Apostles in Didache

When we come to the Didache, which probably lies beyond the boundary-line of New Testament history, we find the name “apostles” applied to a whole class of nameless missionaries - men who settled in no church, but moved about from place to place as messengers of the gospel (chapter 11). This makes it difficult to accept the view, urged by Lightfoot (op. cit., 98) and Gwatkin (HDB, I, 126) on the ground Of Luk 24:48; Act 1:8, Act 1:22; 1Co 9:1, that to have seen the Lord was always the primary qualification of an apostle - a view on the strength of which they reject the apostleship of Apollos and Timothy, as being late converts to Christianity who lived far from the scenes of our Lord's ministry. Gwatkin remarks that we have no reason to suppose that this condition was ever waived unless we throw forward the Didache into the 2nd century. But it seems very unlikely that even toward the end of the 1st century there would be a whole class of men, not only still alive, but still braving in the exercise of their missionary functions all the hardships of a wandering and homeless existence (compare Didache 1Co 11:4-6), who were yet able to bear the personal testimony of eye-witnesses to the ministry and resurrection of Jesus. In Luk 24:48 and Act 18:22 it is the chosen company of the Twelve who are in view. In 1Co 9:1 Paul is meeting his Judaizing opponents on their own ground, and answering their insistence upon personal intercourse with Jesus by a claim to have seen the Lord. But apart from these passages there is no evidence that the apostles of the early church were necessarily men who had known Jesus in the flesh or had been witnesses of His resurrection - much less that this was the primary qualification on which their apostleship was made to rest.

This biblical study was taken from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co