The Way That Leads to Life
A Discourse Analysis of the Didache
Paperback (Forthcoming)
(November 2026)
ISBN: 9782503623825
Price: $100.00
A linguistic analysis of the theme and structure of the Didache read as a coherent unity while acknowledging the complex historical development lying behind its final form.
How should we understand the meaning of the Didache as a whole? Some scholars have focused on the prehistory and the development of the book, often with the result of fracturing it into a series of traditional sources to be studied in light of their own backgrounds and contexts. Other scholars have attempted to read the Didache as a coherent document by denying its historical development, but these interpretations have frequently been unconvincing. This study is an attempt to provide a unified synchronic interpretation of the Didache while acknowledging that a complex historical development lies behind the text in its final form. Discourse analysis (DA) is used to determine the theme and structure of the Didache by analyzing how the global meaning of the Didache in its final form (theme) is conveyed by its arrangement (structure). The heart of this study consists of a unit-by-unit analysis of the theme and structure of the Didache, beginning from the largest units and working down to the smallest.While this study is not the first to utilize DA to study the Didache, it is the first to do so with the intention of discerning how the theme of the book arises from its structure. It is also the first to formulate a statement of the book’s theme. It is an attempt to advance the study of the Didache by looking at both its microstructures and its macrostructures according to their syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Other Titles in this Series
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
Volume 40
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300-1200
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Science of Computus in Ireland and Europe, Galway, 14-16 July, 2006
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Healing not Punishment. Penitentials in the Insular Church
Historical and Pastoral Networking of the Penitentials between the Sixth and the Eighth Centuries
Volume 25
The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus
The Laterculus Malalianus and the Person and Work of Christ
Volume 6
Agents in Liturgy, Charity and Communication
The Tasks of Female Deacons in the Apostolic Constitutions
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