Didache 9:5 reads:
But
let none eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptised in
the Lord's Name. For concerning this also did the Lord say, "Give not that
which is holy to the dogs." (Kirsopp Lake translation)
Commenting on this text, Stander
and Louw noted that
The
author clearly regards baptism as a prerequisite for full membership in the
congregation of believers which entitles the believer to participate in the eucharist.
(Hendrick F. Stander and Johannes P. Louw, Baptism in the Early Church
[rev ed.; Leeds: Reformation Today Trust, 2004], 34)
Kurt Niederwimmer, in the
Hermeneia commentary on the Didache wrote that
Here again (cf. Did. 1.6), the Didachist has the tendency to give authority to his
remarks by adding a supportive quotation (v. 5b): καὶ γὰρ περὶ τούτου εἴρηκεν ὁ κύριος introduces a quotation from the Jesus
tradition. The subsequent quotation, μὴ δῶτε τὸ ἅγιον τοῖς κυσί, is found word for word in Matt 7:6;
however, it is not certain that the Didachist is quoting Matthew’s Gospel. In
the Didache we should consider the
possibility of oral tradition, or a quotation from an unknown apocryphal
gospel. The Didachist interprets the logion as an authoritative confirmation of
the prohibition he has just expressed. If Jesus forbade giving what is holy to
the dogs, he thus forbade (also at
any rate) the giving of the sacred food to the unbaptized. Hence τὸ ἅγιον = the sacred food (possibly we should expand
this to mean that οἱ ἅγιοι = the baptized), and οἱ κύνες = the unbaptized. The concept τὸ ἅγιον can certainly refer to the food of the Christian
community meal; it is more probable, however, that we should assume that the
Didachist is not thinking simply of the community meal that has been the
subject before this. Instead he includes the sacramental celebration of the
Lord’s Supper, and his prohibition applies in a special sense to that
celebration. (Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; trans. Linda M.
Maloney; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998], 153–154)
In other words, it was baptism
that made someone “holy,” and outside the reception thereof, one was κυων (a dog, a ritually unclean animal). While the
Didache is not as explicit in affirming baptismal regeneration as Acts 2:38 or
Rom 6:3-7, this is very strong implicit evidence for this doctrine in this
early Christian text.
