The paradigmatic status of almsgiving appears in the variety of terms used to describe it.Footnote 1 If Hebrew writers often preferred צדקה, this evocative term had less traction in early Christian texts.Footnote 2 A more resonant expression in Christian circles was מצוה or ἐντολή. To speak of charity thus as ‘the commandment’ gave forceful expression to its archetypal status; and though the idea derives from the nomistic context of Torah observance, early Christian emphasis on ‘the law of love’ provided a framework able to assimilate the Second Temple idiom.
In this essay I will consider the development of this use of ἐντολή. My exposition will have three parts. First, I will collect the scattered observations of several (at times isolated) lexicographers and suggest that the expression originates in a Second Temple Jewish context (section 1). Next, I will address and qualify Nathan Eubank's recent proposal concerning ‘the commandment’ (τὴν ἐντολήν) in 1 Tim 6.14 (section 2).Footnote 3 Finally, I will closely examine emerging usage, treating Sir 29.9, but focusing especially on the construction ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν in the Didache (section 3).
1. Lexicography of the Expression
Over the last hundred years, the unfamiliar use of ἐντολή to mean ‘alms/charity’ has been remarked upon several times. In 1910 the great orientalist Theodor Nöldeke offhandedly documented the usage as a footnote to the related meaning in Ge‘ez (mǝṣǝwatǝ, cf. מצותא, מצוה).Footnote 4 David Tabachovitz subsequently addressed the Greek data (without averting to the Semitic calque), offering several illustrations.Footnote 5 The rabbinic scholar Saul Lieberman, in an important contribution just after the Second World War, next stressed the expression's Semitic background (Nöldeke had already noted the ‘spezifisch jüdische Bedeutung’).Footnote 6 Lieberman also detected the usage in the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. In the late 1960s Baruch Lifshitz added some new epigraphic evidence,Footnote 7 and James Drescher briefly noted the same meaning of ‘alms’ for the Coptic ENTOΛH.Footnote 8 Finally, quite recently, Nathan Eubank, leaning heavily on Lieberman, has suggested taking τὴν ἐντολήν in 1 Tim 6.14 as a reference to ‘almsgiving’.
From the work of these researchers, the multilingual phenomenon is established,Footnote 9 and the Greek idiom is well attested by the time of the Apophthegmata Patrum.Footnote 10 If such a dating explains Gottlob Schrenk's failure to discuss the meaning of ἐντολή as ‘alms’ in Kittel's Wörterbuch, the result for New Testament scholarship has been to keep the lexical datum effectively unknown.Footnote 11 Eubank's suggestion is still very new and has not been put to scrutiny.
The development of the expression generated only a few vague comments in the literature detailed above. While Tabachovitz remarked that the popularity of almsgiving among Christians must have promoted the usage,Footnote 12 Drescher speculated more concretely that it was ultimately traceable to the New Testament: ‘It would seem that, by reason of such texts as John 15, 12 and 1 Cor 13, 13 “love, charity” (ἀγάπη) was considered the precept (ἐντολή) par excellence; and, as ἀγάπη and “charity” came to mean the practical expression of the virtue, so did ἐντολή itself.’Footnote 13
The idea of charity as ‘the precept’ par excellence is indeed consonant with its high status in the early Church.Footnote 14 But this is true of Second Temple and formative Judaism as well.Footnote 15 It is essential, moreover, that the Hebrew substrate (unknown to Drescher) not be neglected. In this regard, it is not difficult to imagine the conditions which might have catalysed the identification of almsgiving as the מצוה par excellence (prior to Jesus' ἐντολή ϰαινή).
In particular contexts, a specific command can rise and function metonymically for the whole Law. When the seven brothers in 4 Maccabbees steel themselves to stand fast from eating pork, for example, they recall the eternal torments awaiting those who transgress ‘the command of God’ (τὴν ἐντολὴν τοῦ θεοῦ, 4 Macc 13.15; cf. 16.24). In their pressurised setting, ‘the command’ of Lev 11.7–8 (cf. Deut 14.8) has come to represent the entire Law, with the food taboo serving as the measure of full fidelity to the Torah.
