Early Christianity and the Martyrs: A Study of the Didache and Irenaeus' Writings

Running head: THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
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1THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
The Apostles of Jesus passed down his teachings and life through different Gospels.
These Gospels and different other contemporary accounts come to together to form the Bible
which is the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The 12 Apostles were the direct disciple
of Jesus who witnessed his life and learnt the words of wisdom directly from him. They kept
direct accounts of these teachings and events Chadwick, Henry.. Most of the events narrated
in the different gospels are similar, however there are certain very less amount of differences
that has been defended in various ways by different scholars.
The Apostles had preached the religion in different regions of the world. The Jews
were the primary audience and there were the gentiles or the non-Jewish. The jewish people
already were a part of the religion as they were already the followers of the Old Testament.
Jesus had ordered that the Old Testament has to be followed word by word whereas the New
Testament also has to be followed.
The Didache is the book which is also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles”. The book is an “early Christian treatise”. The book mainly describes the teaching
of the Apostles and what they had said about Jesus and his different activities. Different kinds
of rituals, practices and prayers are also included in the book. There are prayers and all kinds
of practices about Christianity as taught by Jesus and as preached by the Apostles themselves.
The institution of Church was in the phase of development, and the Apostles has been playing
an important role often as “chief priests”. The treatise also revealed how the Jewish
Christians were adopting to the new Christianity. The book is known to be included in the
group of Christian writings of second generation (Varner 2005).
Irenaeus was a preacher and saint from Greece who had been a disciple of Saint
Polycarp. Polycarp again was a disciple of John the Apostle. Therefore Irenaeus had received

2THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
the knowledge from the disciplic succession starting from Jesus himself. The primary source
of this paper would be his writings and the records of the Didache (Kraft and Feedman 1992).
Saint Polycarp was however killed and he died a death of martyr. Martyr was
someone who died in order to preach the message of Jesus. It is said that Saint Polycarp
was burned at the stake, however as the fire did not touch him he was then stabbed.
These accounts had been recorded by Irenaeus himself. So taking cue from this writing
it can be known what the position of early Christianity about Martyrdom was.
As it is very widely known that Jesus himself was crucified and he then had
resurrected as he was the Son of God according to the scriptures. Similar was the fate with
many of the preachers who had been “martyred” and killed by various means because of
preaching the religion (Jefford 1989). The Romans who were not followers of Christianity
had been threatened by the rise of the religion. Hence they have been following the practice
of subduing the Christians in these ways.
As proof about this, is the tale of principal Christian saint, Stephen, stated in Acts
6:8– 7:53. In the wake of being blessed as 1 of the principal elders in that congregation,
Stephen quickly started performing relentless works for the general population. As normally
the situation when the “Holy Spirit” is powerfully active and the “gospel” is going forward,
the powers of dimness emerge to prevent crafted by the holy “kingdom”. For this situation, a
few persons came to question what Stephen had been stating, yet Stephen, loaded with the
“Holy Spirit”, could disprove their reactions. As opposed to acknowledge what Stephen was
instructing, these people conveyed false and artificial charges about him to the “Jewish”
pioneers (Acts 6:11-14). The vast majority of Acts 7 comprises of Stephen's discourse to
these Jewish pioneers in which he basically condensed the historical backdrop of Israel to
their dismissal of their “Messiah” (Milavec 2003).