman province or something. And this seems to be saying that it should be something flowing.
It should be something of a lake or a river or an ocean, I guess, or something like that where it's not a Roman bath. I don't think I don't hear from that, particularly since pouring is okay, that, you know, if you're in a church thing and then they get the but I what the Gregory Dix, I think, made the point on was that it was not a Roman bath situation. I think that was the guess there. Okay.
Now, another consistent with that, I forget when it was seven years ago when I was in Israel and we're doing tour, you know, all over the country, all the typical Christian tour sides. Yeah, yeah. Everywhere you go, so like when you go to the Qumran community, I think there's seven ritual Jewish baths there. They're called Mikvas, if I got it right. They're all over Jerusalem. Everywhere we went, there's Mikvas. I'd never even heard that term before I went there.
They're everywhere, and the Orthodox Jews today still use them as ritual baths. But this is the thing. The Orthodox Jews require that the Mikva has living water. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah, so even though you go down, it looks kind of like a well, you go downstairs, that water has to be circulating somehow. It can't just be a pool of water. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this would, I think, go back to the Jewish practice of, yeah, you know, when they baptized their ritual baths, it was living water and that this carried over, particularly with the example you have of John the Baptist baptizing in the term. Now, it's not a requirement in the New Testament, but it's obviously a practice that they followed. And like you say, they would not have used a Roman bathing except in maybe an emergency or, you know, something like that.
So that was something I learned just happenstance, you know, being over in Israel that I never thought I'd hear that term again living water. Well, that's a fascinating connection. Yeah, that makes sense. And it kind of ties with the other one, the idea that it's not just a stagnant kind of a thing that you always had there or something. Yeah, so when Jesus told the Samaritan woman about the living water, most Christians think he's talking about some kind of spiritual water.
He was just using a term that was common to Jews and people that, yeah, this is running, streaming water, something. Well, because he said water that would flow out. So yeah, it's living water because it's flowing. But anyway, so the other thing that I learned from the Didache that I didn't know was that the Jews, he calls them hypocrites, fasted on Mondays and Thursdays of every week. Oh, yes, yes. And the Christians fast on Wednesday and Friday. And I never knew that. That was, like I say, totally new to me.
As many Christian history books as I read, none of them had revealed that. I remember back in the early days in Texas at church, you had us practice that. Are you still doing that? Do you still do that? Personally, not all the time. Yeah. Yes, a number of brothers and maybe some sisters in our church do that, you know, from reading this. Great practice. Yeah. I did learn something that put us through an unnecessary hardship. I was being even harder than the Montanists.
So I don't know when it was about eight years ago reading maybe it was rereading Tertullian and what he reveals. So the early Christians, they practiced from the rising of the sun, the sunrise. So that'd be about 6:00 a.m. until 3:00 in the afternoon. And they ended their fast at 3:00 in the afternoon. And Tertullian makes a big point, because the Montanists who were more spiritual, they ended at 6:00 p. m.. Okay.
And so, you know, here I was going and making us go to midnight, thinking I was being, you know, doing it the way they were doing it. So, yeah, I was just assuming, you know, using our days. And so we went till midnight, and, you know, a lot of us found that pretty difficult, particularly, you know, six o'clock. And if I just known, oh, they ended it at 3:00, because I wondered how did they do this? You know, they were out working, you know, most of their physical labor.
And it's like, they did this twice a week, you know, and we did it. But like, wow, we found it pretty much a test. It was a blessing too. Those were enjoyable days. But if I'd only known, oh, it ends at three. Now it's fine to go to midnight. But even the Montanists, you know, who are so hyper-spiritual, they only went to 6:00 p.m.. Yeah. So anyway, let me ask you, I want to touch on two more things here. And before we're done, it looks like we have about 10 more minutes or 15 at most, I guess. All right.
Two more things is I'd love to talk on, touch on the communion, maybe connect with the love feast and the communion simplicity there. And also, it appears to be like a congregational sense of ordination even. Maybe we can't get to that one. We'll leave that one off, but let's at least get into the communion one. And I found that very refreshing as well. Yeah, and rereading it, this is one I have never been totally convinced or satisfied that I fully understand what he is describing.
He's describing something that was obviously, you know, very common to them. Now it's where I saw the word Eucharist. Of course, he was really using thanksgiving. Eucharist is our English way of rendering Eucharistia, the Greek word for thanksgiving. But I always thought there was something, you know, the Catholics or Anglicans made up, you know, Eucharist, where do you get that? Well, you know, that's what they called it in the beginning. Yeah. And it was interesting.
Let me see if I can find the words here that, okay, he says something about when you've eaten your fill, when everyone is eating their fill, then, you know, give these things. It's like, eat their fill, because, you know, we all get these little pieces of bread, and it's like, yeah, you haven't eaten anything. And so that is why many scholars think this is with the love feast combined. I'm not 100% convinced on that. The other explanation, obviously, is they didn't have little microscopic pieces of bread.
You got a hunk of bread when you ate your fill, you know, and drank a whole cup of wine or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, you know? But like I say, I'd say predominant scholastic view is that they were having the love feast at the same time, which kind of sounds like that in 1 Corinthians, although again, Paul does not make himself clear, which is typical Paul. You know, he knows his reader understands what he's talking about, and he doesn't try to explain it for somebody who's living in a different era.
But, yeah, so that's, you know, really interesting. And the first time I see a prescribed prayer, you know, to Catholics. It's like, whoa, whoa, you know, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no prayers and all that. And he says, hey, you don't have to say this, particularly the prophets, let them pray however they want. They can go on, yeah. Yeah, they can go on, yeah. But yeah, it's kind of interesting.
