Eschatology in the Making: Mark, Matthew and the Didache (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, Series Number 97)

This study examines the changes and developments in three early Christian communities' expectations of Christ's return and the End of the World. Mark 13, Matthew 24 and 25 and Didache 16 are analyzed to find how early Christian expectations developed and how they were affected by the delay of Christ's return. The book questions the accepted models of change and offers new insights into the communities behind the Gospels of Mark and Matthew and behind the early Christian writing known as the Didache. If the expectations of the early church concerning the return of Christ and the end of the world were disappointed, the magnitude of the disappointment and the form in which it was expressed do not seem to fit with the expectations of modern scholars. This 1997 study questions both the idea that the delay of Christ's return - the parousia - was the primary factor shaping the development of eschatological expectation in the early church, and the linearity of the models used to understand the development of early Christian eschatology. Vicky Balabanski argues that Matthew's Gospel shows a more imminent expectation than Mark's, and that there were fluctuations in eschatological expectation caused by factors within these early communities and those of the Didache. She traces these fluctuations and offers some new interpretative keys to Mark 13, Matthew 24 and 25 and Didache 16, as well as some vivid and original historical reconstructions An Imminent End? Models For Understanding Eschatological Development In The First Century -- Matthew 25:1-13 As A Window On Eschatological Change -- Mark 13 : Eschatological Expectation And The Jewish War -- The Judean Flight Oracle (mark 13:14ff) And The Pella Flight Tradition -- Matthew 24 : Eschatological Expectation After The Jewish War -- Didache 16 As A Development In Christian Eschatology. Vicky Balabanski. Revision Of The Author's Thesis (doctoral)--university Of Melbourne, 1993. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 210-227) And Indexes. This 1997 study examines the changes and developments in three early Christian communities' expectations of Christ's return and the end of the world. Mark 13, Matthew 24 and 25 and Didache 16 are analysed to find how early Christian expectations developed and how they were affected by the delay of Christ's return. There are indications in the canon of the New Testament and in early extra-canonical sources that the delay of the parousia of Christ presented the early church with an eschatological and theological problem.