The Genre and Development of the Didache: A Text-Linguistic Analysis

The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is recognized today by virtually all scholars as a Christian text of the first or early second century. Contemporary with the nascent New Testament, it is especially important to a reconstruction of that period because its highly utilitarian nature provides not only a supplement but a complement to the canonical texts. The recovery of information from the Didache is hindered, however, by the elliptical nature of the text; apparently a certain background knowledge on the part of the ancient reader was assumed, knowledge lost, unfortunately, to the modern audience. Even the important question of its genre remains unresolved. After examining the surface structure of the Didache using text-linguistic methodology, Nancy Pardee proposes a generic identity for the Didache, a reconstruction of its composition history, and some conclusions as to what these mean for our understanding of the early church.