And of course, Jesus gave us a prescribed prayer, you know, which he mentions, they pray that three times a day, you know? And so, yeah, it's and sometimes we have used that in our communion just to kind of feel connected with the early church. But in fact, we finally put it to a congregational vote. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, and people said, " Let's do it sometimes, but yeah, most of the time, let's have it where it's spontaneous or whatever.
" So there's a place for, I think, written prayers, but yeah, it is nice to be able to pray extemporaneous as well. And like I said, it's interesting that it gives the both there. On those prayers though, it's interesting, especially when people who typically get interested in the ancient church, and a lot of times they start to hear apologists trying either from the Roman Catholics or the Greek Orthodox or something, trying to read back into the apostolic fathers and proving something.
I think that it's a it's a big point. I felt that a lot of them would say like the Greek Orthodox would talk about the Epiclesis, that the actual prayer of the receiving of the Holy Spirit into the bread must be in the prayer or doesn't count. Yeah. The Roman Catholics would say it's the words of institution. This is my body. This is my blood. If those words aren't said, it doesn't count. Interesting, neither one are in the Didache. They're not in there.
The other thing, he says a prophet can be the one celebrating this. Let the prophet, you know. A prophet is not ordained. Right. And again, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, it's like, if you don't have this chain of absolute succession... Exactly. Yep. It's not consecrated. It doesn't count for anything. And it's like, wow, in this simple thing, it's like, hey, it doesn't matter who gives it a prophet. Yeah, if he's there, just have him pray over it.
So, yeah, there's none of that develop ecclesiology that you see later on. And like you say, people try to read it back instead of, hey, start from the beginning and see how simple it was. Exactly. Politics, a hundred years later or so, more complicated when you get into the fourth century. Yeah, and all that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, it keeps getting fuller and more complicated where it started off so simple. So I think that's an important lesson for all of us. Now, yeah, we've got a few minutes here.
I think while we're on the Didache, another such an important thing is ordaining leaders. Yes. Okay, good. I'm glad we could get it in there. Okay. One reason why almost all of us are convinced that this is an extremely early document, maybe even older than John's writings in the 90s. It's because he describes this transition. He starts off it as apostles and teachers or prophets and teachers.
These wandering guys who come around and he says, " You know, you got to test whether they're a real prophet, and if they ask for money, you know if they want to stay more than three days, well, that's fine if they're going to work. " But yeah, not live off the congregation. It's cute how simple it is. But he then says, " Ordain for yourselves, bishops and deacons, just a two-fold ministry at this point, and they will take the place of your prophets and teachers.
" So, it appears, and like I say, it's so simple, it's hard to believe someone contrived this or that they would have even understood. There was this transition. People go to 1 Corinthians even today, and they say, " Well, we should have apostles and teachers and all this stuff. " Right, right, right, right. It's like, wait a minute. Now, when Paul gets to Titus and his letters to Timothy, which are both towards the end of his life, now he's talking about ordaining bishops or elders and deacons.
He's no longer talking about the apostles and all of these things. Right, right. And so, this gives witness to that, that what you see in the New Testament, that this happened, that, yeah, they were governed or however you want to say, instructed by these wandering teachers. But then it came to local authorities, bishops and deacons, and it just said, " ordain for yourself. " He didn't say, " No, you got to have a chain of ordination, you know, connected to so-and-so.
" Just the congregation or ordained for yourselves, which ordained, the Greek word just means appoint. You know Select these men. So this is amazing. And I can probably do a whole thing on this because we, you know, we start to pick up in Irenaeus, you know, this discussion of apostolic succession. We start to get it in Tertullian. And we also see a high reference for bishops and things like this, both in the letter of Clement and, you know, Ignatius, obviously.
And so, but the thing is, again, that reading back from this, you know, ninth century, eighth century understanding of these things and forcing them onto the apostolic fathers instead of letting the apostolic fathers speak for themselves. And it may be good for us just to take that on as a particular, you know, group. But I think it's important. I agree with you.
I think the very language that it uses is in harmony with Ignatius and Clement of Rome from an ancient perspective, not from trying to force it in from another way. But yeah, I think that congregational sense is like, wow, when you start to think about as the church grew and then got more control and got more archbishops and metropolitans and things and how that grew up to Constantine and the armies that then fought to protect it.
Again, you want to bring out the Didache and say, wow, can we go back to the simplicity of Christianity given to us by the founder Jesus Christ and put these things into practice and then I think we'll be a lot closer. Yeah. The interesting parallel and maybe we can close on this note that comes to my mind while reading this last night is between the Didache and the Schleitheim confession, the founding document of the Anabaptist. Simplicity. You know, it's got seven points. None of them are theological.
It's all about holy congregational life and baptism and communion like you have in the Didache. Yeah, it's so simple. And it's just like, yeah, you appoint men for yourself, godly men who are going to lead the congregation. And of course, they didn't even have this document when they did the Schleitheim. It was still What's amazing is in Schleitheim they literally use this sense of there's two ways. Yeah, I know.
Obviously, again, when you take the words of Jesus and that is generating your dogma and your church, you end up with something that sounds very much alike. So yeah. Okay. Well, I guess we can talk where we want to pick up next week. There are several directions we can go from here. But yeah, thanks for sharing all of that on your journey in Turkey. And yeah, that's fascinating. Okay, we'll see you next time then. Okay.