Decypher

An interesting article on this question:

Matthew 24:34 -- What The Scholars Say
http://www.jcnot4me.com/Items/theolo...Mt%2024-34.htm



Sixteen Bible Commentaries: genea.

(1) ...verse 34 solemnly promises that Jesus will return while some of his contemporaries are still alive (a reprise of 16:28).... The gospel testimony provides strong support for this view: Jesus did not know all things.

(2) (This generation) can only with the greatest of difficulty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke.

(3) "This generation" clearly designates the contemporaries of Jesus.

(4) The statement in verse 34 is a difficult one. If generation is to be taken in this strict sense, then "all these things" must be limited to the events culminating in A.D. 70.... The majority of the best scholars today insist that generation be taken in its strictest sense.

(5) Jesus was quite certain that they would happen within the then living generation.

(6) [Matthew] probably believed, however, that the end could come before all of Jesus' hearers had died.

(7) Further, he [Jesus] insists that his words are infallible, and that they are more certain than the material universe itself....

(8) This verse recalls 16.28, and affirms that some of the disciples would live to see the Parousia. This would presuppose a relatively early date for the event.... Was Jesus in error in his prediction of the nearness of the end?

(9) In the Old Testament a generation was reckoned as forty years. This is the natural way to take verse 34.... He plainly stated in verse 34 that those events would take place in that generation.... One may, of course, accuse Jesus of hopeless confusion.... It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Jesus, as Man, expected the end within the lifetime of his contemporaries.

(10) The hard fact still remains that if Jesus spoke the sayings of St. Mark xiii and St. Matthew xxiv... he misjudged the extent of his own knowledge and uttered a definite prediction which was not fulfilled.

(11) The Synoptists fell into the contradiction... of making Jesus declare at one moment that He did not know the time of the glorious Advent, and at another that it would infallibly happen within that generation.

(12) The affirmation that "all these things" will happen in this generation is clear, and there is no reason to alter the meaning of the word generation from its usual sense except a fear that the Scriptures may be in error if it is not so altered.

(13) Indeed, the fulfillment will take place before this present generation has passed away.

(14) Did Jesus expect the end within the lifetime of those who heard him speak? It seems quite certain that the early church so understood him.

(15) Matthew made it clear that some of the first disciples would live to see the Parousia.

(16) ... v. 34; there are those now alive, who shall see Jerusalem destroyed.



Nine Christian Scholars & Authors: genea & Matthew 24:34.

(1) Rev. Chuck Smith: As a rule, a generation in the Bible lasts 40 years.

(2) Dr. David Friedrich Strauss: ...the word genea... was put to the torture....

(3) George Murry: If the saying relates to the parousia, it sets the end time within the bounds of the first generation church. The phrase "this generation" should cause no difficulty for interpreters... It always signifies his [Jesus'] contemporaries.

(4) Dr. Albert Schweitzer: And He [Jesus] was to come, moreover, within the lifetime of the generation to which He had proclaimed the nearness of the Kingdom of God.

(5) Gary DeMar: No future generation of Jews is meant here.

(6) Rev. Stuart Russell: Next, our Lord sums up with an affirmation calculated to remove every vestige of doubt or uncertainty, "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." One would reasonably suppose that after a note of time so clear and express there could not be room for controversy. Our Lord Himself has settled the question. Ninety-nine persons in every hundred would undoubtedly understand His words as meaning that the predicted catastrophe would fall within the lifetime of the existing generation. Not that all would live to witness it, but that most or many would. There can be no question that this would be the interpretation which the disciples would place upon the words.... His coming... would come to pass before the existing generation had wholly passed away, and within the limits of their own lifetime.

(7) Edward Gibbon: [Members of the primitive church] were obliged to expect the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man in the clouds before that generation was totally extinguished which had beheld his humble condition upon the earth.

(8) Rev. Milton Terry: The words immediately preceding them show the absurdity of applying them to another generation than that of the apostles: "When ye see these things coming to pass, know ye that he is nigh, even at the doors." The teaching of Jesus was emphatic beyond all rational question that that generation should not pass away before all those things of which they inquired should be fulfilled.

(9) Dr. William Lane Craig: Two generations past the time of Jesus lands you in the 2nd Century



Thirteen Scholars: The "Race" Argument.

(1) Douglas Hare: Some have argued, for example, that "this generation" refers not to Jesus' contemporaries but to the Jewish nation or to the church. The linguistic evidence in favor of such proposals is not impressive.

(2) Alan Hugh M'Neile: "This generation" cannot mean the Jews as a people, believers in Christ, or the future generation that will experience these things. It must be the particular generation of Jews to whom, or of whom, the words were spoken.... It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Jesus, as Man, expected the End within the lifetime of His contemporaries.

