a. The appearance of false prophets and the collapse the tractate may be the observation that the tractate, in
IV. Eschatological Conclusion 16.1-8 General Comment With Did. 16.1 begins the concluding section of the book, which contains an eschatological text. More pre cisely one must distinguish between a parenetic section
(16.1-2) and an apocalyptic section (16.3-8). The latter breaks off sharply at 16.8. The whole seems to be orga nized as follows:
The eschatological conclusion of the Didache has been repeatedly associated with the Two Ways tractate. Chap.
16 (or parts of chap. 16, or the source of the chapter) is then regarded as the original conclusion of the Two
Ways tractate. The Didachist then would have copied the tractate in chaps. 1-6 of the Didache and returned to his source in chap. 16, which constituted the conclusion of the tractate.3 The principal argument in favor of this hypothesis making chap. 16 (or its prior forms) part of the tractate may be the observation that the tractate, in the form available to Barnabas (and similarly the Canons of the Apostles as well), very probably had an eschatologi cal conclusion, which is demonstrable in the form found in Doctr. 6.4-5. (The text of the epilogue, however, is dif ferent.) Something similar has been proposed regarding the source of the Didache. Chap. 16 is said therefore to come from the eschatological final section of the Two
Ways tractate, or more precisely from the version of the tractate that was available to the Didachist as a source.
The principal argument against this is the observation 1. Eschatological parenesis (16.1-2) 2. The apocalypse (16.3-8)1 a. The appearance of false prophets and the collapse of the Christian community (16.3-4a) b. The appearance of the Antichrist (16.4b-d) c. The great apostasy and the preservation of the faithful (16.5) d. The revelation of the three signs of the truth
(16.6-7) e. The arrival of the Kyrios (16.8) . . .
The conclusion of the apocalypse is unfortunately lost in H and can no longer be reconstructed in detail from Constitutions or the Georgian version; it is probable, however, that the apocalypse in the Didache ended origi nally with a short reference to the final judgment of the world.2 that while Did. 1.1—6.1 has parallels (some of them very close) in the Doctrina apostolorum (setting aside the sectio evangelica), the same is no longer true for Didache 16.
1 The defining elements are as follows: eu yap rale; eoydraLq ppepacq (v. 3a) opens this section; av^auovapq yap rfjq avoplaq (v. 4a) is part of the previous section. The remaining organization is indicated by the numerative (nal) Tore in vv. 4b, 5,
6 (including the scriptural proof in v. 7), 8. Cf.
Philip Vielhauer and Georg Strecker, "Apocalyptic in Early Christianity," in NTApoc, 2.589-91.
Consider also the similar beginnings: v. 4b: Kai Tore ipav-qaerac Z indeed have been mentioned in what followed, as the paraphrases in the Apostolic Constitutions and the Georgian still show.
3 This hypothesis seems to have appeared first in the work of P. Savi (cf. Ehrhard, Altchristliche Litteratur,
51 and n. 1, 55). Ehrhard himself also accepted this idea (p. 51). It later found a number of adherents, e.g., Hemmer, Doctrine, xciv (probably); cf. earlier at xxix; Creed, "Didache" 379; Drews, "Untersuchungen," 68-73 (for the source redacted by the Didachist); Knopf, Lehre, 2: "In the original of this proselyte catechism, which was available to the author of the Didache, the greater part of chap. 16, the apocalyptic final scene (16.3-7) was very proba bly present. Possibly 16.2 was also part of the Jewish document because there is again a clear parallel to this passage in Barn. (4.9-10)." In more recent times see esp. Koester, Synoptische Uberlieferung 160:
"Did. 16: a little apocalypse that was probably com bined with the 'ways' even before its inclusion in the Didache." Cf. also pp. 173, 190. Koester therefore speaks of the "apocalypse of the ways" (p. 173). In addition see Kamlah, Paranese, 214. Against the combining of chaps. 1-6 with chap. 16 are Rordorf and Tuilier, Doctrine, 81-83; Vielhauer, Geschichte,
731-35; Aono, Entwicklung, 164-65, 256-57. v. 5a: Tore qi-ei, v. 6a: eai tots (pavqaerai v. 8: Tore operat.
2 Section (e) thus probably dealt, originally, with "the coming of the Kyrios to judge the world." Aono
(Entwicklung 169-74) has insisted that Didache 16 is lacking the idea of judgment. He finds it absent as early as 16.2b as well as in what follows. Aono can only maintain this judgment, however, by having the apocalypse in the Didache (despite Constitutions and the Georgian) end with 16.8. He considers it "more probable that the author deliberately ended chapter
16 just as the other manuscripts [sic] read" (p. 171).
To this it should be said that, as certainly as any thing can be, 16.8 (if only for paleographical rea sons: see below) is not the end of the original
Didache. Rather, in the original, judgment would