Non-scholar wrote:
: Your choice of Josephus for establishing the meaning of parousia in the 1st century
You demonstrate an ineluctable inability to understand the English language. I neither stated nor implied that my above post meant to establish "the meaning of parousia in the 1st century". Indeed, in my first post on this thread I explicitly stated that parousia has at least three shades of meaning:
Parousia can mean "presence", "coming" and "arrival with subsequent presence". The difference in focus can be subtle, and it's not always possible to determine, even from context, precisely what the writer means. Sometimes it seems that the distinctions are not particularly important.
In my exposition on the BGREEK list, quoted above by Leolaia, I clearly stated:
From the comments made on this forum so far, it is evident that "parousia" is not perfectly translated by one English word, for it has connotations that combine features of "coming," "advent" and "presence." Each of these words has features of the others, since an "advent" necessarily entails a subsequent presence, and a "presence" necessarily entails an advent. The question of the precise meaning of "parousia," therefore, as Israel Warren pointed out, is more a matter of emphasis on which feature of "parousia" is the more prominent. Various lexicons I've studied indicate an evolution in meaning, so that by the time of Christ "parousia" did not have the exact same meaning as it did in classical Greek.
While "parousia" primarily means "presence" (literally, "being alongside") or "appearing," from ancient Greek times it has also had the meaning of "arrival," "occasion" and "visitation by a high official," as well as others. Furthermore, it is well established today that at the time of Christ it was used in a special technical sense. Most early Greek-Latin translators, for whom both languages were living, used the Latin adventus ("advent" or "coming"). The translators for the Syriac Peshitta used a similar term. Nearly all Bible translators today use "coming," "advent," "arrival" or similar terms, despite the fact the primary meaning is "presence," because of relatively recent discoveries in Egypt.
I also discussed the technical use of parousia as "visit of a ruler".
Therefore my use of Josephus in my above post was obviously to establish that Josephus used parousia in the sense of "arrival" with no hint of focus on the shade of meaning "presence". This was to prove that the Watchtower Society's claims that parousia has only the meanings "presence" or "presence extending from the arrival onward" are false, and that they knowingly make these false claims. In particular, in the August 15, 1996 Watchtower article that I referred to, the writer stated (p. 11), "Pointedly, parousia means 'presence.'" Then he discussed Vine's definition (but see Hillary_Step's post on page one of this thread), and concluded by stating:
Hence, it is not just the moment of arrival, but a presence extending from the arrival onward. Interestingly, that is how Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of the apostles, used parousia.*
The footnote '*' at the bottom of the page gave five examples from Josephus' works to back up this claim. But Josephus actually used the term parousia 32 times, and it's only in those five examples (which the Watchtower author carefully culled from these works) where the focus of parousia is exclusively on presence, which is easy to see from the context. I won't quote those passages here but will leave that for further discussion, since it's not relevant to the point I'm making here. The point is that in the other 27 times Josephus used parousia, he used it with the shades of meaning "arrival with subsequent presence" and "arrival" only. But the Watchtower author deliberately omits the latter meaning from consideration, and so he has lied to his audience by omitting relevant information. Furthermore, his focus is on showing that the primary meaning of parousia is exclusively "presence" (hence his opening statement "pointedly, parousia means 'presence.'"). Finally, this misrepresentation is quite in line with that found in the Society's official doctrine as discussed in appendix 5B ("Christ's Presence (Parousia)) in the 1984 New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures With References, and in appendix 3B ("Christ's Presence (Parousia)) of the 1985 Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures.
The point is that when an author deliberately omits relevant information that could lead his readers to a conclusion different from the one he wants them to make, he has lied to them. Therefore, by deliberate omission, the Watchtower Society has lied to its readers.
Words often have several meanings. For example, "metal" has several. But the basic dictionary definition is: "any of various opaque, fusible, ductile, and typically lustrous substances that are good conductors of electricity and heat..." I can picture in my mind a typically simpleminded Watchtower writer, having looked up the dictionary definition, and struggling to understand the following true statements:
My body is made mostly of metal.
I hate listening to metal.
It's that rote mentality, along with the Watchtower's Pharisaic traditions, that prevent Jehovah's Witnesses from knowing the facts about what parousia means.
: is at variance with the meagre discussion of his material in Kittel's TDNT, Vol.5, pp.864-5.
Not so. You obviously don't understand that material in Kittel's TDNT, so I'll clue you in. But first I must show how this reference defines parousia and the related word pareimi. Along the way I'll show how the Watchtower Society misrepresents what TDNT says. Beginning on pages 859-861 (Note that in some cases I've expanded TDNT's abbreviations so that the flow isn't interrupted by ugly stuff like "tt. [technical term]"):
A. The General Meaning.
1. Presence.
pareimi, "to be present," is used of person (Jn. 11:28) and also of impersonal things, e.g., evil in Prv. 1:27; ta paronta, "possessions," Hb. 13:5 (cf. 2 Pt. 1:8 vl.). parousia denotes esp[ecially] active presence, e.g., in legal documents. . .
