Posted by J.H. on March 16, 1999 at 08:48:45 {MWKQmDRkic4cM}:
In Reply to: *A Tale of Three ENDS posted by Three Different Ends on March 15, 1999 at 19:52:46:
: The following information demonstrates clearly that these terms do not refer to the same
things.
What is not clear is what you think your quotations actually show. Moreover, there is a difference between arguments and assertions, and an assetion does not necessarily carry more weight even if you quote somebody else making it. You totally ignored my arguments, which does not at all make them go away.
Sometimes I think linguists should lobby to have a warning printed on all dictionaries: "practicually useless unless you know at least a bit about the language."
It's not a coincidence that it is people like Barbour, Russell and Rutherford, who could not even parse the simplest sentence in the Biblical languages, who made such extensive -- if selective -- use of dictionaries and made their whole doctrinal superstruture rely solely on spurious and controversial translations of single words. If you read works by actual scholars you will see that reasoning is based on actual evidence and arguments, and only rarely a few odd references to standard dictionaries (and while you can work on a Master level without a background in the relevant language(s), a PhD level thesis actually requires that you indeed know the language).
It's no surprise to find Vine's Dictionary among your references. It is popular among evangelicals as well, mostly because it's cheap (free in electronic form). It's not because it's particularly good. Vine stands (stood) as a one-person minority among Greek scholars in maintaining that there is a distinction between the coming and the parousia. It's not hard to see why. Vine's was from childhood member of the denominations that invented the two stage coming doctrine in the 1800s, before Barbour and thereafter Russell adopted it as a convenient excuse for the 1874 failure. So, being a strong believer in these doctrines, he just refused to allow himself to be updated to account for the massive evidence unearthed in the last part of the 19th century, when scholars for the first time could investigate extra-Biblical, secular texts written in the same language as the New Testament. This evidence demonstrated why all the Bible translators of the first few centuries, when Greek was still a living language -- choose words for "coming" not "presence" when the NT was rendered in Latin, Syriac and Copthic and Gothic.
Below this mesaage you will find a quotation from Appendix B of C. O. Jonsson's Sign of the Last Days - When? (p. 259, 260), which deals extensively with this question. I suggest you read this book for a thorough and complete discussion about parousia.
Robertson and Barnes are partly contradicting your own view, and they are partly busy explaining away the fact that Jesus in the synoptic apocalypse predicted that his coming would be immediately after the siege on Jerusalem, and that it would occur while the immediate audience of Jesus were still alive, in the 1st century. The two-fulfillment hypothesis is a theological necessity, it has nothing to do with what the actual text in the gospels says. And it has no relevance for a discusion of the secret coming/two-stage coming doctrine of the JWs, that both these men reject as far as I remember.
: It is also clear that NWT rendering of the cited verses is not unique.
Not literally unique, but no respected modern translation of the NT translates parousia with "presence", and the reason is that the evidence is against this rendering.
I avoided linguistic and grammatical arguments in my posting simply because people here are not competent to understand or form such arguments. I posted one very clear and definite argument showing that the disciples could not possibly mean "presence" as in two-stage coming. I did not see you address this argument, and since it is alone suffienct to blow away your whole argument, you should have.
Neither did you explain how Jesus could be with his disciples only until the synteleia if this occurs before the actual coming.
Ignoring inconvenient arguments is not a good debating technique.
Below follows some paragraphs from C. O. Jonnson's appendix about the parousia.
PAROUSIA . . . denotes both an arrival and a consequent presence
with.... When used of the return of Christ, it signifies not mereb his
momentary coming for His saints, but His presence with them from that
moment until His revelation and manifestation to the world.
This description of the
parousia sounds very much like that of the
Watch Tower Society. It is no surprise, therefore, to find that Vine's
definition of the word is quoted at length on page 1335 of the Society's
Bible dictionary Aid to Bible
Understanding. It may be a surprise to
some, however, to learn that Vine was one of the most assiduous ad-
vocates of the "secret rapture" doctrine in our century. This apparently
caused him to define the word parousia in a way
that supported his
theological views. However, this only served to bring him into conflict
with the results of modern scholarship.
As noted earlier, the "secret rapture" idea found its most zealous
champions among the
followers of John Nelson Darby, called the
Brethren. In 1847 a schism between Darby and George Muller, the
leader of a group of Brethren in Bristol, England, split the movement
in two: the Exclusive Brethren, headed by Darby, and
the Open Breth-
260
ren, who sided with Muller. Although Muller himself rejected the "se-
cret rapture" concept, the Open Brethren movement stuck to the idea
and continued to preach it. W. E. Vine, who was born in 1873,
was
associated with the Open Brethren and seems to have been that from
his youth. He was a great scholar, and his Dictionary is invaluable as
a handbook to the study of the New Testament. His definition of the
word parousia,
however, was clearly influenced by his adherence to
the "secret rapture" doctrine, a doctrine that may have been dear to
him since his early days. He defended it in several works written in
collaboration with a fellow-believer,
Mr. C. F. Hogg, such as The
Epistles of Paul and the Apostle to the Thessalonians ( 1914), Touch-
ing the Coming of the Lord (1919), and The Church and the Tribula-
tion (1938). The last-mentioned book was published as a reply to
Rev.
Alexander Reese's broadside against the "secret rapture" idea, The
Approaching Advent of Christ, published in the previous year (1937).
The well-known exegete and Bible commentator, Professor F. F.
Bruce, although of the
same religious background as Dr. Vine, gives
the following critical comments on Vine and Hogg's use of the word
parousia in their eschatological system:
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Touching the Coming was
their
treatment of the word parousfa. They insisted on the primary sense of
'presence' and understood the word in its eschatological use to mean the
presence of Christ with His raptured Church in the interval preceding
His
manifestation in glory....
It may be questioned whether this interpretation of parousia does ade-
quate justice to the sense which the word has in Hellenistic Gmk. The
writers did, indeed, appeal in support of their view
to Cremer's lexicon;
but Cremer wrote a good while before the study of vernacular papyri
revolutionized our knowlege of the common Hellenistic speech.'6
The Watch Tower Society's reference to Dr. Vine's definition of
parousia,
then, does not carry great weight. At a closer look it proves
to be essentially as obsolete as their other references.