The traditional oracle in vv.
16-17a, with Pauline additions and adjustments removed, probably was like this:
|
Ho kyrios |
The Lord |
|
en keleusmati, |
with a commanding signal |
|
en phōnē
archangelou kai |
with the voice of an archangel
and |
|
en salpingi theou, |
with the sounding of God’s trumpet |
|
katabēstai
ap’ ouranou |
will descend from heaven, |
|
kai hoi nekroi (en kyriō)
anastēsontai |
and the dead (in the Lord)
shall rise, |
|
hoi perileipomenoi |
the surviving remnant |
|
hama syn autois harpagēsontai |
will be caught up with them |
|
en nephelais |
in clouds |
|
eis apantēsin
tou kyriou eis aēra. |
for a meeting of the Lord in
the sky. |
Paul the prophetic interpreter. Paul was not merely a passive transmitter
of this tradition, but also its active interpreter, re-presenting it with his
own prophetic-apostolic authority. Thus his own anticipatory summary in v. 15 is
also a constituent element of the “word of the Lord.” The summary also reduces
the quantity of apocalyptic detail; while Paul thinks within the apocalyptic
worldview in general, he exhibits no fascination with the details of the
end-time scenario except as they contribute to his pastoral purpose. To focus
the oracle on the present situation in Thessalonica, he amplifies the oracle
proper by adding “in Christ” (or changes an original “in the Lord” to this
typical “in Christ”) and “first” in v. 16, and “we, the living” in v. 17. Those
who have been baptized into Christ (1 Cor 12;13) have their being “in Christ,”
which cannot be changed by their death.
In addition, the key change Paul
makes in the summary of v. 15 is the replacement of the prophetic oracle’s apantēsis
(meeting in v. 17) with his own key term parousia. In ordinary Hellenistic
Greek, parousia is an everyday secular word that means simply “coming,” “arrival,”
“presence” (etymologically: para, “beside, with” + ousia, participle
of einai/eimi, “to be” = “being with, being present”). Parousia
has no equivalent in the Hebrew Bible and is found only four times in late
books of the LXX, always in this ordinary secular sense, never for the coming
of God (Jdt 10:18; 2 Macc 8:12; 15:21; 3 Macc 3:17). Neither in Paul’s Bible nor
in Judaism of his day did the word have religious or theological overtones. In
Paul’s later letters, he too will mostly use parousia to refer simply to
the arrival or presence of himself or his colleagues (1 Cor 16:17; 2 Cor 7:6,
7; 10:10; Phil 1:26; 2:12), and then he will abandon the word altogether in the
period reflected in 1 Thessalonians, however, Paul has already made parousia
a key term in his theology. He may have seen the parousia of the Lord Jesus
as an alternative to the triumphant ceremonial entry of a Roman ruler into a provincial
city, and later backed off from this too-provocative image, which could too
easily lead to a misunderstanding of the nature of the Christian community. (M.
Eugene Boring, I & II Thessalonians: A Commentary [The New Testament
Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015], 167-68)