The book of Tobit provides the best expression of the precise pressures under which almsgiving emerged as a similar demonstration of faithfully keeping the Torah. The text has a misty origin, and its fanciful setting obscures the historical circumstance. The presentation, nonetheless, is highly suggestive. Tobit suffers severe persecution – a death sentence and the confiscation of all his property (Tob 1.19) – for performing outlawed works of mercy.Footnote 16 Charitable solicitude for his kinsmen, in other words, has displaced the Jewish dietary commandments as the point of confrontation with aggressive paganism. The Maccabean crisis never took such an unlikely form, and it is difficult to place such a situation historically. Tobit's folk tale affinities may ultimately shed more light.Footnote 17 Whatever reconstruction one prefers, however, the story's diaspora setting offers the best clue both to the sense of pagan encroachment and the special status of almsgiving. In the distant reaches of the diaspora, charitable deeds became the only feasible way of making ‘sacrificial’ gifts. Charity was a kind of fulfilment made in adverse conditions which marked a (diaspora) Jew as piously observant. At the same time, in the disintegrating conditions of exile, the exercise of charity towards one's kinsmen functioned as a form of solidarity, reinforcing the ties binding together a scattered Jewish community.Footnote 18 This bonding purpose is significant and greatly illuminates Tobit's coupling of almsgiving with endogamy (Tob 4.5–16).Footnote 19 Each precept in its own way attends to much-needed boundary-maintenance.Footnote 20 In his wisdom instructions and in the broader narrative, these two מצוות thus vie for ultimate emphasis.Footnote 21 This situation helps to explain why the explicit language of ‘the commandment’ does not yet appear in Tobit.Footnote 22
When does this usage first appear? The attestation claimed by Eubank presents itself as the earliest record of the usage, but closer inspection reveals some difficulties.
2. ‘The Commandment’ in 1 Timothy?
Eubank's proposal invites a pedantic observation. The verse in question reads: τηϱῆσαί σε τὴν ἐντολὴν ἄσπιλον ἀνεπίλημπτον μέχϱι τῆς ἐπιϕανείας τοῦ ϰυϱίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χϱιστοῦ (1 Tim 6.14). While a real exegetical question surrounds the precise reference of τὴν ἐντολήν, the locution with τηϱέω is unexceptional. By comparison, the lexical phenomenon in the later Christian texts looks considerably different: ἐὰν θέλῃ ἐντολήν, δὸς αὐτῇ, εἰ δὲ ϕαγεῖν ποίησον αὐτῇ (‘If she wants ἐντολήν, give it to her, and if she wants to eat, provide for her’).Footnote 23 The syntagm here (elliptically) parallels the normative expression, δίδωμι + ἐλεημοσύνη, and the translation ‘commandment’ simply fails. In 1 Tim 6.14 no such semantic shift is required.
If Eubank has not attended closely to the lexical construction and semantics, he relies instead upon contextual arguments. Within the letter, he points to the surrounding economic discourse (6.6–10, 17–19) and argues that the invasive personal address to Timothy (6.11–16) would be less abrupt if an instruction on the use of wealth were implicit in τὴν ἐντολήν.Footnote 24 This is true. Eubank, however, does not consider the structural parallel between 6.2b–21a and 1.3–20, which exposes the wealth material (6.6–10, 17–19) rather than the address as the intrusive element in the chapter.Footnote 25 From this perspective, Towner's contention that the reference of τὴν ἐντολήν is ‘surely to what Paul has charged Timothy to do … in 1:3–5’ deserves more consideration.Footnote 26 The presence here of a two-part exhortation on the proper use of wealth still requires explanation; but as Abraham Malherbe has shown in detail, the language of this exhortation is profoundly reminiscent of popular pagan morality.Footnote 27 To that extent, given the basic unfamiliarity of such Greco-Roman discourse with the imperative to give alms,Footnote 28 a thematic disjunction still appears on Eubank's reading. The presence of Greco-Roman thought forms, of course, hardly precludes Jewish sensibilities about almsgiving.Footnote 29 In the end, however, Eubank fails to show some wider awareness of the importance of almsgiving (rather than just wealth ethics) in the letter, particularly in chapter 6.
