30/09/2023
Why Was Christianity’s First Name “The Way”?
Long before was known as Christianity, it was simply called . In Acts, for instance, Saul was hunting down men and women “belonging to the Way” (9:2). In Ephesus, there was an uproar over those who were part of “the Way” (19:23). To us, that seems an odd name, if not a little too generic and nondescript. So why was it used?
In the scriptures of Israel, the Hebrew noun for “way” is derek (דֶּ֫רֶךְ). The verb, darak, means to tread, trample, march, or walk, so the place where you that is a derek—a road, path, or journey.
But it implies more than simply taking a stroll. In English, we speak metaphorically of a “way of life” or “the road we’re now traveling,” by which we mean how we’ve chosen to live, where we are in life, or the behaviors and beliefs that characterize us. Likewise in Hebrew, that “way of life and belief” is a derek.
The Psalms often describe two ways or two “dereks.” Already in Psalm 1, we read that “the LORD knows the way [derek] of the righteous, but the way [derek] of the wicked will perish” (v. 6). The “way [derek] of the wicked” God brings to ruin (146:9) but “blessed are those whose way [derek] is blameless, who walk in the Torah of the LORD!” (119:1). In that longest of psalms, Psalm 119, derek is used 13 times, mainly to describe the way/derek of God.
When Isaiah describes the work of the Messiah, he says that he will heal the lame, give sight to the blind, and begin a new creation (35:1-7). He then shifts to the image of a new exodus, in which God’s scattered people will come home on a highway, “and it shall be called the Way [derek] of Holiness” (35:8). In Matthew 11:40-6, Jesus says that he is “Isaiah 35ing” in his ministry. He is thus healing, recreating, and constructing this Derek of Holiness.
These images of the Way of God continue in non-biblical Jewish writings like the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, 1 Enoch, Tobit, the Psalms of Solomon, and elsewhere. In early Christian literature, such as the Didache (first or second century AD), this biblical imagery is continued. Echoing the Psalms, the Didache begins this way: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but there is a great difference between the two ways.”
With all this widespread biblical and Jewish background, is it any surprise that the followers of Jesus were known as those who followed The Way? And, given that Jesus himself said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” how appropriate a name for this faith (John 14:6)!
To be a Christian, therefore, is to be in the Son of God, who is the Way, and to walk in the Way that he himself has shown us.