(3) Clifton Allen: The meaning of "this generation" is much disputed. Efforts like those of Jerome, to make it mean the Jewish race, or of Origen and Chrysostom, to refer it to all Christians, are arbitrary, and are to be rejected. "This generation" refers to the contemporaries of Jesus.

(4) Heinrich Meyer: Ver. 34. Declaration to the effect that all this is to take place before the generation then living should pass away. (It is) well-nigh absurd (the) manner in which it has been attempted to force into the word genea such meaning as: The Creation, The Human Race, The Jewish Nation, The Class of Men Consisting of My Believers, The Generation of the Elect Now in Question, The Future Generation Which is to Witness Those Events... (The Second Coming) is to occur during the lifetime of the generation then existing.

(5) R.T. France: (Genea) has been taken to mean The Jewish Race, or Unbelieving Judaism. It is unlikely that such an improbable meaning for the noun would have been suggested at all without the constraint of apologetic embarrassment...! Jesus was wrong.

(6) Floyd Filson: The end... will come within a generation. Attempts to translate genea as: Human Race, Jewish Race are misguided; the word refers to the generation living when Jesus spoke.

(7) P. Davids, F.F. Bruce, M. Brauch: This has been regarded as a hard saying.... Plainly the idea that the human race is meant cannot be entertained; every description of (the end of the world) implies that human beings will be around to witness it.... Nor is there much more to be said for the idea the Jewish race is meant; there is no hint anywhere in the New Testament that the Jewish race will cease to exist before the end of the world. In any case, what point would there be in such a vague prediction? It would be as much as to say, "At some time in the indefinite future all these things will take place." Jesus' hearers could have understood him to mean only that "all these things" would take place within their generation.... The phrase always means the generation now living.

(8) Bible Commentary: ...seems to require us here to translate the word genea as meaning "generation," not, as it is sometimes rendered, race or people. (Generation) is the usual meaning.

(9) Rev. Patrick Fairbairn: It has been maintained by some that... our Lord identified generation with the Jewish race.... But that is a very forced explanation; and not a single example can be produced of an entirely similar use of the word. Whatever difficulties may hang around the interpretation of that part of Christ's discourse, it is impossible to understand by "the generation that was not to pass away" anything but the existing race of men living at the time when the word was spoken.

(10) Bruce Chilton: Some have sought to get around the force of (Mt. 24:34) by saying that the word generation here really means race, and that Jesus was simply saying that the Jewish race would not die out until all these things took place. Is that true? I challenge you: Get out your concordance and look up every New Testament occurrence of the word generation, and see if it ever means "race" in any other context.... Not one of these references is speaking of the entire Jewish race over thousands of years; all use the word in its normal sense of the sum total of those living at the same time. It always refers to contemporaries. In fact, those who say it means "race" tend to acknowledge this fact, but explain that the word suddenly changes its meaning when Jesus uses it in Matthew 24! We can smile at such a transparent error ....

(11) Dr. Albert Schweitzer: These words (Mt. 24:34) must be strained into meaning, not that generation, but the Jewish people. Thus by exegetical art they are saved forever, for the Jewish race will never die out.

(12) Rev. Milton Terry: The various meanings which, under the pressure of a dogmatic (crisis), have been put upon the phrase "this generation" must appear in the highest degree absurd to an unbiased critic. It has been explained (away) as meaning: The Human Race [Jerome], The Jewish Race [Dorner], The Race of Christian Believers [Chrysostom].

(13) Rev. Stuart Russell: It has been contended by many that in (Mt 24:34) the word genea should be rendered "race" or "nation...." But we think... without any shadow of doubt that the expression "this generation" so often employed by our Lord, always refers solely and exclusively to His contemporaries, the Jewish people of His own period.




References for 16 Bible Commentaries: genea.

1) Matthew [Hare], 2) The Expositor's Bible Commentary, 3) Commentary on the Gospel of Mark [Wm Lane], 4) The Wesleyan Bible Commentary [Earle], 5) The Expositor's Greek Testament [Bruce], 6) The Interpreter's Bible, 7) The Gospel of Matthew [Robinson], 8) New Century Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, 9) Word Pictures in the New Testament [A.T. Robinson], 10) Primitive Christian Eschatology [Dewick], 11) The Eschatology of Jesus [Muirhead], 12) The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 13) The Interpreter's Bible [vol. 7], 14), The Interpreter's Bible [vol. 8], 15) Peake's Commentary, 16) The NIV Matthew Henry Commentary.


References for Nine Christian Scholars & Authors: genea & Matthew 24:34.

