‘He will send forth his disciples, and they shall disciple all the nations and every tongue unto the resurrection of the Beloved ... and his ascension into the seventh heaven, whence he came: and many who believe in him will speak in the Holy Spirit. . . . And on the eve of his approach, his
disciples will let go the preaching (spogureiayv) of his Twelve Apostles, and their faith and love and their purity (ceyvetoy) 3
DIDACHE
DIDACHE 449
and there will be many factions on the eve of his approach. And there will be in those days many desiring to rule, though void of wisdom: and there will be many lawless elders and shepherds unjust towards their sheep, which shall be ravaged for want of pure shepherds. ... And there will be much slander and vainglory ...and the Holy Spirit will depart from the many: and there will not be in those days many prophets speaking sure things, but only one here and there in divers places, by reason of the Spirit of error and of fornication and vainglory and love of money, which shall be in those who will be called servants of that One and in those who will re- ceive him, And there will be great hatred in the shepherds and elders towards each other.* For there will be much jealousy in the last days, for each will speak what is pleasing in his own eyes: and they will let go utterly the prophecies of the prophets who were before me (Isaiah): and these very visions they will treat as void, in order that they may utter the impulses of their own heart’ (iii, 13-31).
Next follows a description of the descent of Beliar ‘in the likeness of a man, a king, lawless, a matricide, one who himself—the king—will per- secute the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved shall plant; and of the Twelve, one shall be delivered into his hands.’ This Nero-Antichrist is then pictured as emulating the superhuman powers of the Messiah—
‘He will act and speak like the Beloved, and will say, ‘I am God, and before me there has been none.” . . . And the greater part of those who shall have been associated together in order to receive (=wait for) the Beloved, he will turn aside after him. ... And he will set up his image before him in every city. ... And many believers and saints, having seen him for whom they were hoping,’ namely, Jesus the Christ, ‘and those also who became believers in him—of these few in those days will be left as his servants, while they flee from solitude to solitude, awaiting the coming of the Beloved’ (iv. 2-13).
It is true that one must not forget that in all this we are listening to an apocalyptist—one who as such is apt to dwell on the darker hues of days which he regards as the ‘darkest hour before the dawn,’ familiar to all apocalyptic. Yet allowing for this, as also for some phrases and clauses which may be due to the final redactor of the Ascension, the impression remains that the degree to which deterioration has invaded the communi- ties specially in the writer's mind, particularly the degree to which ‘the prophet’ is already dis- credited, —not to speak of the greater relative
rominence of the local ‘pastors’ and ‘elders,’— that all this implies a state of things at least as late in the developmentof the Syrian or Palestiniant Churches as what meets us in the Didache. Surely such a picture of defection from the ‘love and purity’ of Messiah’s ‘Twelve Apostles’ presents a wide contrast to the life among Christians as con- templated by the compiler of the Didache, and tells somewhat against a later date. In particular, the absence of explicit warning against possible faults in the local leaders, like those of the ‘ elders’ and ‘ shepherds’ cited above, deserves notice. In- stead of this, the only hint of actual faults within the brotherhood is the injunction to ‘reprove one another, not in wrath, but in peace,’ and to visit with temporary spiritual ostracism the brother who offends against his fellow (xv. 3). In any case the attitude and mode of thought evidenced in the Ascension, in its reference to ‘the preaching of his Twelve Apostles’ as the norm of faith and conduct, to which Christians in the last days were like to prove unfaithful, furnishes a close parallel to the idea of the ‘Teaching of the Lord, through the Twelve Apostles, to the Gentiles.’ Thus it is natural to regard these two writings as almost contemporary attempts to extend. the influence of the traditions going back to ‘the Twelve Apostles.’ Only, the author of the Didache did not see such difficulties in the way as were patent to the eye of the apocalyptist, writing further, perhaps, from
* So the Ethiopic, the Greek here being lost.
+ There was probably enough common consciousness through- out the regions in question to warrant the argument as stated in the text.
EXTRA VOL.—29
the original centres of Apostolic activity, yet seem- ingly before A.D. 100. Accordingly, as to date, it seems best to say with confidence,* ‘ before rather than after A.D. 100,’ and with diffidence, ‘A.D. 80- 90 is the most likely decade known to us.’
The following weighty passage from Dr. C. Taylor’s Teaching of eee Apostles, p. 118, deserves quotation on several grounds :—