No problem here, since everyone agrees that this is one definition of parousia. However, in appendix 5B of the NWT with References (pp. 1576-7), the Society states:
Liddell and Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon (LS), p. 1343, gives as the first definition of parousia the English word presence. Likewise TDNT, Vol. V, p. 859, states under the subheading "The General Meaning": "parousia [parousia] denotes esp[ecially] active presence."
If that were the only definition that TDNT gave, then there would be no problem. But TDNT immediately gave the second of the two general meanings (p. 859):
2. Appearing.
pareimi, "to have come," 1 Macc. 12:42, vl. 45; 2 Macc. 3:9; Mt. 26:50; Ac 10:21; 17:6 or "to come," Lk. 13:1. parousia, "arrival," Thuc., I, 128,5: te protera parousia, "during the first 'invasion'"; so also 2 Macc. 8:12. Of the arrival of Titus (2 C. 7:6 f.) or Paul himself (Phil. 1:26). . .
Once again we have a case where the Watchtower deliberately lied by omission.
TDNT goes on with more definitions (p. 859):
B. The Technical Use of the Terms.
I. In Hellenism.
1. The Visit of a Ruler. . .
2. The Parousia of the Gods. . .
3. The Sacral Meaning of the Word in Philosophy. . . In [Iamblichus' De Mysteriis; ca. 325 C.E.] the word is common and always sacral, cf. V, 21 of the invisible "presence" of the gods at sacrifices, or III, 11 in spontaneous ecstasy; cf. also III, 6 of the parousia of divine fire. V, 21 reminds us vaguely of descriptions of the parousia in the NT: before the parousia (coming) of the gods when they wish to visit the earth, all subject powers are set in motion and precede and accompany them. . .
On to page 864:
2. Hellenistic Judaism.
a. Greek Translations of the Bible.
pareimi occurs in the LXX, in Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, over 70 times, mostly for [the Hebrew bwo'; "come in, come, go in, go" (BDB p. 97)], also [for various other Hebrew words]. It thus means "to come," and this affects parousia accordingly. The context sometimes gives it numinous overtones (-> 861, 9 ff.), though it is never technical. parousia occurs only in works originally written in Greek: Jdt. 10:18; 2 Macc. 8:12; 15:21; 3 Macc. 3:17, always in a profane sense. But the very occurrence of the word is significant. Hellenistic Judaism took it from its environment. That it also found its way into religious usage may be seen from [Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs XII, a 1st or 2nd century Jewish/Christian work] (-> 863, 4 f.). The technical sense does not seem to have been normative at first. But one may assume that it soon exerted an influence. . .
c. Josephus.
Josephus uses the verb for God's presence to help, parousia being the Shekinah, Antiquities, 3, 80 and 202. Elisha asked God to display His sunamis and parousia to his servant, 4 Bas. 6:17; Antiquities, 9, 55. God also revealed it to the pagan governor Petronius, Antiquities, 18, 284. . .
The above quotations from TDNT show the overall thoughts of the writers with regard to parousia and pareimi. With that in mind, TDNT goes on to the technical use of the terms in the New Testament:
IV. The Technical Use of pareimi and parousia in the NT.
1. The Historical Place of the Concept of the Parousia in the NT.
Primitive Christianity waits for the Jesus who has come already as the One who is still to come. The hope of an imminent coming of the exalted Lord in Messianic glory is, however, so much to the fore that in the NT the terms are never used for the coming of Christ in the flesh, and parousia never has the sense of return. The idea of more than one parousia is first found only in the later Church, -> 871, 1 ff. A basic prerequisite for understanding the world of thought of primitive Christianity is that we should fully free ourselves from this notion, which, so far as the NT is concerned, is suspect both philologically and materially.
In the NT generally pareimai is not a technical term. Only in certain passages does it take on the familiar (-> 861, 9 ff.; 864, 22 f.) numinous quality, though now with reference to Christian data, so more or less in Jn. 11:28; 1 C. 5:3; 2 C. 13:10 with a personal subject, Jn. 7:6: Col. 1:6; Hb. 12:11; 2 Pt. 1:12 with a non-personal. Hence in what follows our concern will be only with the noun.
