Question
I was reading some works that mention the problem of how the New Testament addresses the time of Christ's return. I basically understood their arguments, but I don't quite understand the meaning of the Greek words that appear in the text that I am sending to you. I tried Google Translate, but it doesn't work. Would it be possible to explain your opinion on the arguments presented about the parousia being expected in the first century, or to recommend a book addressing them please? I really appreciate you taking your time to help me, in case you have some time available. Thank you!
Quoted from Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament:
Usually, however, in order to remove the objectionableness of the words, an appeal is made to the fact that by means of an “ enallage personae ” or an ἀνακοίνωσις , something is often said of a collective body which, accurately taken, is only suited to a part. Then the sense would be: we Christians, namely, those of us who are alive at the commencement of the advent, i.e. the later generation of Christians who will survive the advent. But however often ἡμεῖς or ὙΜΕῖς is used in a communicative form, yet in this passage such an interpretation is impossible, because here ἩΜΕῖς ΟἹ ΖῶΝΤΕς Κ . Τ . Λ . , as a peculiar class of Christians , are placed in sharp distinction from κοιμηθέντες , as a second class. Accordingly, in order to obtain the sense assumed, the words would require to have been written: ὅτι ἡμῶν οἱ ζῶντες κ . τ . λ . οὐ μὴ φθάσονται τοὺς κοιμηθέντας , apart altogether from the fact that also in 1 Thessalonians 5:4 the possibility is expressed, that the day of the Lord might break in upon the presently existing Thessalonian church. Not less arbitrary is it, with Joachim Lange, to explain the words: “we who live in our posterity ,” for which an additional clause would be necessary. Or, with Turretin, Pelt, and others, to understand οἱ ζῶντες , οἱ περιλειπόμενοι in a hypothetical sense: we, provided we are then alive, provided we still remain. (So, in essentials, Hofmann: by those who are alive are meant those who had not already died.) For then, instead of ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες , οἱ περιλειπόμενοι , it would necessarily require ἩΜΕῖς ΖῶΝΤΕς , ΠΕΡΙΛΕΙΠΌΜΕΝΟΙ (without an article). The same also is valid against J. P. Lange ( Das apostol. Zeitalter , I., Braunschw. 1853, p. 113): “The words, ‘the living, the surviving,’ are for the purpose of making the contrast a variable one, whilst they condition and limit the ἡμεῖς in the sense: we, so many of us (!), who yet live and have survived; or (?) rather, we in so far as we temporarily represent the living and remaining, in contrast to our dead.” Lastly, the view of Hoelemann ( Die Stellung St. Pauli zu der Frage um die Zeit der Wiederkunft Christi , Leipz. 1858, p. 29) is not less refuted by the article before ζῶντες and ΠΕΡΙΛΕΙΠΌΜΕΝΟΙ : “The discourse, starting from the ἩΜΕῖς and rising more and more beyond this concrete beginning, by forming, with the next two notions οἱ ζῶντες , οἱ περιλειπόμενοι , always wider (!) and softer circles, strives to a generic (!) thought namely, to this, that Paul and the contemporary Thessalonians, while in the changing state of περιλείπεσθαι (being left behind), might be indeed personally taken away beforehand; although the opposite possibility, that they themselves might yet be the surviving generation, is included in the ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες with which the thought begins, and which always echoes through it.” Every unprejudiced person must, even from those dogmatic suppositions, recognise that Paul here includes himself, along with the Thessalonians, among those who will be alive at the advent of Christ. Certainly this can only have been a hope, only a subjective expectation on the part of the apostle;
Response
Hello,
You are reading a simple passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, where Paul is giving an evasive answer to the Thessalonians’ question about why some of them have died, when Paul had told them that the Second Coming—the Parousia—was coming soon. So they want to know when it will come. But Paul does not know when. That is why the passage is short, because he does not have anything to say about the timing question that everybody is still obsessed with.
Now you are reading a commentary on the passage by Meyer, who is filling it with Greek words that you don’t understand. So it looks to you that you might be missing some important arguments. But you are not. The first Greek word, ἀνακοίνωσις (anakoinōsis), is totally irrelevant to the passage and nobody needs to understand it. It is a term from rhetoric. Meyer is a scholar, but you don’t need to understand anything he says here to understand the passage.
So, in compensation for not being able to answer the timing question of the Parousia, Paul tells them that the dead will precede the living into their inheritance, because the special concern of the Thessalonians is for the salvation of their deceased loved ones; and this will comfort them. Then he goes on to repeat this and adds details about the Second Coming that the Thessalonians might have heard, but which bear repetition.
Then, for completeness, he returns to the living and reassures them of their reunion with their loved ones, together with the Lord, at the time of the Parousia. In verse 17 the Greek word is the rapture word (ἁρπάζω, harpazō: caught up), but it applies to the saved as they go to the final judgment at the Second Coming, not at an imaginary pretribulational Rapture.