Paragraphs below were extracted from https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html. There are many extracts from other scholars at the page.
Burton Mack notes two interesting features of the text of the Didache. One concerns alms, and the other concerns the Eucharist. Of the first, Mack writes (Who Wrote the New Testament?, p. 240):
“There are several interesting features of this manual of instruction. One is an overriding concern with the practice of alms, gift giving, and the support of dependents, itinerant teachers, and others who may ask for a handout. Generosity was obviously thought to be a prime Christian virtue, but in practice one had to be careful, for others could easily take advantage of the Christian. This was especially the case with “false” prophets who showed up and wanted the congregation to feed them. The instruction was not to “receive” any prophet who asked for food or money while speaking “in a spirit” (Did. 11:12), and not to allow any “true” prophet (who did not do that) to stay longer than two or three days unless he was willing to settle down, learn a craft, and “work for his bread” (Did. 12:2-5). It is obvious that the Didache was written with resident congregations in mind and that their overseers and deacons had grown weary of the hype and hoopla characteristic of an earlier period of itinerant teachers and preachers. The pattern of congregational life over which they presided was sufficient. They had gotten together and agreed upon the practices, prayers, and rituals that defined the Christian way.”
On the second, Mack continues (op. cit., pp. 240-241):
“The prayer of thanksgiving (eucharist) for the community meal in chapters 9 and 10 are also significant. That is because they do not contain any reference to the death of Jesus. Accustomed as we are to the memorial supper of the Christ cult and the stories of the last supper in the synoptic gospels, it has been very difficult to imagine early Christians taking meals together for any reason other than to celebrate the death of Jesus according to the Christ myth. But here in the Didache a very formalistic set of prayers is assigned to the cup and the breaking of bread without the slightest association with the death and resurrection of Jesus. The prayers of thanksgiving are for the food and drink God created for all people and the special, “spiritual” food and drink that Christians have because of Jesus. Drinking the cup symbolizes the knowledge these people have that they and Jesus are the “Holy Vine of David,” which means that they “belong to Israel.” Eating the bread symbolizes the knowledge these people have of the life and immortality they enjoy by belonging to the kingdom of God made known to them by Jesus, God’s child. And it is serious business. No one is allowed to “eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptised in the Lord’s name” (Did. 9:5). We thus have to imagine a highly self-conscious network of congregations that thought of themselves as Christians, had developed a full complement of rituals, had much in common with other Christian groups of centrist persuasions, but continued to cultivate their roots in a Jesus movement where enlightenment ethics made much more sense than the worship of Jesus as the crucified Christ and risen son of God.”
Mack states on the provenance of the Didache (op. cit., pp. 241-242): “It is not unthinkable that both the Didache and the Gospel of Matthew stem from the same or closely related communities, though at slightly different times in their histories. . . it would be easy to imagine a social location in some district of southern Syria or northern Palestine where a small group of congregations had formed.”