David Downs provides the exact argument Eubank requires.Footnote 30 The instruction on care for widows (1 Tim 5.3–16) signals the letter's robust idea of charity. Paul's desire that all be ‘blameless’ (ἀνεπίλημπτοι) in regard to the instruction on providing for widows (5.7), moreover, is a direct echo of his language to Timothy in 6.14 (τηϱῆσαί σε τὴν ἐντολὴν ἄσπιλον ἀνεπίλημπτον). But this very connection allows one to wonder whether ‘the commandment’ might not now refer back to the concrete directive in chapter 5. Reference to the ‘treasure in heaven’ metaphor in 6.19 would help secure a generic almsgiving topos,Footnote 31 but the language here might also be read as a this-worldly investment, a material reward wealth ethic common to both Paul (2 Cor 8.14; 9.8–10; cf. Sir 29.11–13; 22.23) and pagan sources (e.g. Seneca, Cons. Marc. 9.1; Ovid, Tr. 5.8.4–18).Footnote 32
Ultimately, then, Eubank rightly argues that the locution is culturally presupposed. His contextual argument accordingly expands to take in the semantic context offered by Lieberman, who traced the secondary sense of ἐντολή as far back as the Testament of Asher. Unfortunately, this argument is unstable. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is ‘one of the most puzzling documents of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’.Footnote 33 Proposed dates range from the middle of the second century bce to the late second or early third century ce.Footnote 34 Besides the date, however, the passage Lieberman appeals to is itself problematic. Not only is it text-critically nightmarish and otherwise difficult to interpret.Footnote 35 The verse at issue employs not the singular, but the plural (accusative: ἐντολάς) – a problem neither Lieberman nor Eubank mentions:
Another commits adultery and fornication and refrains from meat (ἀπέχεται ἐδεσμάτων); and fasting he does evil (ϰαϰποιεῖ); and in the power of his wealth he sweeps many away; and out of his his excessive evil he does the commandments (ἐϰ τῆς ὑπεϱόγϰου ϰαϰίας ποιεῖ τὰς ἐντολάς); and this one is two-faced (διπϱόσωπον), but entirely evil. (Test. Ash. 2.8)
Echoing Lieberman, Eubank declares that the intolerable awkwardness of this translation is ‘obvious’.Footnote 36 How can one do the commandments out of excessive evil? If Charles proposed an emendation that might neatly solve the problem,Footnote 37 Lieberman is satisfied that ὑπέϱογϰος may be taken as a substantive and that ποιεῖ τὰς ἐντολάς is ‘the exact equivalent’ of מצות עושה.Footnote 38 The meaning of the key line would thus be: ‘From his ill-gotten goods he distributes alms.’
There are more difficulties to face here than either Eubank or Lieberman acknowledges. The Armenian evidence (dear to Lieberman) is hard to decipher and could point in opposite directions.Footnote 39 The immediate context is also more complex than either scholar concedes.Footnote 40 The use of the plural, moreover, is not the normal or expected idiom.Footnote 41 Lieberman, in fact, produces no examples and seems simply to have retroverted ‘the exact equivalent’ of ποιεῖ τὰς ἐντολάς. Finally, the word ἐντολαί must shift meanings twice in the passage (2.5–10) if taken in the proposed idiomatic sense of ‘alms’ in 2.8. Even if the intuition is right, then, more clearly needs to be done to establish the hypothesis.Footnote 42 Even then we would still lack a solidly datable instance of ἐντολή as ‘alms’.
Lieberman's other purported Greek examples are late. The Hebrew evidence, moreover, is confined to the fifth-century Midrash Rabbah and a synagogue inscription from the same time.Footnote 43 It is unclear, then, exactly how far back one can push the secondary meaning of ἐντολή and its Semitic antetype (מצוה).Footnote 44 One must presume that the calque belongs to a moment of close interaction between the two linguistic cultures. If Eubank's argument is plausible, then, it remains desirable to anchor the usage more firmly to the NT period – however one settles the authorship and dating of 1 Timothy. Two texts help clarify the usage during this earlier period: Sir 29.9 and Didache 1.5 (cf. 13.5, 7).
