Decypher

This is something from an old thread. I was given an "Old Thread Warning" that, "It is preferable that you start a new thread and just link to this old one".

So here is the link:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=252952&page=2



From the sources I have seen, early Christians (and we have evidence going right back to the first/second century) understood the kind of language in the Olivet Discourse, in the Matthew 24:30-31 section, to be speaking of a still future "2nd Advent".

There is a connection with Daniel 7:13, and that itself was understood by early Christians to speak of the 2nd Advent.

The way the NT uses the Hebrew Bible, Mark himself may well be using Daniel references to mean something, "quite different from what they meant in their original context".

There is a suggestion made by partial preterists that people today have misunderstood the kind of Hebrew apocalyptic language used in the Olivet Discourse. But the thing is, is that the early Christian sources seem to be on the side of the Olivet Discourse speaking of the 2nd Advent.

Preterism itself, and I'm thinking specifically of the claim that Matthew 24:30 was fulfilled in the first century, looks to me like possibly a modern invention. I know the claim goes back (at least) to the 17th century. But that is still relatively modern. If anyone knows any older sources than that, I'm interested to see them.

Well OK, but if we look at the gospels themselves, does such a view make the most sense?

What preterists claim, is that the gospel gets "preached in all the world". And then what happens after? Then the gospel just gets preached again...

No doubt the preterist can come up with some sort of justification, but it looks strange to me...

Decypher

Also, with regard to the last point...



I believe context (what I take to be connected material) is against such an interpretation. For example:

It seems to be talking about angels and a judgement. It doesn't look like "messengers" spreading the gospel message.

John Kesler

You seem to enjoy discussing preterism, since you were highly involved in another old thread, from 2006. As I said in that thread, ask preterists to explain exactly when and how Zechariah 14 was fulfilled without just asserting that it is "apocalyptic language" or figurative. It can't be talking about Jerusalem in 70 AD, since the Jews were defeated in that conflict, while Zech. 14 speaks of a battle in which "all the nations" would come against Jerusalem, but eventually be defeated when Yahweh strikes them with a plague (v:12).

judge

Zechariah 14 starts with the Lord coming with the nations against Jerusaem (or os it seems).
Zecahriah 14:3 is ambiguous in the Hebrew. It has the Lord fighting with the nations. But, is this with, as in alongside or with as in against?
We have two reasons to think it is alongside the nations against Jerusalem.

1. The LXX translates it as alongside rather than against IIUC.

2.Verse 14:5 has the jews themselves fleeing, not the nations.


After the nations defeat Jerusalem (with the Lords help), then yaweh strikes them with a plague, although some do survive, and everyone worships in Jerusalem after this. (that how it seems to read to me, but it's not the easiest passage to get my head around so I could be wrong)

Note too that, the the idea of the Lord fighting alongside the nations against jerusalem is found in other places in the hebrew prophets. Just read Joel for example.

jgreen44

A few problems with Preterism....

Unless Zechariah is talking about a different apocalypse than AD 70 he seems to be saying that one third of the population in AD 70 would actually experience (be "in") and "brought through the fire" and destruction. This one third would then recognize Jesus as the Messiah ("the one they have pierced") by "calling on His name" (Zech 13:9 & Matth23:39)

It sure seems to me that Zechariah and Matthew are describing the same event. Would I be correct in assuming that Preterists, therefore, must believe that in AD 70 one third of the population of Israel or Jerusalem repented?
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Zecharaiah 14:16
Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

Isaiah 66:21 specifically differentiates "priests" from "Levites" meaning the author specifically meant to say "Levites", not just priests or ministers in the generic sense. Similarly, if the Jews completely miss out on any reward from God in the New Earth why does God, in Zechariah 14:16, promise that in the New Heavens and the New Earth a distinctly Jewish holiday, the Feast of the Tabernacles, will take place every year?
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Zechariah 14:3
Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations (that attacked Jerusalem), as he fights in the day of battle.

When did the Lord "fight against" and vanquish the Roman Empire and her allies? The empire, in some sense, actually lives on in the form of the Catholic Church.

Verse 13 goes on to say that "On that day men will be stricken by the LORD with great panic." When is a day not a day? When is a battle not battle? When does the Bible not say what it means? When does all of this allegorical/symbolic interpretation begin to strain perspicuity?

