[B-Greek] PAROUSIA

Ann Nyland accuratebibles at ozemail.com.au
Wed Apr 9 19:58:22 EDT 2003


PAROUSIA in the papyri/inscriptions means "coming", "arrival", "visit",
often but not always of the coming of an official (and their presence after
their arrival), cf. P.Oxy 47; SIG3 741.111, 1V; SEG 821.10. See the cognate
verb in an edict and speech of Nero which states that as many people as
possible were to be present in Corinth on November 28, 67 AD. There's a good
discussion in L. Robert, Hellenica 13 (1965) 129-131 on the cognate verb,
used for gods from the time of Homer. The cognate verb appears in the future
in  P.XV.Cng 8.8, a letter stating that the correspondent (not an official)
will be present at a court case. See also BGU 2211, a letter about an
official's coming, "..who is now intending to be present.in the land".
Ann Nyland

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Glick" <lists at danielglick.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] PAROUSIA


> Clwinbery at aol.com wrote:
>
> >In a message dated 4/4/03 11:43:17 PM, lgblmay at cox.net writes:
> >
> >
> >>2) the coming, arrival, advent
> >>  2a) the future visible return from heaven of Jesus,
> >>  to raise the dead, hold the last judgment, and set up
> >>  formally and gloriously the kingdom of God
> >>
> >>
> >This certainly goes beyond anything Ican see in the word PAROUSIA. It
> >involves a hop-skip-jump trip through the NT i'm aftaid. I wonder if we
could
> >stay with the lexical/contextual possibilities of the pres. fem.
participle
> >of PAREIMI.
> >
> Would the list-members agree with this characterization by Barclay? "In
> the papyri and in Hellenistic Greek /parousia/ is the technical word for
> the arrival of an emperor, a king, a governor or famous person into a
> town or province." (New Testament Words, 223) This is a philological
> rather than theological argument, since Barclay is basing the claim on
> Hellenistic--not biblical--usage.
>
> However (and I hope I'm not going too off-topic here), whether PAROUSIA
> is punctilliar or not is theologically irrelevant. A study of the
> contexts in which the word is used in the NT clearly indicates the
> meaning it had in common usage among first-century Christianity.
>
> --Dan Glick



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