16:1 Be watchful for your life;
Chapter 16. 16:1 Be watchful for your life; 16:2 let your lamps not be quenched and your loins not ungirded, but be ready; 16:3 for you do not know the hour in which our Lord comes. 16:4 And you shall gather yourselves together frequently, seeking what is fitting for your souls; 16:5 for the whole time of your faith shall be of no use to you, if you are not perfected at the last. 16:6 For in the last days the false prophets and destroyers shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate. 16:7 For as lawlessness increases, they shall hate one another and shall persecute and betray. 16:8 And then the world-deceiver shall appear as a son of God; 16:9 and shall work signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands; 16:10 and he shall do unholy things, which have never been since the world began. 16:11 Then all created mankind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish; 16:12 but those who endure in their faith shall be saved through the Curse itself. 16:13 And then the signs of the truth shall appear; 16:14 first a sign of a rift in the heaven, then a sign of a voice of a trumpet, and thirdly a resurrection of the dead; 16:15 yet not of all, but as it was said: 16:16 The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. 16:17 Then the world will see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.
Didache; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Didache (/ˈdɪdəkiː/; Koine Greek: Διδαχή) or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Didachē means "Teaching") is a brief early Christian treatise, dated by most scholars to the late first or early 2nd century.The first line of this treatise is "Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles (or Nations) by the Twelve Apostles"
The text, parts of which constitute the oldest surviving written catechism, has three main sections dealing with Christian ethics, rituals such as baptism and Eucharist, and Church organization. It is considered the first example of the genre of the Church Orders.
The work was considered by some of the Church Fathers as part of the New Testament but rejected as spurious or non-canonical by others, eventually not accepted into the New Testament canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church "broader canon" includes the Didascalia, a work which draws on the Didache.
Lost for centuries, a Greek manuscript of the Didache was rediscovered in 1873 by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia in the Codex Hierosolymitanus. A Latin version of the first five chapters was discovered in 1900 by J. Schlecht. The Didache is considered part of the category of second-generation Christian writings known as the Apostolic Fathers.
Most scholars place the Didache at some point during the mid to late first century, but John Robinson argues that it is first generation, dating it c. 40–60 AD. It is an anonymous work, a pastoral manual "that reveals more about how Jewish-Christians saw themselves and how they adapted their Judaism for gentiles than any other book in the Christian Scriptures." Hitchcock and Brown produced the first English translation in March 1884. Harnack produced the first German translation in 1884, and Sabatier the first translation and commentary in 1885.
Early references The Didache is mentioned by Eusebius (c. 324) as the Teachings of the Apostles following the books recognized as canonical:
"Let there be placed among the spurious works the Acts of Paul, the so-called Shepherd and the Apocalypse of Peter, and besides these the Epistle of Barnabas, and what are called the Teachings of the Apostles, and also the Apocalypse of John, if this be thought proper; for as I wrote before, some reject it, and others place it in the canon."
Athanasius (367) and Rufinus (c. 380) list the Didache among apocrypha. (Rufinus gives the curious alternative title Judicium Petri, "Judgment of Peter".) It is rejected by Nicephorus (c. 810), PseudoAnastasius, and Pseudo-Athanasius in Synopsis and the 60 Books canon. It is accepted by the Apostolic Constitutions Canon 85, John of Damascus and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Adversus Aleatores by an imitator of Cyprian quotes it by name.
Unacknowledged citations are very common, if less certain. The section Two Ways shares the same language with the Epistle of Barnabas, chapters 18–20, sometimes word for word, sometimes added to, dislocated, or abridged, and Barnabas 4:9 either derives from Didache, 16, 2–3, or vice versa. There can also be seen many similarities to the Epistles of both Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch. The Shepherd of Hermas seems to reflect it, and Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen of Alexandria also seem to use the work, and so in the West do Optatus and the Gesta apud Zenophilum. The Didascalia Apostolorum are founded upon the Didache. The Apostolic Church-Ordinances has used a part, the Apostolic Constitutions have embodied the Didascalia. There are echoes in Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Cyprian, and Lactantius.
Contents The contents may be divided into four parts, which most scholars agree were combined from separate sources by a later redactor: the first is the Two Ways, the Way of Life and the Way of Death (chapters
1–6); the second part is a ritual dealing with baptism, fasting, and Communion (chapters 7–10); the third speaks of the ministry and how to deal with travelling prophets (chapters 11–15); and the final section (chapter 16) is a brief apocalypse.
The manuscript is commonly referred to as the Didache. This is short for the header found on the document and the title used by the Church Fathers, "The Lord's Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" which Jerome said was the same as the Gospel according to the Hebrews. A fuller title or subtitle is also found next in the manuscript, "The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles".
Description Willy Rordorf considered the first five chapters as "essentially Jewish, but the Christian community was able to use it" by adding the "evangelical section". "Lord" in the Didache is reserved usually for "Lord God", while Jesus is called "the servant" of the Father (9:2f.; 10:2f.). Baptism was practised "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Scholars generally agree that 9:5, which speaks of baptism "in the name of the Lord," represents an earlier tradition that was gradually replaced by a trinity of names." A similarity with Acts 3 is noted by Aaron Milavec: both see Jesus as "the servant (pais) of God". The community is presented as "awaiting the kingdom from the Father as entirely a future event".
The Two Ways The first section (Chapters 1–6) begins: "There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two ways."
In Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed., Lightfoot-Harmer-Holmes, 1992, notes: The Two Ways material appears to have been intended, in light of 7.1, as a summary of basic instruction about the Christian life to be taught to those who were preparing for baptism and church membership. In its present form it represents the Christianization of a common Jewish form of moral instruction. Similar material is found in a number of