In his translation of the Didache, Kurt Niederwimmer rendered 4:1 thusly:
My child, you shall
be mindful day and night of the one who speaks to you the word of God. You
shall honor him as the Lord, for at the source of proclamation of the lordship
[of the Lord], the Lord is there.
Commenting on this passage, Niederwimmer
wrote the following:
How is the relationship
of the pupil to the teacher determined? It is shaped by the fundamental
commandment of piety, which in turn is concretized in two ways: the pupil shall
continually keep the teacher in mind, and shall honor him like the Kyrios himself. The additional ὡς κύριον refers apparently to the Lord Jesus. The command τιμήσεις δὲ αὐτόν (i.e., τὸν λαλοῦντά σοι τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ) ὡς κύριον (“You shall honor him as Lord”) is given its
foundation in v. 1c: ὅθεν (This ὅθεν is not to be understood as οὗ.
Literally: “Whence, that is, lordship is proclaimed” or “For whence the
proclamation of the lordship comes”) γὰρ ἡ κυριότης λαλεῖται, ἐκεῖ κύριός ἐστιν. This language of the phrase is unusual, but it is
easily understood in context. Κυριότης (“lordship”) here probably refers to the
characteristic of Jesus as κύριος. Thus the Didache text means that the place from
which the proclamation about the κυριότης of Jesus goes forth is at the same time the place
of his presence. There, in the mouth of the teacher and in his teaching, the
Kyrios himself is present. Thus the
teacher himself should be honored as if the Kyrios
himself were standing before you. In the word of the teacher, the Kyrios is present. (Kurt Niederwimmer, The
Didache: A Commentary [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on
the Bible; trans. Linda M. Moloney; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998],
105, emphasis added)
