Steven Carr

This is an area where I am pretty ignorant.

What , for example, would the term 'Tartarus' have meant to Greek-speaking hearers (as the epistle would have been read out loud)

According to the all-seeing Wikipedia 'Virgil describes it in the Aeneid as a gigantic place, surrounded by the flaming river Phlegethon and triple walls to prevent sinners from escaping from it. It is guarded by a hydra with fifty black gaping jaws, which sits at a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamantine, a substance akin to diamond - so hard that nothing will cut through it.'

Is this true? And what caused the author of 2 Peter to hit upon the word 'Tartarus' as the most suitable for the message he was trying to convey?

Steven Carr

Wright says Colossians 3 and 1 John 3 'put it' as re-appear, although he gives no quotes.

Where do they 'put it'?

Gamera

No need to be coy, Steven. They say Jesus will "appear' in the future. The issue is whether the Greek word for "appear", phaino, like ours, includes "reappear" in its semantic field.

Are you so sure it doesn't? You seem to just assume the conclusion.


1 John 2:28 - And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

1 John 3:2 - Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Colossians 3:4 - When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

The issue is the semantic field of phaino in these verses. Are you sure it doesn't include "reappear." I think, given the future time of this appearance, and the clear sense that he's already been here, it is not a mistranlation to say the sense here is "reappear." (though I wouldn't push it since, I think the passages refer to the "manifestation" of Christ as Christ, and not as the earthly Jesus)

Minimalist

An obvious conflict-of-interest.

Gamera

These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked, rather than just assuming 2 Peter meant "hell" in the sense as we now use it, as the heirs of mediaeval iconography that accumulated around the term.

The answer I would give, taking into consideration the entirety of 2 Peter and the Christian scriptures and their core message, would be that 2 Peter meant that hell is a condition of the soul that is very unpleasant (because the lack of love is the worse thing possible), and that a way to express that externally, with images, is a place of torment. The author calls it later in the passage: "nether gloom of darkness." It is a metaphor for the loveless condition of their souls (which he articulates at length in the passage, citing greed and violence and anger as the keynote of the souls of men).

Much as we might say "Their marriage was a living hell," by which we designate a condition, a relationship, not a place.

Rick Sumner

If you think (as I suspect you do, though I'll gladly be corrected on this) that those who think it refers to the gospel narrative are making up a story around it any more or less than those (such as Doherty or yourself) who think it refers to a mythic event, you've missed the point.

If instead you mean it to suggest that both parties are simply reading it in the light of their preconceptions, then you're spot on.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

gurugeorge

Neither actually. I do think it originally had a sort of skeletal Jewish mythic (and probably vaguely proto-Gnostic) meaning (a "time inversion" of the Jewish Messiah from the future into the past, combined with a tint of dying/rising god - creating as a gestalt an entity still quite as mythic as the ordinary Jewish Messiah) which was invented or got in a vision by Cephas, James, etc., which was taken up by Paul with a slightly stronger proto-Gnostic tinge, and universalised, and, as it spread, had read into it all sorts of ever more elaborate meanings - further mythic meanings, proto-orthodox meanings, Gnostic meanings, further Jewish (scriptural) meanings, Hellenistic philosophical meanings, etc., etc., etc.

The "time inversion" component invited mythico-historical gap-filling ("well if he was in that past, what did he do, and where?" - note that this could be either a mythic-minded question or a literal-minded question, depending on taste), and the dying/rising component invited a more Mysteries-like kind of gap-filling.

To me this totally fits in with the variety we find in Christian writings as a whole. It also fits in with the W Bauer idea that Christianity as a movement was variegated right from the start, and proto-orthodoxy (a "hard" historicist type of gap-filling) was only one interpretation of that skeletal mythic idea among many.

hjalti

Let's not forget The Apocalypse of Peter, a very graphic description of a "condition of the soul that is very unpleasant (because the lack of love is the worse thing possible)", written about the same time as 2 Peter.
I this also a "metaphor for the loveless condition of their souls"?

DCHindley

In 1 John the form of the verb* is past tense and in Colossians it is in the future tense. I guess the idea is that taken together the future appearance will be a "re-appearance."

