Gehenna (4:114). Then, following an indeterminate period of rest for the still-living godly
who have execrated Beliar, along with the saints who have descended from heaven, they will
all leave their bodies and ascend into heaven (v. 17).
3.2. Epistle of Barnabas (ca. A.D. 70
130, see text at p. 39)
The work sets out to prove that even the Old Testament was never meant for Jews.
Using various tortured exegetical "proofs," sometimes based on gnosis-oriented interpretation,
"Barnabas" makes the entire Old Testament the Christian's book.
18
He combined the Jewish idea of a Sabbath rest, the Hellenistic notion of seven millennia
to arrive at a reign of Christ in the seventh millennia, and the Christian notion of an eighth
"day" as eternal life.
19
So some consider him a chiliast;
20
some think his schema has a seventh
millennium,
21
although not necessarily one that would have been understood literally;
22
and
others deny that he was a chiliast.
23
The real issue of whether Barnabas is a chiliast hinges on
whether we identify his seventh "day" (Barn. 15.5) with his eighth "day" (15.89), or see the
seventh as an interim period of rest before the eighth, as a natural reading would have it. It to
10
------------------------------------
18
E. D. d. Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity 4: Heresy and Christian
Doctrine (4 vols.; trans. A. H. Holmden; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1879) 6; quoted by
Gregory, "Chiliastic Hermeneutic," 16.
19
J. Daniélou, The Development of Christian Doctrine Before the Council of
Nicaea 1: The Theology of Jewish Christianity (trans. J. A. Baker; Chicago: Henry Regnery
Co., 1964) 3968.
20
J. Quasten, Patrology 1: The Beginning of Patristic Literature (Westminster, Md.:
Newman, 1949) 89; J. A. Kleist, The Didache the Epistle of Barnabas; The Epistles and the
Martyrdom of St. Polycarp; The Fragments of Papias; The Epistle to Diognetus (Ancient
Christian Writers 6; eds. J. Quasten and J. Plumpe; Mahwah, N.J.: Newman, 1948) 179.
21
W. Rordorf, Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest
Centuries of the Christian Church (Originally published as Der Sonntag: Geschichte des
Ruhe- und Gottesdiensttages im altesten Christentum (Zwingli Verlag, 1962); trans. A. A. K.
Graham; London: SCM, 1968) 934.
22
R. A. Kraft, The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary 3:
Barnabas and Didache (ed. R. M. Grant; New York: Nelson, 1965) 129.
23
E. Ferguson, "Was Barnabas a Chiliast? An Example of Hellenistic Number
Symbolism in Barnabas and Clement of Alexandria," Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays
in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (eds. D. L. Balch, E. Ferguson and W. A. Meeks;
Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1990) 15767; Kromminga, Millennium, 303.