The Jerusalem council of the apostles marked the beginning of the separate development of Jewish and Gentile Christianity. They both agreed on some essentials and ardently expected the impending second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. Paul himself insisted that it would happen in his own lifetime (1 Thess 4:15-7). But in other respects they saw things differently. The original Judaeo-Christian baptism, a rite of purification, and the breaking of the bread, a solemn communal meal, were transformed in the Gentile church under the influence of Paul. The former developed into a mystical participation in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and the latter became a sacramental reiteration of the Last Supper. The perceived differences soon led to animosity and to an increasing anti-Jewish animus in the Gentile church. 

Among the oldest Christian writings, two in particular offer a splendid insight into the divergences between the two branches of the Jesus followers. The 16 chapters of the Didache, or Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, probably composed in Palestine or Syria, is our last major Jewish Christian document preserved in full, and the Epistle of Barnabas is one of the earliest expressions of Gentile Christianity, filled with anti-Jewish strictures.  

The existence of the Didache was known as long ago as the fourth century. Eusebius mentions it. However, the full Greek text was first published by Philotheos Bryennios in 1883 from an 11th-century manuscript identified by him ten years earlier. It contains no identifiable chronological pointers, but is generally assigned to the second half of the first century CE, thus probably antedating some of the writings of the New Testament.

Its religious programme is built on the essential summary of the Mosaic Law, the love of God and of the neighbour, to which is added the so-called "golden rule" in its negative Jewish form, "Whatever you do not want to happen to you, do not do to another" (Did. 1.2), instead of the positive Gospel version, "Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them" (Mt. 7:12; Lk 6:31). The lifestyle recommended is that of the primitive Jerusalem community described in the Acts, including religious communism: "Share all things with your brother and do not say that anything is your own" (Did. 4.8). The Didache seems to recommend the observance of the entire Mosaic Law or at least as much of it as is possible (Did. 6.2).