Texts in Conversation
In Matthew, Jesus warns that his followers will face betrayal, hatred, and death, yet promises that those who endure to the end will be saved. 4 Ezra offers a similar apocalyptic vision, describing how people will have to endure trials to the very end.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 10:22
New Testament
19 Whenever they hand you over for trial, do not worry about how to speak or what to say, for what you should say will be given to you at that time. 20 For it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21 “Brother will hand over brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise against parents and have them put to death. 22 And you will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved! 23 Whenever they persecute you in one town, flee to another! I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
Date: 70–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
4 Ezra 6:25
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
22 Suddenly the sown places will appear unsown. The full storehouses will suddenly be found empty. 23 The trumpet will give a sound which when every man hears, they will suddenly be afraid. 24 At that time friends will make war against one another like enemies. The earth will stand in fear with those who dwell in it. The springs of the fountains will stand still, so that for three hours they won’t flow. 25 “It will be that whoever remains after all these things that I have told you of, he will be saved and will see my salvation, and the end of my world. 26 They will see the men who have been taken up, who have not tasted death from their birth. The heart of the inhabitants will be changed and turned into a different spirit.
Date: 70–132 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... A similar instance may occur in Didache 16:5 ... compare Matthew 24:13, Mark 13:13, Matthew 10:22. it can be argued that the parallel is not by itself very significant. The language is not unusual in such an eschatological context (compare Daniel 12:12; 4 Ezra 6:25), though the verbal agreement between these texts and the Didache is not as close as that between the Didache and Matthew/Mark. Whether the verse in Mark is part of Mark’s Vorlage is debatable. But whatever its origins, the parallel here provides another instance of the Didache showing verbal links with material which Matthew shares with Mark ..."
Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, eds., The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 115.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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