3. The Emerging Usage
3.1 Sir 29.9
The Wisdom of Ben Sira (29.9) provides evidence of the emerging expression, though Eubank ominously admits that ‘it is not as clear here as in the Testament of Asher’.Footnote 45 The text reads: ‘On account of the commandment receive a poor person, and according to his need, do not turn him away empty-handed’ (χάϱιν ἐντολῆς ἀντιλαβοῦ πένητος, ϰαὶ ϰατὰ τὴν ἔνδειαν αὐτοῦ μὴ ἀποστϱέψῃς αὐτὸν ϰενόν, 29.9). The reference to almsgiving is plain from the mention of πένης and ἔνδεια; and this reference agrees with the chapter's wider concern for charity.Footnote 46 Ben Sira's appeal to the ἐντολή, with no need for explanation, anticipates the meaning found in the later sources. The distance from the more developed idiom, nevertheless, remains clear.
(1) The parallel expressions in the immediate context employ the plural (ἐντολάς, 29.1, 11) rather than the (anarthrous) singular.Footnote 47 Thus: ‘The one who gives alms/shows mercy (ὁ ποιῶν ἔλεος) lends to his neighbour; and the one who gives a helping hand (ὁ ἐπισχύων τῇ χειϱί) keeps the commandments (τηϱεῖ ἐντολάς)’ (29.1). Such shifting in number indicates that the expression (and idea) has not stabilised; and in the wider context of the book, almsgiving remains but one of the Lord's commandments.Footnote 48 Indeed, in Sira's moral vision, even more than Tobit's, despite charity's important place, other commandments can hold the same high rank as almsgiving.Footnote 49
(2) It is perfectly natural to use the singular ἐντολή in a defined context to refer to some understood precept (e.g. Exod 12.17; 1 Sam 13.13; 1 Kings 2.43), without implying any exemplary status. Members of the Yahad were admonished ‘to reprove each man his brother according to the commandment (כמצוה)’ referring explicitly to Lev 19.17 (CD 7.2); while, after Jesus' crucifixion, the women rest on the Sabbath ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν (Luke 23.56). Accordingly, many agree that Ben Sira is thinking here of Deut 15.7–11 – without yet imagining any paradigmatic sense.Footnote 50
(3) The prepositional syntax (χάϱιν ἐντολῆς) prevents a full semantic convergence with ἐλεημοσύνη. One does not yet find here the critical syntagm δίδωμι/ποιέω/ζητέω + ἐντολή, as it appears in the later sources.Footnote 51 It is thus inaccurate to blur this usage with the later Greek idiom, though the clear genetic relation should not be missed.
3.2 The Didache
The Didache represents a critical witness to the developing trajectory of ἐντολή as charity discourse.Footnote 52 The opening line of the work famously announces the existence of Two Ways (1.1). An instruction follows, identifying the ‘way of life’ as the love of God and neighbour (1.2). In this context, an exhortation to almsgiving appears (1.5–6):
5a παντί τῷ αἰτοῦντί σε δίδου, ϰαὶ μὴ ἀπαίτει·
5bα πᾶσι γὰϱ θέλει δίδοσθαι ὁ πατὴϱ ἐϰ τῶν ἰδίων χαϱισμάτων
5bβ μαϰάϱιος ὁ διδοὺς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν, ἀθῷος γάϱ ἐστιν.
Give to all who ask of you, and do not ask for repayment.
For the Father wishes something from his own benefactions to be given to all.
Blessed is the one who gives according to the commandment, for he is innocent.
Line 5a is a Janus linking the teaching on alms with the previous section (1.4).Footnote 53 The macarism in 5bβ, of course, is the point of interest. Steven Bridge remarks that ‘scholars have long since recognized “the mandate” [i.e. τὴν ἐντολήν] as a reference to the Second Mandate in the Shepherd of Hermas’.Footnote 54 The close connection of these texts is unmistakable:
4 πασίν γάϱ ὁ θεὸς δίδοσθαι θἐλει ἐϰ τῶν ἰδίων δωϱημάτων ...
6 ὁ οὖν διδοὺς ἀθῷός ἐστιν ...
7 ϕύλασσε οὖν τὴν ἐντολὴν ταύτην, ὥς σοι λελάληϰα.
For God wishes something from his own gifts to be given to all ...
Therefore the one who gives is innocent ...
