Aaron Milavec has written an important study of the Didache, one of the first major texts describing the way of life lived within a set of first-century Christian communities. A "pastoral manual" of sorts, it enumerates the step-by-step training of gentile converts for full active participation in the church communities of the mid-first century.

Milavec offers here a fresh translation, side by side Greek and English, of the work, along with extensive commentary. Of considerable length, this work is noteworthy because it places the text with the context of...