parousia as a technical term for the "coming" of Christ in Messianic glory seems to have made its way into primitive Christianity with Paul. The older designation hemera tou kuriou or the like (-> II, 945, 1-947, 3; 951, 6-953, 5) occurs in the Synoptists and Jn., and is also used a dozen times or so in Paul as compared with 7-8 instances of parousia (1 C. 1:8 vl.; 15:23; 1 Th. 2:19; 3:13; 4;15; 5:23; 2 Th. 2;1; 2:8). In the Pastoral Epistles parousia is replaced by -> epiphaneia, which is even more influenced by Hellenism. In the Gospels we find it only in Mt., who has it 4 times in the apocalyptic discourse or its setting. Jn. has the word only at 1 Jn. 2:28, but we find it 3 times in the strongly Hellenising 2 Pt. (1:16; 3:4, 12) and twice in Jm. (5:7 f.). These data leave us in no doubt as to the historical place of the technical use of parousia in the NT. The term is Hellenistic. In essential content, however, it derives from the OT, Judaism, and primitive Christian thinking.
TDNT goes on (pp. 866-871) with a long discussion of "2. The Detailed Development of the Concept" of the parousia. Here are a few relevant statements:
So far as can be seen, the parousia concept is one of the original stones in the Synoptic tradition concerning Jesus. It is present in fully developed form in the parousia address in Mk. 13 and parallel [in Luke 21 and Matthew 24] ... [p. 866]
Neither Mark 13 nor Luke 21 contain the word parousia, but the parallels with the "parousia address" in Matthew 24 are obvious (see below for more comments on this). So it's obvious that TDNT is equating the imagery of the parousia in these accounts.
In the Pastoral Epistles the synonym -> epiphaneia is once used for the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, 2 Tm. 1:10; cf. 1 Tm. 3:16. This paves the way for a similar use of parousia and adventus later (-> 870, 35-871, 20). [p. 868]
So TDNT directly states that parousia, epiphaneia and the Latin adventus are synonyms with respect to Jesus' coming at the "end of the age".!
2 Peter meets doubt by reinterpretation. The message is not a fable, . . . The day will come like a thief. Believers should hasten towards the parousia tes tou theou (vl. kuriou) hemeras, 3:12. In the first instance parousia has here the general sense of "coming" or "arrival," but there is a suggestion of the technical meaning too. [p. 869]
Given what TDNT actually says, in context, next note how the Watchtower Society treats TDNT's statements, again in the NWT with References, appendix 5B (p. 1577):
The word parousia, "presence," is different from the Greek word eleusis, "coming," which occurs once in the Greek text, in Ac 7:52, as eleuseos (Lat., adventu). The words parousia and eleusis are not used interchangeably. TDNT, Vol. V, p. 865, noted that "the terms [pareimi and parousia] are never used for the coming of Christ in the flesh, and parousia never has the sense of return. The idea of more than one parousia is first found only in the later Church [not before Justine, second century C.E.] . . . A basic prerequisite for understanding the world of thought of primitive Christianity is that we should fully free ourselves from this notion [of more than one parousia]."
But because TDNT directly states that parousia means "coming", the Society's use of this passage is meaningless and completely out of context, because it goes directly against what TDNT actually said. So this is yet another example of Watchtower misrepresentation of scholarly sources, and of the Society's lying to its readers.
So, given all of the above, non-scholar, your claim that my use of Josephus "is at variance with the meagre discussion of his material in Kittel's TDNT, Vol.5, pp.864-5" is nothing but another instance of your usual blowing of smoke to obscure the facts. Assuming you're not deliberately lying -- as you might easily have learned from your Brooklyn masters -- you show that you simply have no command of the scholarly literature, and very little of the English language. It's obvious that your highly self-touted degrees have not taught you how to think properly.
Now let's examine the rest of your statements:
: Clearly, This term in Josephus can be translated in various ways,
Precisely what I've said all along.
: all that you have done is selected those texts that show arrival rather than presence.
Correct, but with the specific goal of using those texts to prove that the Watchtower's omission of such texts proves that it's deliberately misrepresenting both the ancient literature and modern scholarly commentary. My goal was deliberately limited to that point, and did not include material such as I've included above, nor which I will discuss later in this post and in future posts.
: You do not demonstrate completely how this term is used
Correct.
: and so arbitrary selection is irrelevant.
Not to my clearly stated goal -- which you either conveniently ignored, or simply didn't understand.
: What figures most importantly for Christians is how this word should be rendered in English for the 24 times it occurs in the NT.
Correct, and I will do that in subsequent discussions.
: Perhaps, as you make bold and fanciful claims about this term, you could indicate how parousia dhould be translated in each of those occurrences.
No problem.
: The Society's WT article on this subject contains no lies as you allege
I've demonstrated above that it most certainly does, and that the lies are by deliberate omission of crucial information.
: but simply presents the facts of lexicography that parousia means presence with its connotations of arrival and coming
No, it presents a mere subset of lexicography that omits crucial information, such as the full range of meanings presented in scholarly reference works like TDNT. It also misrepresents the way in which Josephus uses the word parousia, since he uses it in the three shades of meaning that I called out above, whereas the Society's examples only included the shade of meaning that was convenient for their goal of misrepresenting the facts.