Therefore observe this commandment I have spoken to you. (Herm. 27.4, 6, 7)Footnote 55
The literary relationship at this point unfortunately remains unsolved.Footnote 56 Carolyn Osiek considers that ‘the best solution to draw is that there is a common written, or perhaps even oral, source behind the appearance of this one cluster of ideas’.Footnote 57 This is safe.Footnote 58 One might merely add that, despite uncertainty in the dating of both documents (and the wider difficulties surrounding the history of transmission for Did. 1.3b–2.1),Footnote 59Hermas is widely considered the later text.Footnote 60 The notion that ‘the mandate’ appealed to in the Didache would be a reference to Hermas' Ἐντολὴ β´ is thus hard to sustain on simple chronological grounds.Footnote 61
Osiek's suggestion of a shared source is helpful, then, but it solves the wrong problem. It addresses the tradition history of the parallel sayings, but leaves the (unparalleled) phrase ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν unexplained. After all, the injunction (τὴν ἐντολὴν ταύτην) which is given to Hermas by ‘the shepherd’ (Herm. 27.7; cf. 25.5-7) is an unmistakable part of the redactional framework of that text.Footnote 62 More important, ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν in the Didache is likewise redactional.Footnote 63 It is not restricted to Did. 1.5, but appears twice more in a passage having no connection to Hermas (Did. 13.5, 7). It is thus problematic to forge too close a link here with the Shepherd.
If ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν in Did. 1.5 is not the instruction given to Hermas, but a redactional theme of the Didachist, to what does it refer? The most popular possibility is Luke 6.30 – or its precursor in Q. The logion clearly has some close relation with Did. 1.5a: παντί αἰτοῦντί σε δίδου, ϰαὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴϱοντος τὰ σὰ μὴ ἀπαίτει.Footnote 64 The connection is not in dispute – nor is the ample presence of synoptic material in Did. 1.3–5. Again, however, the question of tradition history is not the immediate issue. There are, in any event, several difficulties with embracing Luke/Q 6.30 as a solution to the reference of the Didache's ἐντολή. First, as Niederwimmer rightly senses (yet overstates), a shift in theme separates Did. 1.5a from 1.5b–6.Footnote 65 The original logion, in particular, is an instruction on non-retaliation, not charity per se – even if the decoupling of these ideas cannot be pressed. Second, if the allusion in 1.5b were to the immediately preceding injunction in 1.5a, one might expect more deictic force: e.g. τὴν ἐντολὴν ταύτην (as in Herm. 27.7). Third, the Didachist is perfectly able to specify the gospel tradition by name – even when this means mere oral traditions (cf. Did. 15.3).Footnote 66 Thus the Our Father is prefaced: ‘Do not pray like the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his Gospel (ὡς ἐϰέλευσεν ὁ ϰύϱιος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ)’ (8.2).Footnote 67 Exhortations, too, can be enjoined ϰατὰ τὸ δόγμα τοῦ εὐαγγελίου (11.3).Footnote 68 Finally, again, as a basic point of method, the Didache's wider usage of the phrase ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν must be considered before a judgement can be made on the case of 1.5.
We may turn, then, to this wider usage. The two additional occurrences appear towards the end of the document, in a section (13.1–7) which transitions from a discussion of teachers (11.1–2) and itinerant apostles and prophets (11.3–12) to instructions on the ‘sacrifice’ (ἡ θυσία) of the breaking of bread (14.1–3). The text in question thus blends matters of cult and personnel:
4 ἐάν δὲ μὴ ἔχετε πϱοϕήτην, δότε τοῖς πτωχοῖς.
5 ἐάν σιτίαν ποιῇς, τὴν ἀπαϱχὴν λαβὼν δὸς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν.
6 ὡσαύτως ϰεϱάμιον οἴνου ἤ ἐλαίου ἀνοίξας,
τἠν ἀπαϱχὴν λαβὼν δὸς τοῖς πϱοϕήταις.
7 ἀϱγυϱίου δὲ ϰαὶ ἱματισμοῦ ϰαὶ παντὸς ϰτήματος λαβὼν τὴν ἀπαϱχήν
ὡς ἄν σοι δόξῃ, δὸς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν.
But if you do not have a prophet, give to the poor.
If you make bread, take the first fruits and give according to the commandment.
Likewise when you open a jar of wine or oil,
take the first fruits and give them to the prophets.
