Early Christian writings · 16 chapters
Didache
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: the ways of life and death, baptism, fasting, prayer, the Eucharist, visiting teachers and the community's leaders. A short starting point for studying early Christian practice.
Place in the traditions
An early Christian church manual, included here for historical study. Its title expresses apostolic teaching; it is not a claim that all twelve apostles jointly wrote this surviving document. It is distinct from the Ethiopic Didascalia.
Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers: source collectionThe edition you are reading
J. B. Lightfoot's historic English translation, transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library from a 1956 reprint and identified there as public domain. Source chapter divisions are retained. The reader numbers successive source paragraphs within each chapter; these locators may differ from section numbers in other editions. Opening greetings appear separately and do not change chapter numbering. Editorial footnotes are omitted; the source remains available for comparison.
Lightfoot's text at CCELBookmarks, highlights, notes and offline saving work in this collection. Verse comparisons appear when more than one edition is available. The existing cross-reference and Strong's datasets cover the original 66-book collection.