Teaching of the Lord

Doctrina Domini

Standard abbreviation: Teach. Lord

Other titles: Didascalia of the Lord, Diataxis of the Holy Apostles

Clavis numbers: ECCA 911

Category: Revelation Dialogue

Compiled by: Chance Bonar, University of Virginia ([email protected])

Citing this resource (using Chicago Manual of Style): Bonar, Chance. “Teaching of the Lord.” e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha. Accessed DAY MONTH YEAR. https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/teaching-of-the-lord/.

Created August 2025.

1. SUMMARY

The Teaching of the Lord is a Byzantine revelation dialogue set on the Mount of Olives between Jesus and the twelve apostles (which here includes Paul). The scene is set after Jesus’ ascension, when the apostles are fasting in the Valley of Jehoshaphat for forty days. There they receive a visionary experience from an angelic figure who is later revealed to be Jesus. The rest of the text proceeds as a revelation dialogue, with various apostles asking Jesus questions about liturgical practices and the afterlife.

Paul, for example, asks Jesus to explain how to manage sexually immoral persons (both pornoi and arsenokoitai, who feature in Paul’s list of who will not inherit heaven in 1 Cor 6:9–10). Jesus’ response reveals how many days or years certain types of individuals—an adulterer, perjurer, bigamist, murderer, and others—have to repent after their sin before being cast into the fiery river. Andrew and James ask Jesus about the meaning of the seven days of the week, leading to a summary of God’s creative activity based on Gen 1–3, as well as a justification for fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays in order to mirror the Paschal week. Thomas asks about how God will punish clerics who abandon their churches to make a profit elsewhere, which provides space for Jesus’ near-monologue of woes against a range of actions and people.

Noticeably, Jesus’ list of woes includes comparing illicit priests who wrongly come to the altar to Judas, and asserting that the Eucharist would burn the intestines of an illicit priest who tries to consume it. Jesus continues with a more generic list of woes against those who fail to learn from the scriptures, those who have sex or women who comb their hair on Sundays, those who drink while playing musical instruments, those who participate in Jewish or Egyptian religious practices, those who do not venerate icons, and monks who walk among the laity.

Thaddeus’s question for Jesus concerns ecclesiology, by which Jesus describes the church as a reflection of heavenly realities: the altar is Jesus’ tomb, the priest is the angel who sat at the tomb’s entrance, the instrumentalists are the women who came to the tomb, the Eucharistic dish is the eye of Christ, and the holy anaphora is Jesus’ body.

Two different versions of the Teaching of the Lord exist: an earlier form known as the Diataxis and a later revision known as the Didascalia. The Diataxis was likely composed in the 6th or early 7th century CE, but was revised to remove an extensive question and answer regarding the devil’s origin and fall (similar in content to the Dialogue between Jesus and the Devil and the Qur’an). Likely, this revision occurred in the 7th or 8th centuries in response both to the spread of Islam and heresiological condemnation of the claim that the devil fell because he refused to worship Adam (e.g., Anastasius of Sinai, Questions and Responses). Péter Tóth classifies Teach. Lord as a “non-eschatological revelation dialogue” that tends to focus on answering questions relevant to liturgical, monastic, or ecclesiological life. By the 11th century, Teach. Lord was translated into Church Slavic. These translations lack Paul’s question about sexually immoral people, and instead emphasize God’s singularity—perhaps in response to Bogomil theological dualism.

Named historical figures and characters: Andrew (apostle), Antichrist, David (king), Ezekiel (prophet), Herod (the Great), Isaiah (prophet), James (son of Zebedee), John (the Baptist), Judas Iscariot, Mary (Virgin), Paul (apostle), Peter (apostle), Thaddeus (apostle), Thomas (apostle).

Geographical locations: Hades, Mount of Olives, Valley of Jehoshaphat/Josaphat.