Solo

Anyone here remembers Julian Jaynes' The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of Bicameral Mind ? It always seemed to me he had it ass-backwards. If the Hebrew prophets were just like everyone else, listening to voices, and seeing things that weren't there, and foreseeing future because their corpus callossum was not yet "quaranteneng" properly the chants of the gods in dreams from the voices of real folks during business hours, how - based on what - would anyone get anything done ? The point is they wouldn't. But, if - as I think - the normal waking consciousness developped and dominated the actions of humans from well beyond paleolitic times and it was breaking down in some people periodically into the bicameral model, then naturally then it explains a lot more. Look and compare the behaviour of primates with ours - they are compos mentis most of the times, like we are ...

So, while I agree with Jaynes (whom I met personally, and corresponded with) that the OT prophets were likely challenged in bouts of paraphrenia or manic ecstasy, they needed to demonstrate to the community their mental fitness to be approachable. So when these men - who as a group would be smart - came to their normal self, it would be seen by those who believed their psychoses were the sign of their election by God and their scarry exterior during or after the summit with YHWH a proof of it. (Ex 34:30, Hsa 9:7)

Those in the community with the experience of transient psychoses, would naturally be curious about the meaning of the bizzare intensity, hallucinations and the torrents of visionary ideas in their head which visited them and then left them. They would interpret the events with the tools they had - as a prophetic faculty given them by God to guide Israel.

The suggestion that some people can "see" the future is ubiquitous in all cultures. The reason ? Someone - many people - in every culture claimed it. Yet no one can document this faculty, for the simple reason, that the origin of this "foreseeing" prowess originates from a cognitive disorder during psycho incidents in which events that are in the past are presented by the brain as future events. I believe all people will experience at one time or another a mild form of this phenom : a 'deja-vu'. Now imagine yourself with ever changing deja-vu scenarios that play themselves out for hours in an episode that stratches for weeks and months. There is yet another challenge during psychoses, something called the experience of the 'decease of time'. It is a pronounced feeling that all one's life has happened at the same time - in infinity. One cannot allocate time frames associated with events and ideas into present, past and future. In the psychotic paralogic, there is no difference between events and ideas, wishes or fears are automatically their fulfilment. At some pointy during an episode, this sensing of eternity will normally trigger large doses of adrenalin which the disordered brain releases to "fight" whatever it is that attacks its integrity. When this happens, the psychotic may very well defecate into his bread dough believing this is the way to placate God (one's disordered brain) to relent and release him from the torment. It will be later remembered by the prophet calm and thoughtful, interpreting the bizzare compulsion as God's punishment of the whole of Israel for its sins by making it eat bread with fearfulness.

So, it is not at all surprising to find God fighting on both sides. It's just another version of his schizo ways, when he e.g. sends Moses to Pharaoh and then tries to kill him as Mo executes the command, or when he punishes Egypt by waves of pestilence for Pharaoh's refusal to let his slaves go after he 'hardened his heart'.

Best,
Jiri

jgreen44

"Plato concluded that the fleeting world of daily experience is only half real, an ephemeral reflection of a timeless domain of pure and perfect Forms, which occupy the realm of eternity. Time itself is but an imperfect 'moving image of Eternity which remains forever at one,' but which we human beings incorrigibly reify: 'The past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence.'"

About time: Einstein's unfinished revolution, By P. C. W. Davies (or via: amazon.co.uk)

judge

How can it be a modern invention?
Don't the earliest sources that we have, have Jesus who is supposed to return in the lifetime of the reader?
It is only later on that xtians begin to re-interpret Paul and the gospels to explain why it didnt happen.

We know that Mark and therefore Matthew were penned after 70 CE because they tell us about the jewish war of 66-70.
How could they have been written earlier?

And so look at the verses just before Matthew 24:30

Matthew, who is earlier than the xtian sources you refer to has verse 30 happening immediately after the jewish war of 66-70 CE.

Later xtians find this not to their liking, but not the earliest ones.

Our earliest xtian sources are Paul and the early gospels, not later bishops etc...

Decypher

That isn't the same thing as preterism.