As for money and clothing and every possession, take the first fruits,
as it seems to you, and give according to the commandment. (13.4–7)
In consideration of these lines and the unknown reference(s) of ἡ ἐντολή, Paul Drews made the interesting and unlikely suggestion that ‘eine vermutliche, bisher unbeachtete Quelle der Didache’ containing dominical sayings and bearing the name Ἐντολή is being invoked.Footnote 69 The force of Drews' idea lies in the suggestion that the Didachist has a single point of reference in all three ἐντολή passages.Footnote 70 If there is reason to suspect this, one need not therefore imagine a(nother) lost Q. Indeed, what Drews fails to recognise is that binding together 1.5 and 13.4–7 is precisely the ‘Gebot’ to give alms.Footnote 71
This commandment is clear in 13.4b. If this theme has not been highlighted, part of the distraction has been the offering of ‘first fruits’ to the ‘prophets’. No other primitive Christian text speaks in just this way, and the scenario dangles a tantalising hint about the life of the Didache community.Footnote 72 Much might be said here, but it will suffice to make two points.
(1) The sacral language of 13.3–7 advances the Didache's larger operation of replacing the Temple cult (cf. 8.1–2; 14.1–3; 16.3–8).Footnote 73 In this connection, the giving of ‘first fruits’ in the Didache is no longer restricted to the produce of those in the Land (cf. Lev 23.10; m. Bik. 3.2; m. Ḥal. 4.7, 10), nor brought to the priests of the central sanctuary (cf. Deut 26.1–4).Footnote 74 It is impossible to say whether or not the cultic ‘substitution’ envisioned in the Didache implies that the Temple was still standing (cf. m. Bik. 2.3). What can be said is that, both during the Second Temple period and after, charity held status as a kind of surrogate cult.Footnote 75 Thus Ben Sira declares, while the Temple still stood:
The one who returns a kindness offers choice flour,
and one who gives alms sacrifices a thank offering. (Sir 35.2)
Later R. Johannan ben Zakkai openly expresses the principle to R. Yehoshua, mourning the loss of the Temple:
Be not grieved my son. There is another equally meritorious way of gaining ritual atonement, even though the Temple is destroyed. We can still gain ritual atonement through deeds of loving kindness. For it is written, ‘deeds of charity I desire not sacrifice’. ('Abot R. Nat. 4.5; cf. b. Ber. 55a)
The doctrine of redemptive almsgiving which informs this rabbinic saying also informs Did. 4.6–7 (cf. Barn. 19.8–11):
6 If you earn something by working with your hands,
you shall give a ransom for your sins (λύτϱωσιν ἁμαϱτιῶν σου).
7 You shall not hesitate to give, nor shall you grumble when giving,
for you shall yet come to know who is the good paymaster of the reward.
The Didache thus recognises the atoning power of generous giving.Footnote 76 It is no strain, then, to suggest that the alternative cult implied in 13.3–7 understands charity as the essential source of its sacral character. This leads to the second point.
(2) In the Didache's pattern of substitution, the poor enjoy some extended or metaphoric status as priestly figures. The ‘prophets’ are identified as such explicitly: αὐτοὶ γὰϱ εἰσιν οἱ ἀϱχιεϱεῖς ὑμῶν (13.3).Footnote 77 Yet, these ‘high priests’ are functionally interchangeable with the poor (πτωχοί). The needy might stand in ‘if you do not have a prophet’ (13.4).
The boldness of directing dedicated offerings to the hands of beggars must not be missed. When Judith (deceitfully) explains to Holophernes why the Lord has abandoned his people, the monstrous sin she concocts is the sacrilege (ἀτοπία) of mishandling first fruits. Being starved by the siege, ‘they have decided to use the first fruits (ἀπαϱχάς) of grain and the tithes (δεϰάτας) of wine and oil, which they consecrated and reserved for the priests who minister in the presence of our God in Jerusalem – ‘things which the people should not so much as touch with their hands!’ (Jdt 11.13). Against this background, one must recognise in the Didache's consignment of first fruits to the hands of the poor a link connecting offerings for the priests with gifts to the needy. The two social groups are functionally aligned.
The base for this linkage is well established. Ben Sira attests to the parallelism repeatedly and at one point even connects it to first fruits:Footnote 78
Fear God and honour the priest;
Give him his portion as he commanded you:
The first fruits (ἀπαϱχὴν) and sin offering,
The gift of the arms and sacrifice of holiness,
and first fruits of holy things (ἀπαϱχὴν ἁγιών).
