I've been reading through some of the early church documents recently and am now reading through the Didache. Many of the verses seem similar or almost identical to those in the Bible, but there are equally many verses that are clearly not Biblical. Also, except for the sections on Communion, Christ is not really mentioned, and even in the sections on Communion it is questionable to me whether the writer(s) of the Didache had a proper belief about who Christ is and what he accomplished.

Although an open-ended question, I would be curious to hear others' thoughts about the Didache, e.g., is it truly characteristic of the early church, how useful is it for us to study today, does it handle Christ appropriately, was it influenced by the various heresies that were common in the 1st century, etc.

To me it seems like a very legalistic document that contains only glimpses of the Gospel, although a person I was discussing it with said that the document was written with the Gospel as an assumed starting point and was intended to be more practical for daily life (an argument I can't really agree with).

Thanks,
John