234 G.K. BEALE Thus, 1 John 2,18-23 is developing Jesus’ prediction of “anti- christs ” and that of 2 Thessalonians about the “man of lawless- ness ”, both of which are based on Daniel’s earlier prediction. It is important to underscore that 1 John 2,18 says that his audience had “ heard ” about Antichrist’s coming, which apparently means that the audience was familiar with a circulating oral form of the expectations in the Synoptics and 2 Thessalonians. However, as noted earlier, we can speculate that even if the audience’s knowl- edge was based directly on a written form of the Synoptics and 2 Thessalonians, they would still have “heard” it, since letters were read aloud by a lector in the early churches and not read by each person (see Col 4,16 and 1 Thess 5,27, especially in the light of Rev 1,3), as was plausibly the case also with the gospels by the end of the first century. In this respect, similarly, note that the aorist of akoyw can refer to people having “heard” at some point ߥ in the past the reading of the written words of the Old Testament (Matt 5,21.27.33.38.43; Jn. 12,34 ; James 5,11; 1 John 2,7). We will now argue that 1 John 2,18 is also partly dependent on Daniel itself and not merely on the synoptic tradition and 2 Thes- salonians 2. 2. The Unique Lexical Parallel of 1 John’s “Last Hour” with That of Daniel’s Eschatological Hour Further analysis of 1 John 2,18 indicates that John, in fact, likely understands that the prophecy in Daniel and in Matthew 24 / 2 Thessa- lonians 2 was beginning to the fulfilled. This is most apparent through the introductory phrase in 2,18, “last hour”: “children, it is the last hour ; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour” 10. The only eschatological uses of “hour” (wra) in all of the Old ™ Testament occur in the Old Greek (= OG ; not Theodotion) of Daniel 8, 11, and 12 11. In every one of these occurrences in Daniel, The default English translation used in this essay is the NASB. 10 There is an eschatological use of wra in the apocryphal book of Sirach ™ 11 (18,20). This occurs in a broader context of proverbial statements and not in an overtly eschatological context like that of Daniel 8–12, and it also lacks the close connection to words for “last” or “end” that we will see are found in Daniel 8–12.