Conclusion: Missing Pieces in the Puzzle or Wild Good Chase? A Retrospect and Prospect Jonathan A. Draper 1. Why the Riddle? In his groundbreaking commentary written soon ater its irst publica- tion by Bishop Bryennios in 1883, Adolf von Harnack 1 highlighted its signiicance: he more one immerses oneself in the context of the Didache, the more clearly one sees that its author has exhausted, to his mind, everything which belonged in a short evangelical-apostolic manual for the Chris- tian life of the individual (in everyday dealings and in the community). One could not deny that the evidence provided by this writing is quite irst rate. So impressed was Harnack with its evidence, that it formed the key to his picture of the evolution of the early church from the writings of the New Testament to the emerging institution of “early Catholicism” in his mas- sive two volume work, Das Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902). 2 Ater one hundred and thirty years, 1. Adolf von Harnack, Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel nebst Untersuchuingen zur ältesten Geschichte der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts, TUGAL 2.1, 2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1884), 36–37 (my translation). Harnack’s contention concerning the comprehensiveness of the instructions has been speciically questioned by Georg Schöllgen, “Die Didache als Kirchenordnung: Zur Frage des Abfassungszweckes und sinen Konsequenzen für die Interpretation,” JAC 29 (1986): 5–26. Schöllgen argues that the Didache simply presents an ad hoc collection of burning issues of the day and what is absent from the text is irrelevant for its interpretation. 2. Translated into English as Adolf von Harnack, he Mission and Expansion of -529- 22.Didache.indd 529 3/2/15 12:09 PM