2. RESOURCES

3. BIBLIOGRAPHY

3.1 Manuscripts and Editions

3.1.1 Greek (BHG 812a–e)

3.1.1 Diataxis (BHG 812c)

D Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 929, pp. 480–501 (15th cent.) ~ chaps 1–13, 21–34 (=Nau siglum A)

E Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 390, fols. 37^v–46^r (16th cent.)

3.1.2 Didaskalia (BHG 812a, 812b, 812d, 812e)

A Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, G 63 sup., fols. 174^v–176^v (1000 CE) ~ Pinakes; chaps 1–22 (BHG 812a)

C Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 15 sup., fols. 212^r–216^r (15th cent.) ~ Pinakes; chaps 1–18

V Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 2072, fols. 178^v–182^v(11th cent.) (=Nau siglum B; BHG 812b)

Athens, Ethnikê Bibliothêkê tês Hellados, gr. 1021, fols. 145^v–155^v (1518)

Mount Athos, Monē Koutloumousiou, 176 (Lambros 3249), fols. 126^v–132^r (15th cent.) ~ Pinakes (BHG 812e)

Mount Athos, Skētē Hagiou Andreou 96, fols. 16–20 (16th cent.) ~ destroyed

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson G. 4 (misc. 142), fols. 123^v–132^v (16th cent.) ~ Pinakes; catalog (=BHG 812d)

Patmos, Monē tou Hagiou Iōannou tou Theologou, 379 (16th cent.) ~ Pinakes (BHG 812e)

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 2013, fols. 188^r–191^r (11th cent.) ~ BHG 812b

Jagič, I. Victor. Otčet o 33. prisuzdenii nagrad grafa Uvarova. Suppl. Zapiski imp. Akademii 70.3. St. Petersburg, 1892 (edition of the Didaskalia based on Patmos 379, pp. 272–75).

Krasnoseltsev, Nikolai F. Addenda “Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina” (in Russian). Odessa: Economicheskaa Tipografia, 1898 (edition of St. Andrew’s Skete 96, pp. 84–90).

Nau, François. “Une didascalie de Notre-Seigneur Jesus-Christ.” Revue de l’Orient Chretien 12 (1907): 225–54 (edition based on Nau’s sigla A and B, pp. 230–43).

Heil, Uta, and Ioannis Grossmann. “Diataxis–Instructions of the Twelve Apostles.” Pages 475–89 in The Apocryphal Sunday: History and Texts from Late Antiquity. Edited by Uta Heil. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2023 (partial edition and translation based on CDEAV).

3.1.2 Church Slavic

Belgrade, National Library of Serbia, 651 (Popa Dragol Collection), fols. 186^r–192^v(13th cent.)

Belgrade, National Library of Serbia, 828, fols. 135^r–141^v (1409) ~ destroyed in a fire in 1941

Bucharest, Romanian Academy of Sciences, 298, fols. 71–74 (14th cent.)

Kyiv, St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, 490, fols. 168^r–170^v (1649)

Kyiv, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Nizhyn 162, fols. 177–182 (14th cent.)

Reinhart, Johannes. “Slavonic Translation of the Apocrypha Didascalia Domini / Revelation to the Holy Apostles (BHG 812a–e.” Studia Ceranea 4 (2014): 141–60. [Russian].

3.3 Modern Translations

3.3.1 French

Nau, François. “Une didascalie de Notre-Seigneur Jesus-Christ.” Revue de l’Orient Chretien 12 (1907): 225–54 (French translation based on A and B, pp. 243–54).

3.4 General Works

Baun, Jane. Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 (pp. 360–63).

Heil, Uta and Ioannia Grossman. “Diataxis – Instructions of the Twelve Apostles.” Pages 475–89 in The Apocryphal Sunday: History and Texts from Late Antiquity. Edited by Uta Heil. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2023.

Tóth, Péter. “New Wine in Old Wineskin: Byzantine Reuses of the Apocryphal Revelation Dialogue.” Pages 77–93 in Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium. Edited by Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul. New York: Routledge, 2017.