245 THE OLD TESTAMENT BACKGROUND “ LAST HOUR ” OF THE heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world”). Thus, though the Antichrist has not yet come in his incarnate form into the midst of national Israel’s covenant community prophesied by Daniel, his “spirit” is here inspiring his false teachers in antithetical parallelism to the work of Christ’s Spirit working in his true people. Likewise, the persecution that Daniel prophesied would come through the end-time opponent has not apparently begun in the community to which 1 John is directed. But these lack of corre- spondences with the full scope of Daniel’s prophecy of the eschat- ological enemy do not indicate that Daniel is not in mind but that only part of his prophecy has begun to be fulfilled. In this respect, likewise, the Danielic eschatological discourse in Matthew 24 makes only one mention of persecution (Matt 24,9), and 2 Thess 2,1-17 makes no mention at all of persecution but only of deception and apostasy (though cf. 2 Thess 1,4-6), while making clear refer- ence to Daniel’s end-time foe. A New Testament writer can make allusion to an Old Testament context without referring to all the parts of that Old Testament context, even when inaugurated fulfill- ment may not be the explanation for omitting some of those parts. Consequently, the prophecy of the Antichrist has begun fulfill- ment in that his “spirit” has begun to come and inspire his false teachers to do their deceiving work. The prophecy has begun literally also in the sense that the prophesied deceptive teachers are working in the covenant community, as they were literally prophesied so to do (on which see, e.g., Dan 11,30-31.34 and Theod. of Dan 11,32.34). III. The Standard Criteria for Validating Allusions and the Application to 1 John 2,18 The contention of this essay is that the overall weight of the cu- mulative arguments points to the probability that the repeated ref- erence in 1 John 2,18 to “the last hour” derives from Daniel’s repeatedly prophesied eschatological hour. How does the evidence of our argument measure up to the now often-cited “tests” for the validity of OT echoes and allusions formulated by Richard B. Hays ? 26 R.B. HAYS, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT 26 1989) 29-32.