A particularly striking feature of the Didache is the amount of material it shares with Matthew's Gospel. For many scholars this factor, combined with the Didache's four references to 'the gospel', has been taken as showing that the Didache was written with knowledge of that Gospel. If Matthew may be dated to AD 80-100, then the Didache cannot be an especially early text.

The flaw in this logic is a failure to take into account another feature of the Didache that is all but universally recognised by scholars; the Didache wasn't written by one person at one time. This factor, combined with the numerous Matthean parallels, creates a puzzle. Is it likely that similarities to Matthew's Gospel were inserted at several stages in the Didache's development? This would require an extraordinary string of coincidences - especially given that the parallel material is almost always unique to these two texts. It is much more likely, therefore, that Matthew found the Didache at a late stage in its development and combined material from its various elements with traditions from other sources.

A detailed presentation of the case for Matthew's knowledge of the Didache (at a late stage in its development) is offered in The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache, (sample chapters and further information). This book concludes that Matthew knew and used the first three layers of the Didache, in which case they must have been created before this Gospel.

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