Tuesday, October 4, 2022

M. Eugene Boring on 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17a and Paul as Prophetic Interpreter of Received Tradition

 

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)