The Didache is a text from early Christianity which has excited growing interest in recent years, yet still poses many unanswered questions and riddles. In this study, originally a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, Nancy Pardee focuses especially on the issues of the genre of the text we know as the Didache, and also its possible development, given that the full text is only available to us in one Greek manuscript from the eleventh century (Hierosolymitanus 54 [H54]). A full first chapter traces important developments in the history of scholarship, especially on the question of the genre of the text. Pardee shows how many descriptions of the text in the past as a ‘church order’ may be somewhat anachronistic, using a category of texts from post-Reformation churches. A second chapter seeks to apply the methods and categories of ‘text linguistics’, especially as developed (within early Christian studies) by David Hellholm, to see if this can throw light on the structure of the text (taking the H54 text as the base text to be analysed). The discussion here is (at least for this reviewer) at times extremely complex and difficult to follow, with many abbreviations, sigla and what for many will be unusual terms. This then leads on to a discussion of the ‘delimitation’ of the Didache, with extended discussion of the two ‘titles’ at the start of the work in H54. Pardee argues (against many others in the modern debate) that the longer ‘title’ is indeed original (for example, a later origin is unlikely in view of the fact that the ‘twelve apostles’ are not given any more honorific descriptions, and the reference to Jesus as simply the ‘Lord’ also looks to be earlier rather than later).

In a shorter chapter at the end of the book, Pardee discusses the two issues which form the central focus of the book. For the genre, she argues that the category of διδαχή (as in the inscription and the incipit) provides the most appropriate description of the text: the Didache perhaps provides the first example of this as a genre. She then also raises the question of whether different stages in the development of the text can be discerned. Claiming in part that the results emerge from the text-linguistic analysis, she argues that four stages in the development of the text may be identified. A first stage of the text comprised the Two Ways document with the initial title and also the sections in 1·3–5 and ch. 16. A second stage added 7·1–11·2. A third stage added 11·3–15, including references to a ‘gospel’, now taken as the authoritative norm for teaching; and a fourth stage added a few extra clauses (e.g. 1·6; 6·3).

The book provides much food for thought with many useful discussions of key issues. Particularly valuable is the discussion of titles of works in antiquity (pp. 101–25) and how this might bear on the phenomenon of the apparent two-fold title at the start of the H54 text. On the other hand, the application of ‘text linguistics’ to the text here seemed (to this reviewer) not always very clear or helpful to a reader not versed in these mysteries. To be told that the τέκνον section in 3·1–6 is to be described as ‘⁹ST1·1·1·1·1·1·2·2·2’, or that the command about support in 14:3 is ‘⁶ST1·2·2·1·2·3’, will be somewhat challenging for many. Further, it is not clear (at least to this reviewer) just how far this analysis really brings new insights into the structure of the text, or how far it simply describes (in a different ‘language game’) what is already decided on other grounds. Thus to be told that the use of περὶ δέ in 11·3 is ‘a pragmatic marker, a sub-situation on the meta-level’, a description which is then further expounded as ‘in essence a chapter heading for the material that follows’ (p. 135), one wonders if talk of ‘pragmatic markers’ or ‘meta-levels’ is saying anything more than can be said in (for some) more accessible language about a ‘chapter heading’.

The discussion of the possible development of the text provides interesting food for thought but also raises some questions. Part of the argument that 1·3–5+16 belong in an early stage of the text's development is that both sections allude to synoptic materials, but without quoting and without appealing to the authority of such material as such. This is contrasted with the references to the ‘gospel’ (probably Matthew) elsewhere (for example 15·4, taken here as advocating the ‘gospel’ as the authoritative norm for all that has been said). Hence it is assumed that materials in 1·3–6+16 belong at an early stage of Jesus traditions, perhaps at a pre-synoptic stage. However, this seems to ignore the fact that quite a few early Christian authors can allude to (but not explicitly quote) material from gospels, even after the writing of these gospels. The manner in which the tradition is used does not determine the date of such usage; nor did gospel texts necessarily become immediately authoritative (as almost canonical scripture) as soon as they were written.

Some of the divisions suggested here are scarcely novel (e.g. a break at 11·3 [or perhaps 11·1]; references to a ‘gospel’ being possibly late). But it is not clear that the seams and breaks detected here (most of which would find much assent and agreement from others) necessarily imply a chronological, sequential development in the text. The apparently abrupt breaks between 6·2/3 and 7·1, or between 11·2 and 11·3, do not necessarily imply that the material in what is now the later part of the text was added to a version of the text which contained the whole of the preceding material as a specific text. The situation implied by Pardee is not dissimilar to stratification theories about Q, with some arguing that the earlier traditions were already combined into a form of the text of Q (a ‘Q¹’): but such theories may go beyond the evidence.

There is however much to ponder here. Several important issues raised in the book could not be discussed in this short review (for example on διδαχή and genre). The book will undoubtedly provide the basis for further discussions about the Didache, which continues to provide an intriguing, if still enigmatic, witness to so many aspects of early Christianity.