To the poor also extend your hand,
so that your blessing might be perfected. (Sir 7.31–2)
Ben Sira's vision here has deep biblical roots. Ultimately, it stems from the Pentateuch's complicated tithing legislation, where a ‘third tithe’ was set apart for the poor every third and sixth year. This offering for ‘the Levites, aliens, orphans and widows’, which was never brought to the priests in Jerusalem, was nevertheless described and treated in the Torah as a ‘sacred portion’, subject to precise purity laws (הקדש, τὰ ἅγια, Deut 26.12–15). As Gary Anderson explains, ‘Already in Deuteronomy we see the beginnings of the sacralization of gifts to the poor.’Footnote 79
In principle, ‘firstfruits were not to be confused with tithes’.Footnote 80 The Didache's language thus seems to conflate a ritual concerned with the produce (and ownership) of the Land with the deuteronomic ethic of social concern. This is no great difficulty, however. First of all, the first fruits ritual with its creedal declaration (‘My father was a wandering Aramean ...’, Deut 26.1–11) is immediately followed in Deuteronomy by the instruction on the third year tithe for the poor, with its declaration (‘I have brought the sacred portion out of my house, and given it to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow ...’, 26.12–15). The close association of the two offerings is therefore native to the deuteronomic law. Beyond this, the Didache's use of ἀπαϱχή is also ‘artfully adopted for gentiles’, lacking the neat distinctions preserved in the LXX and meant to echo familiar pagan practice.Footnote 81 Excessive precision, then, should not be expected. A similar conflation of ‘tithes’ and ‘first fruits’ appears in Philo, for instance.Footnote 82 It is interesting, nonetheless, that the Apostolic Constitutions, a fourth-century expansion of the Didache, explicitly speaks at this point of a ‘tithe’ directed to the poor (annually?):Footnote 83
(1) All the first fruits (ἀπαϱχήν) of the winepress, the threshing-floor, the oxen, and the sheep, you shall give to the priests, that the storehouses of your treasuries and the products of your land may be blessed, and you may be strengthened with grain and wine and oil, and the herds of your cattle and flocks and sheep may be increased. (2) You shall give the whole tithe (δεϰάτην) of your increase to the orphan, and to the widow, and to the poor, and to the stranger. (3) All the first fruits of your warm bread, of your vessels of wine, or oil, or honey, or nuts, or grapes, or the first fruits of other things shall be given to the priests; but those of silver, and of garments, and of all sorts of possessions, to the orphan and to the widow (Ap. Const. 7.29).Footnote 84
Even here, though, despite the more refined legal precision, non-agricultural ‘first fruits’ are still directed to the needy.
The circumstance reflected in the Apostolic Constitutions is far removed from the background to the Didache. The well-established clerical caste and protocol of priestly emoluments belong to another world.Footnote 85 All the same, we should avoid exaggeration. Milavec is surely too imaginative in his reconstruction of the extreme need of the Didache's ‘prophets,’ whom he sees as ‘broken men and women who, owing to economic pressures, had suffered the loss of their families, their homes, and their shops’.Footnote 86 One way or another, whatever their private economic means (cf. Did. 12.4), it appears that the Didache sees the offerings to the ‘prophets’ (cf. 15.1) to be on the order of regular, ministerial entitlements – distinct, that is, from charity to the poor. The Didache, in other words – despite its loose language of ‘first fruits’ – maintains a distinction between hieratic ‘taxes’ and charitable gifts. It does not collapse the categories, despite their close relation.
Preserving this distinction between ministrants and the poor leaves one final option open for understanding ‘the commandment’. Perhaps it is about providing for the prophets. Genuine (ἀληθινός) teachers and prophets are said to be ‘worthy of their food’ (ἀξιός τῆς τϱοϕῆς, Did. 13.1–2). With some reason, Harnack thus imagined Matt 10.10 (‘the labourer is worthy of his food’) to be the Didache's ‘commandment’.Footnote 87 The proposal, unfortunately, faces the same range of objections that the logion in Luke 6.30 faced above – including, in this case, the inability to account for ἐντολή in Did. 1.5. We may add that the voluntary (ὡς ἄν σοι δόξῃ) offerings of money, clothes and other material possessions given ‘according to the commandment’ in Did. 13.7 stand in direct tension with Matt 10.8–12, which expressly prohibits the ἐϱγάτης from holding money or extra tunics. For Matthew ‘repayment’ is all in food and shelter.
