Resurrection and Zechariah 14.5 in the Didache Apocalypse

1. Introduction

One of the most difficult passages among many in the Didache is 16.5: "Then the creation of human beings will come to the fire of testing, and many will fall away and be lost, but those who endure in their faith will be saved by the curse itself/himself." The usual way of explaining this "curse" () is to see it as referring to Jesus on the cross, so that it reads "will be saved by him who was accursed" in line with the Pauline understanding in Galatians 3.13 and I Corinthians 12.3.¹ An alternative, and rather unconvincing, interpretation was provided by J.-P. Audet, who understood here a reference to the grave.² In my doctoral thesis,³ I argued that the was the reference of this difficult phrase , so that what was a curse to the wicked was understood as salvific for the righteous. The fire would be purgative as in Malachi 3.2–4 and as in a number of Christian texts, especially Hermas, Vision IV.3,4 and I Peter 4.12.⁴ The question has been re-opened recently in two articles in Clayton Jefford's collection of essays on the Didache.⁵ Aaron Milavec⁶ has made a strong case for the same understanding. He argues with admirable clarity that the "burning process of testing" has a double reference:

According to the Didache, this "fire" will be experienced in two distinct ways: 1) those who follow the Way of Death (as defined in 5.1–2 and 16.3–4) will be entrapped and destroyed by God's judgment; and 2) those who follow the Way of Life (as defined in 1.2–4.14) faithfully to the end will be approved and saved by God's judgment.⁷

Nancy Pardee,⁸ in a helpful study in the same volume, argues against this interpretation. She explores the background to the development of the word from the word in Jewish literature. The original reference is to something "offered up" or "devoted," from the semantic field of the Hebrew word . It comes to have the negative sense then of a curse, a negative sense confirmed by the substitution of . Pardee acknowledges, however, that her study does not necessarily rule out my suggestion that the saving curse refers to persecution and suffering, simply maintaining that the context speaks against it.⁹

In this article, I wish to push this line of reasoning further and defend the reference of to purgatorial fire in its context, by a study of the understanding of resurrection in the Didache. Building on the work of George Nickelsburg, I believe that the background to the text is the theology of martyrdom which emerged from the Maccabean crisis.¹⁰ Resurrection is the recompense for the suffering righteous. So there is no general resurrection but only a resurrection of the righteous, those who have emerged unscathed from the fire of testing.¹¹ Likewise, the punishment of the wicked is not resurrection to eternal life of torment, but simply extinction.¹² It is in this general sense also that the Two Ways speak of Life and Death as the goals of the ethical life.¹³

John Pobee, in his study of persecution and martyrdom in Paul, has argued that the theology of martyrdom resolved the question of theodicy in four ways: firstly, it viewed suffering as punishment or chastisement for the sins of the martyr her/himself, a way of expiating her/his own sins and the sins of the nation.¹⁴ Thus, in b.Berakot 5a we read, "chastisements wipe out all a man's wickedness" or in II Maccabees 7.18, "For we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God. Therefore astounding things have happened."¹⁵ Again in II Maccabees 7.38:

I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our fathers, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by afflictions and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God...