DCH

*FANEROW "make known, reveal, show; make evident or plain; pass. be revealed or made known; be evident or plain; appear, reveal oneself"

EarlDoherty

It would almost be difficult to believe if we didn’t see evidence of it right here on this forum. Comments from more than one of you provide the classic example of reading into the text what you want to see there—to the clear point of circularity. Gamera gave us the best example:

First of all, in what way does the English word “appear” contain within its “semantic field” the idea of “reappear”? If it did, we wouldn’t need the latter word. But even in the examples given above, where is the sense of “reappear”? Gamera has clearly set this up ahead of time, on no basis. In his final paragraph, he says on the one hand, that the verbs contain “the future time of this appearance” and then in the next breath, “the clear sense that he’s already been here.” If the time of the appearing is “given (as) the future” on what is the second thought based? Wishful thinking, as far as I can see. (NT scholars do this sort of thing all the time.) Where is the “clear sense” of already having been here in any of the three verses quoted above? The second quote is clearly referring to the appearing of God. (Originally, it was God who was expected to put in an appearance to restore Israel; that was who Isaiah declared the way should be “made straight” for (Isa. 40:3), before Messiah expectation became dominant. 1 John is obviously still preserving this sort of expectation--at least, in the stratum to which this verse belongs.) Has God already been here? Are we going to see him for the second time?

The epistles are full of statements expressing the hope, expectation and forecast that Christ will be coming: Phil. 3:20 (we expect our deliverer to come), 2 Thess. 1:7 (when our Lord J. C. is revealed from heaven…), 1 Peter 1:7 (when J. C. is revealed), and so on. Where is the sense of “reappearing” in any of these statements? It’s only there if you read the Gospel assumptions into them. Where are the statements claimed by Gamera: “There are plenty of references in the epistles to "waiting" for Jesus, which implies a reappearance.”? Only in his predisposed thinking, which will impose them on the text no matter what. He offers this analogy:

First of all, he gives us an analogy which already includes the knowledge that Joe has been to the house already and left. Right there, he’s begging the question. In setting it up, in order for us to understand the situation, he has to say “come back,” implying that in order to describe the situation the speaker has to use a verb which clearly contains that thought (which the epistolary examples do not). Then he says that “we’re waiting for Joe to appear before we start” contains the sense of “reappear.” Well, I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that 100 neutral people, if presented simply with a group saying nothing more than “we’re waiting for Joe to appear before we start” would unanimously make the assumption that he had not been there already. (If not, they must live in a different linguistically conceptual universe than I do.)

To compound the confusion, Gamera does not even have the right verb. The verb in all these instances is not phainw, it is phanerow, which is predominantly used to mean “be revealed/manifested,” which is hardly the normal way one would express the idea of “coming” or “coming back” in regard to a human life or a once-human returning in another form. When epistle writers use it of Christ in a past reference, and in the absence of any statement about an earthly life, we need to take its meaning as a revelation of Jesus the Son as a newly-revealed/manifested spiritual entity, not an incarnated god-man. And when using it in a future reference, the sense is of his “revelation” to us in a form in which we will be able to see him. (Would our hungry pizza anticipators say that “Joe was revealed to us when he first came to the house, then he left; now he will be manifested to us when he arrives with his pizzas accompanied by his angels in blazing fire…”?) In fact, some of those anticipatory references, like 2 Thes. 1:7 (which I just parodied) and 1 Peter 1:7, use the word (in noun and verb forms) apokaluptw/apokalupsis which is purely a “revelation” meaning. Even the verb phainw divides its time between the “reveal” meaning and the “appear” meaning, but in no cases of the latter is it used to mean a “reappearance”, just an “appearing” in a single context.

Here one must distinguish between an “appearance” which post-dates a presence which has already happened, and an “appearance” which is meant to refer to a second appearance. Thus if a post-resurrection scene says that Jesus “appeared” to his disciples in a locked room, this does not mean a second such “appearance” to his disciples, for this is the first time he has “appeared” to them. He was with them previously when he was alive, but that simply lies in the background because the story has told us so, not because the verb has to imply it. Nor would we say that in that previous state of being with them, that at that time he was “appearing” to them.

It’s telling that the one usage I located of Jesus “appearing” to his disciples a second time (John 21:1) is accompanied by the word “again” (palin, which is needed to make “appear” imply “reappear”. In 21:14, it becomes a multiple appearance because “for the third time” accompanies it. In both cases, John uses phanerow because it is an appearance with ‘magical’ miraculous overtones. It is the manifestation of a now divine entity. Which doesn’t prevent scholars in lexicons from identifying the past-tense epistolary references as being used to mean “the first Advent.”

Which brings us full circle to people reading into the texts things they want them to contain, or which they, as NT scholars, have been trained to so see them.

Postscript:

Well, yes, but the form of the verb in 1 John 3:2 which Wright was referring to may be a past tense, but it is used with a future meaning, not a past one. There is no implication that this usage of the verb has any past-time significance or reference, it’s simply a grammatical phenomenon to use the past tense in this sort of expression. It’s as though we put it: “We know that when he has appeared, we will be like him…” “Has appeared” is a past tense (the perfect), but that appearance is only to take place in the future. In English we would tend to say "When he appears, we will..." Appears is in the present tense but we mean a future appearing.

But at least he got the actual verb right: phanerow

Earl Doherty