The behaviour of the early church regarding the support of ministers was complex.Footnote 88 It is evident from 2 Corinthians alone that the praxis and philosophy was far from uniform. Fortunately, it is not necessary to sort out all the problems. The major preoccupation for the Didachist's community is clear enough: discerning ‘worthy’ ministers deserving of support (Did. 11.6, 12; 12.1–5; 13.1–2). This discernment parallels a similar question posed about giving to the poor.Footnote 89 The instruction in 1.5–6 addresses this, declaring that pretenders who take without being in real need will be held accountable ‘until [they] repay the last penny’ (1.6; cf. Matt 5.26). The difference in each case is that, while the Didachist counsels not to give to swindling prophets, indiscriminate charity to the poor seems to be commended.Footnote 90 Indeed, in the case of misdirected alms, it is only the receiver who comes in for rebuke – not the benefactor, who is reckoned to be ‘innocent’ (Did. 1.5).
The distinction is telling. On the one hand, both gifts to the ‘prophets/priests’ and gifts to the poor were in some way understood as gifts offered to God. It is exactly this that the description of ἀπαϱχή suggests. The hands of prophets and the hands of the poor are in a real sense like a kind of altar.Footnote 91 On the other hand, gifts to the poor are somehow more secure as acceptable offerings. Almsgiving is so trustworthy, in fact, that its promotion aids the discernment of spirits: a prophet is trustworthy who enjoins giving gifts to the needy – not one who says (‘in the Spirit’) δός μοι ἀϱγύϱια (11.12). It is suggestive, then, in interpreting the repeated injunction to ‘give’ (δὸς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν) in 13.5–7, that this imperative is not elsewhere ever used with the prophets as indirect object. By contrast, the command to ‘give’ does resonate with the instruction on the free distribution of alms (1.5; cf. 13.4).
The best solution to the unspecified phrase ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν in the Didache is accordingly to take it as a reference to the command to give to the poor. The third-year tithe of Deuteronomy 26 may even be in view (cf. Deut 15.7–11; Sir 29.9). All contextual considerations in the document converge towards a high estimation of charitable giving, and no other solution answers the all data. As a gloss, of course, ‘alms’ is still grammatically unworkable. As in Ben Sira, the word here clearly means ‘commandment’ (although the gerund ‘almsgiving’ is within sight). Nonetheless, two developments distinguish the Didache's more advanced usage. First, the singular has stabilised as the preferred and exclusive expression. Second, a regular syntagmatic relation with δίδωμι has appeared:Footnote 92
ὁ διδοὺς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν (1.5)
δὸς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν (13.5)
δὸς ϰατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν (13.7)
While the prepositional phrase still precludes any exact equation with the later employment, the Didache's idiom has paved the way for making τὴν ἐντολήν the direct object. The language is thus one syntactic step away from the full semantic shift.
4. Conclusion
The adoption of the language of ‘the commandment’ in connection with almsgiving arises within a distinctly Jewish, Second Temple setting, in which a kind of ‘parallel cult’ grew up around the practice of charitable offerings. It appears to be no accident that the semantic trajectory of ἐντολή passes through the cultic practices of the Jewish–Christian Didache; and it is perhaps significant that later Christian sources attesting the usage are largely of Syrian provenance. One might imagine the expression as belonging to a specific religio-cultural idiolect. If the Didache, as the most impressive witness to the developing usage, reveals a brand of Christian praxis still operating within a modified framework of Torah observance (cf. Deut 26.1–15), this fits well with the nomistic ethos of acting on behalf of המצוה. At the same time, it is significant that the Didache positions the teaching on almsgiving in an instruction fundamentally shaped by Jesus' double commandment of love of God and neighbour. The appeal to ἡ ἐντολή thus functions within a newly formulated Law (cf. 1 Tim 1.5–8). Syntactically 1 Tim 6.14 more closely resembles Sir 29.1 than the Didache. As a pastoral rule concerned with church officers and charity, however, the Didache's framework of thought may best illuminate the evidence found in 1 Timothy.