1) Future Survival, Chuck Smith, The Word for Today, Costa Mesa, CA 1978, page 17

2) The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, Dr. David Friedrich Strauss, Sigler Press, Ramsey, NJ 1994, page 587

3) Jesus and The Last Days, George Murray, Hendrickson Pub., Peabody, Mass. 1993, pages 443-444

4) The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Macmillian, NY, 1968, page 240

5) Last Days Madness, Gary DeMar, American Vision Inc., Atlanta, GA 1994, page 114

6) The Parousia, Stuart Russell, T. Fisher Unwin Pub., London, 1887, page 84

7) The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, Penguin Books, NY 1985, page 276

8) Apocalypse of The Gospels, Milton Terry, (1819), chapter 18 reprinted and its pages renumbered in 1992 by John Bray, PO Box 90129, Lakeland, FL 33804, pages 34 & 38

9) Dr. William Lane Craig lecture attended by Mark Smith, given at Hope Chapel, Hermosa Beach, CA, 1-11-99, statement @ 8:33 PM


References for 13 Scholars: The "Race" Argument.

1) Matthew, Douglas Hare, John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1993, p. 281

2) The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Alan Hugh M'Neile, Macmillan & Co., London 1949, p. 354-355

3) The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, Clifton Allen, ed., Broadman Press, Nashville, TN 1969, p. 221

4) Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book To The Gospel of Matthew, Heinrich Meyer (1883), Alpha Pub., Winona Lake, IN 1980, p. 426

5) The Gospel According to Matthew, R.T. France, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1985, p. 346

6) A Commentary on The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Floyd Filson, Adam & Charles Black Pub., London, 1960, p. 257

7) Hard Sayings of the Bible, W. Kaiser, P. Davids, F.F. Bruce, M. Brauch, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill, 1996, pp. 445-448

8) Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY 1901, p. 144

9) The Imperial Bible Dictionary, Vol. II, Rev. Patrick Fairbairn, Blackie & Son, London, 1885, p. 352

10) The Great Tribulation, David Chilton, Dominion Press, Ft. Worth, TX 1987, p. 3

11) The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Macmillian, NY, 1968, p. 22

12) Apocalypse of The Gospels, Milton Terry (1819), chapter 18 reprinted and its pages renumbered in 1992 by John Bray, PO Box 90129, Lakeland, FL 33804, p. 34

13) The Parousia, J. Stuart Russell, T. Fisher Unwin Pub., London, 1887, p. 85

Decypher

An article which considers this issue:

The Lowdown on God's Showdown
by Edward Babinski

http://home.freeuk.net/jesusmyth/showdown.htm


"One attempt to divert attention from the false predictions we have examined is to say that despite the plain language they used, the apostles could not have predicted Jesus' return was so near, because even the apostles knew that certain things had to happen before before Jesus returned, and surely the New Testament authors recognized that those things had not yet occurred in their lifetimes, or in the first century. Therefore, they could not have truly believed nor predicted that Jesus' return was imminent.' To which I would respond, 'Au contraire! Those things, according to the New Testament authors, had already occurred in their lifetimes. The Bible tells us so.' What 'things' had to occur before Christ could return?

1) The Gospel had to be preached to the 'whole world.' But Paul, and the author of Revelation, agreed that the gospel had already been preached to 'the whole world,' i.e., the Roman Empire, from Spain to Jerusalem. [6] Therefore nothing prevented Jesus from returning 'shortly':

Their voice [of first century Christian preachers] has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world...The revelation of the mystery...now is manifested and...According to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations. [Rom 10:18; 16:25-26]

And

...The gospel, which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing... ...The gospel...which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister. [Col 1:5-6,23]

2) The Anti-Christ must first be revealed. But Paul and the author of the Johannine letters taught:
The mystery of lawlessness is already at work...Pray...that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly... [2 Thes 2:7; 3:1]

And

The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining...The world is passing away ['This world, as it is now, will not last much longer' - Today's English Version], and also its lusts...It is the last hour [circa 100 A.D.]; and just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour. [1 John 2:17,18] [7]"

Decypher

Perhaps this is an argument against preterism, but it doesn't seem to be a legit argument against those that think Jesus a false prophet.

Decypher

I have seen Christians come out with various interpretations of Matthew 16:27-28. They say that the verses are about:

(1) The Transfiguration
(2) Pentecost
(3) The Ascension
(4) The Resurrection

They will make up anything rather than concede that they are about the second coming. Sometimes Christians will try and split the verses, saying that 16:27 is about the second coming, and that 16:28 is about something else!

Jane H

Look, I haven't the time to respond to all of these, so I'll do the three that I found hardest. I'm very conscious that, especially to a hostile audience, I've had to leave out a lot of argument along the way. Really I can't do justice to the Third Quest in a few lines. Read J.Dunn, E.P.Sanders or especially Tom Wright for more. I am not a preterist.