: unless of course you intend to produce your own lexicon or Bible transaltion.
My discussion is entirely based on extant scholarly literature.
Now I'm going to present proof from the parallel passages in Mark 13, Luke 21 and Matthew 24 that parousia in Matthew 24:3 means "coming" rather than "presence". No one disputes that these passages are competely parallel. Let's start by examining the passages from Bible translations that properly render them, since the NWT introduces sectarian distortions. Jesus had told the disciples that the temple would be thrown down with not a stone left upon a stone, and they questioned him:
Mark 13:3, 4 (The New Jerusalem Bible): And while he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, facing the Temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew questioned him when they were by themselves, 'Tell us, when is this going to happen, and what sign will there be that it is all about to take place?'
Luke 21:7: (The New Jerusalem Bible): And they put to him this question, 'Master,' they said, 'when will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that it is about to take place?'
Note the bolded phrase "about to take place". This shows that the intent of the disciples was to obtain, not a sign that some "invisible presence" was taking place, but that the events they were asking about -- the destruction of the temple and the end of the Jewish age (cf. Matt. 23:37 - 24:3) -- were about to occur. This is perfectly in line with the parallel passage at Matthew 24:3 and helps us understand the meaning of parousia as used in the New Testament. The passage reads:
Matthew 24:3 (The New Jerusalem Bible): And while he was sitting on the Mount of Olives the disciples came and asked him when they were by themselves, 'Tell us, when is this going to happen, and what sign will there be of your coming and of the end of the world?'
So, in view of Mark 13:4 and Luke 21:7, we should understand the passage in Matthew 24:3 to mean, "what sign will there be that your coming and the end of the world are about to take place?" This entirely obviates any claimed necessity that the "coming" or parousia would be an invisible presence.
Now, I'm sure that non-scholar will attempt to argue that the above passages from The New Jerusalem Bible are mistranslations, but I'll now show that the renderings in The New World Translation are wrong and are not supported by any other Bible translations that I'm familiar with. In the NWT, we have:
Mark 13:4: Tell us, When will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are destined to come to a conclusion?
Luke 21:7: Teacher, when will these things actually be, and what will be the sign when these things are destined to occur?
Note that the NWT uses the phrase "are destined to" occur rather than "are about to" occur. The English verb "to destine" means "to decree beforehand" or "to predetermine", which carries no flavor of immediacy. But the Greek word melle ("may be about") almost always carries the notion of immediacy. For example, the NWT renders Revelation 10:6, 7 this way: "There will be no delay any longer; but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to blow his trumpet, the sacred secret of God according to the good news which he declared to his own slaves the prophets is indeed brought to a finish." It would be nonsensical to translate the phrase "when he is about to blow" as "when he is destined to blow", because it completely loses the sense of immediacy that the context demands. Furthermore, the fact that Jesus, as God's prophet, told the disciples what was going to occur was proof to them that it was "destined to occur".
So it is with the NWT's rendering of Mark 13:4 and Luke 21:7: The NWT's translator deliberately hid the sense of immediacy that the context demands by using "are destined" instead of "are about" to occur. The fact that this mistranslation is deliberate is proved by the way the Watchtower Society's The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures renders the original Greek. In the examples below, I've given the original NWT rendering, then the Greek transliteration, and then the KIT's literal rendering into English:
Mark 13:4:
Tell us, When will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are destined to come to a conclusion?
Eipon hemin pote tauta estai, kai ti to semeion hotan melle tauta sunteleisthai panta.
Say to-us when these-(things) will-be, and what the sign whenever may-be-about these-(things) to-be-concluded all.
Luke 21:7:
Teacher, when will these things actually be, and what will be the sign when these things are destined to occur?
Didaskale, pote oun tauta estai, kai ti to semeion hotan melle tauta ginesthai.
Teacher, when therefore these-(things) will-be, and what the sign whenever may-be-about these-(things) to-be-occurring?
The deliberate obfuscation by the NWT translators is obvious. The fact that the identical phrase for hotan melle ("whenever may-be-about") is properly rendered in Revelation 10:7 proves that the NWT translators knew exactly what they were doing when, for sectarian reasons, they mistranslated the phrase in Mark 13:4 and Luke 21:7. They simply wanted to give the community of Jehovah's Witnesses no reason to doubt their sectarian misrepresentation of the meaning of the word parousia.
I'm sure it will be entertaining for readers to see how non-scholar attempts to wiggle away from the proof that his precious Brooklyn masters have deliberately misrepresented the Word of God to the community of Jehovah's Witnesses.
AlanF
