The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

This wide-ranging essay collection is divided into two parts. The first four chapters explore themes relating to educational contexts and settings relevant to the study of ancient education and Christianity: "The Torah versus Homer: Jewish and Greco-Roman Education in Late Roman Palestine," by Catherine Hezser; "Exodus from the Cave: Moses as Platonic Educator," by Craig Evan Anderson; "Observing a Teacher of Progymnasmata," by Ronald F. Hock; and "The Seven Sages, The Delphic Canon and Ethical Education in Antiquity," by James R. Harrison.

The second, and longer, section ("Early Christian Appropriations") consists of "Fabulous Parables: The Storytelling Tradition in the Synoptic Gospels," by Matthew Ryan Hauge; "The Origins of Greek Mimesis and the Gospel of Mark: Genre as a Potential Constraint in Assessing Markan Imitation," by Andrew W. Pitts; "Luke and the Progymnasmata: Rhetorical Handbooks, Rhetorical Sophistication and Genre Selection," by Sean A. Adams; "Luke's Antetextuality in Light of Ancient Rhetorical Education," by Dennis R. MacDonald; "A School of Paul? The Use of Pauline Texts in Early Christian Schooltext Papyri," by Jennifer R. Strawbridge; and "How Did the 'Teaching' Teach? The Didache as Cathechesis," by William Varner.

The book begins with a very brief (two-page) introduction in which the editors explain that this is, to their knowledge, the first volume "that brings together significant contributions from a range of scholars in this emerging domain of scholarly interest" (p. 1). If this is the case, the anthology is indeed a contribution. Questions of the relation between ancient education and early Christianity have been a going scholarly concern since the 1980s, so a volume in which some of these works are brought together (if not, in this work, into conversation) is overdue.

Among the highlights of the book is Hock's detailed reconstruction of the first two days of instruction in the classroom of a teacher of progymnasmata ("elementary exercises"), [End Page 364] which, he suggests, conveyed to students "the habits of thought and expression that would govern not only their composing rhetorical speeches but all literary activity—gospels, acts and epistles included" (p. 70). Hezser's consideration of the similarities and differences between rabbinic and Roman secondary education provides some welcome information on a neglected topic. Harrison's essay on the significance of the Delphic canon in relation to ethical instruction in early Christianity is illuminating, especially with reference to the Delphic "Haustaufeln" discussed on pp. 77-79.

Pitts's discussion of the function of mimesis in the Gospel of Mark ends with a call for further analysis of the role of mimesis in Mark and other early Christian documents, mentioning both my observation that the structure of Mark is organized similarly to ancient tragedies (Mark's Audience: The Literary and Social Setting of Mark 4:11-12 [JSNTSup 33; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989]), and Richard A. Burridge's demonstration that Mark's structure "maps similarly in a biographical setting" (What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004] 192) (p. 130). It should be noted that, although I continue to be impressed by the structural parallels between the five-act Hellenistic drama and Mark, and by the broadly biographical nature of the Gospel, I subsequently agreed with John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington that Mark's most influential "pre-texts" are the Jewish Scriptures (Beavis, Mark [Paideia; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011] 16-17; Donahue and Harrington, The Gospel of Mark [SacPag; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002] 16-17).

The chapters by Strawbridge and Varner feature two relevant bodies of evidence that are often left out of consideration in studies of early Christian education (especially the former): early Christian papyri containing excerpts from the beginning of Romans (P.Oxy. 2.209; P.Mich. 926) that may have been used as school exercises; and the Didache, considered to be early Christian catechesis. Among the chapters, the one that is least persuasive is Anderson's ingenious parallel between Plato...