Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 165:659 (Jul 2008)
Article: The Didache “Apocalypse” and Matthew 24
Author: William C. Varner

---

BSac 165:659 (July-September 2008) p. 309

The Didache “Apocalypse” and Matthew 24

William C. Varner

William C. Varner is Professor of Biblical Studies, The Master’s College, Santa Clarita, California.

The little document entitled the Didache continues to hold a fascination for the few readers who pay it the attention it deserves.1 The Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles (its full English title) was well known in the early church. Chapters 1–5 were incorporated into the early second-century Epistle of Barnabas 18–20. Some believe that Clement of Alexandria (second century) and Origen (third century) quoted it, though they did not mention it by name. In the fourth century Eusebius listed it among the noncanonical books read in some churches. Athanasius recommended its reading by young converts, and Didymus the Blind referred to it as a “catechetical book.” It evidently was used for instruction of catechumens, at least in Alexandria. Sections of it were incorporated into some fifth- and sixth-century church manuals. The book itself disappeared from view after a brief mention of it by Nicephorus in the early ninth century.

The only known Greek copy of the Didache was found in an Istanbul monastery library by Philotheus Bryennios in 1873.2 He published the text in 1883. It presently is housed in the library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem. Much scholarly attention was given to the book in the 1880s and 1890s, and the general conclusion was that the original dated from the late first century

BSac 165:659 (July-September 2008) p. 310

and that it utilized the canonical Book of Matthew. Then a view (mainly due to British influence) prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century that it dated from the middle to late second century and reflected opposition to Montanism. Since the work of Pere Audet in the 1950s, the dating of the book has been generally pushed back into the first century again, some placing it as early as before A.D. 70, with the accompanying view that it utilized oral “Jesus tradition” that preceded the Book of Matthew. The archaic simplicity of the book’s theology and ecclesiology and its lack of reference to persecution or heretical teaching point to an earlier rather than a later date.

The author of the Didache is anonymous, and no individuals are mentioned by name in the book. It is generally divided into three sections. The first six chapters are based on a two-ways theme (the way of life and the way of death) and are highly paranetic in character, leaning heavily on ethical Torah...

visitor : : uid: ()