Zechariah 14- this is part of a theme in the OT which deals with the coming of the kingdom, and describes the defeat of the enemies of the kingdom. See also Daniel 7, Isaiah 52. Jesus stood firmly in that tradition; but with the radical twist, that the Kingdom was being redefined, and those who persisted in the Israel 1.0 praxis of Temple worship, adherence to dietary laws, Jewish nationalism etc were the enemies of God's kingdom. They were to be destroyed (AD 70). This would then be followed by a time in which the whole world would be called on to follow the worship of the new Israel. Jerusalem in this Zechariah context is to be taken as a cipher for the New Kingdom community; those who remained with the Old Israel were the enemies of this New Israel. Particularly interesting is the phrase "even Judah will fight at Jerusalem", which could be translated as "against Jerusalem", or "in Jerusalem". You need to understand how to read things written in Jewish Apocalyptic Form, instead of being hung up with word for word translation. Zechariah read this way fits pleasingly well with Jesus' message, and could almost be a pro-Xian passage.

1 Peter 4:7 The word for "end" is telos, which also means "goal". Here again, we need to be aware just how dramatic the AD70 events were in all senses, including religious and political, for those who lived in them. I cannot come up with any event in recent decades that comes close. Peter, again, is echoing the message that the most dramatic shift is about to occur, and the Judaeo-Christian world is about to embark on the next phase. In other words "Everything that's happened so far is about to reach a climax".

Matt 24- As Caird 1965/ Caird & Hurst 1994 pointed out, "Here, as in the book of Daniel...the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven was never conceived as a form of space travel, but as a symbol for a mighty reversal of fortunes within history and at the national level." Daniel 7 is the key here, and its that Jesus is referring to. The phrase "coming of the Son of Man" means there "the defeat of the enemies of the kingdom, and the vindication of the people of God", and that's what it means in Matthew 24. "Coming", "erchomenon", can be just as easily translated as "Going". This phrase is followed in Matthew by a description of the spread of the Gospel throughout the world. Remember, in Matt 24, Jesus is answering a question- when will the temple be destroyed? When Matthew wrote, they had just lived through the answer. Why would Matthew suddenly switch from an answer to a vitally topical question, without any indication, to answering a completely different question?

GenesisNemesis

"In the following portion of the letter which Paul writes to the Thessalonians he discusses those who remain alive in the present tense.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain* unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain* shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:15-18"

http://mmcclellan.tripod.com/comingagain.html

Sven

Yes, this is indeed a strange tendency among defenders of this passage: They spend much time on preterism, a position which no non-theistic skeptic adheres to. IIRC, Jason Gastrich also once did so in a formal debate here. :huh:

Decypher

I have one of E.P. Sanders books. Let me quote from it:


"The second of the problems mentioned above -- if Jesus expected God to change the world, he was wrong -- is by no means novel. It arose very early in Christianity. This is the most substantial issue in the earliest surviving Christian document, Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. There, we learn, Paul's converts were shaken by the fact that some members of the congregation had died; they expected the Lord to return while they were all still alive. Paul assured them that the (few) dead Christians would be raised so that they could participate in the coming kingdom along with those who were still alive when the Lord returned. The question of just how soon the great event would occur appears in other books of the New Testament. A saying in the synoptics (discussed more fully below) promises that 'some standing here' will still be alive when the Son of Man comes. In the appendix to the Gospel of John (ch. 21), however, Jesus is depicted as discussing an anonymous disciple, called 'the disciple whom Jesus loved', with Peter: 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?' The author then explains, 'So, the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"' (John 21.21-3).

The history of these adjustments to the view that God would do something dramatic while Jesus' contemporaries were still alive is fairly easy to reconstruct. Jesus originally said that the Son of Man would come in the immediate future, while his hearers were alive... Then, when people started dying, they [the followers of Jesus] said that some would still be alive. When almost the entire first generation was dead, they maintained that one disciple would still be alive. Then he died, and it became necessary to claim that Jesus had not actually promised even this one disciple that he would live to see the great day. By the time we reach one of the latest books of the New Testament, 2 Peter, the return of the Lord has been postponed even further: some people scoff and say, 'Where is the promise of his coming?' But remember, 'with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day' (2 Peter 3.3-8). The Lord is not really slow, but rather keeps time by a different calendar.

In the decades after Jesus' death, then, the Christians had to revise their first expectations again and again. This makes it very probable that the expectation originated with Jesus. We make sense of these pieces of evidence if we think that Jesus himself told his followers that the Son of Man would come while they still lived. The fact that this expectation was difficult for Christians in the first century helps prove that Jesus held it himself. We also note that Christianity survived this early discovery that Jesus had made a mistake very well."

E.P. Sanders (1993) The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin.

Decypher

If you give a surname and year of publication as a reference, you should also be providing the full reference at the end of what you have written. Merely to say "Caird 1965/ Caird & Hurst 1994" is not proper referencing.

Decypher

??

I am not really sure what your point is here.