A New Testament Myth
Dean Galbraith deanwest@iconz.co.nz
Sat, 31 Jan 1998 21:14:50 +1300 (00886256090, 01BD2E8D.45566C00@deanwest.internet.co.nz)
JAMES > > THOMSON
> > Look IAN, the New Testament is about Christianity: the Old Testament is
> > about Judaism. Why do you insist upon talking about the myths of Genesis
> > when the subject is Jesus Christ! If you in your ignorance are > unfamiliar
> > with the NT....I suggest you read it fool. Get with the program > dumbkopf!
> > You might as well say lets discuss Christianity but I've only read Gone
> > With the Wind!
> >
> > James Thomson
> > Amazed at what I read on the Errancy list!!
>
DEAN
To accommodate you, here's a New Testament myth: The "KINGDOM OF GOD", and Christ's second coming to reign in power.
According to the New Testament, the "Parousia" or "second coming" would involve the resurrection of the "dead in Christ", with those Christians still alive at the second coming, to be united with Christ forever.
And it would happen soon after Christ's death. The beginnings of earliest Christianity had a predominantly eschatological character, dominated by a strong expectation of an imminent end. This expectation of an imminent end meant that the first generation of Christians after Jesus' death and resurrection thought that they would not have to die, because the coming of the Son of Man was immanent. The members of the earliest Christian community regarded themselves not only as the first Christians, but also as the very last Christians.
If this was the belief of the earliest Christians, the fact that we are having this discussion 2000 years later proves the inaccuracy of the belief. And the fact that this belief of an imminent return is clearly set out by Paul and the other NT writers proves the inaccuracy of the NT books.
Let's start with Paul's first writings, and proceed through:
1 Paul's converts at Thessalonica were so convinced of Christ's immanent second coming that they were shaken in their faith when one or more of their number died before Christ returned. Therefore, the Thessalonians apparently put their doubts concerning this issue to Paul. In 1 Thes 4:15-17 Paul discusses those believers who had died, and states that they will be raised with those of Paul's contemporaries who are still alive at the time of the second coming.
"For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever."
For centuries, readers interpreted the "we who are alive" to themselves, understanding the passage to apply, at least potentially, to their own lifetimes. Such a view ignores the historical context in which Paul is writing, and assumes that the Thessalonians understood a meaning different from what is plainly being conveyed. The New Testament is not a mystical language of the Holy Ghost, but the ordinary vernacular of everyday life (to broadly quote part of FF Bruce's introductin to Vine's expository dictionary of NT words). A non-contextual understanding is justified to a degree, if we take the canonization of the letter into account - thereby allowing for a non-temporal "we".
But it is firstly our task to understand what Paul is saying here, at this stage, before harmonising with the remainder of a "canon". From an historical perspective, "we" can only be related to Paul and the recipients of the letter. In that case, we may conclude that Paul thought, along with the Christians of Thessalonica, that he would experience the advent of Jesus from heaven.
2 Of course, as time went on, Paul's expectation of an imminent end was challenged. Paul's series of instructions to the Corinthians not to get married, to remain single, not to purchase anything, etc in I Cor 7 are fact-specific commands (Paul acknowledges they are not universal commands of the Lord). The specific fact-background was the perceived return of Christ in the very near future: eg v29 "I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now
on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none."
3 As time wore on, the early Christian certainty of Christ's immanent second coming faltered. A rumour spread in the early Christian church that only one of the disciples would be still alive when Christ returned: John 21:21-23. By the time II Peter was written, many were scoffing at the Christians' claims of Christ's second coming, as discussed in chapter 3 of that epistle.
Paul, in his letters, believed:
1 Some of his readers would be alive when Christ returned; and
2 The second coming was near (Paul would not have considered 2000 years away as being "near" ).
Moreover, these beliefs underlay his whole theology, and provided the main basis for the exhortations in his letters.
The words ascribed to Jesus by the gospel-writers concerning his second coming have probably already sprung to mind: (Matt 24:34) "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." And the truly imaginative bible interpreters would tell you that "generation" could possibly mean "age" or "nation" in this verse, thus allowing a 2000+ year return. If "generation" is ambiguous, there must be little ambiguity as to the meaning of "some standing here" in Matt 16:27-28:
"For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
cp Mark 9:1; Luke 9:26 - 27
What was promised did not occur.
The claim of any group of fundamentalists is that they are the group of modern-day Christians that are most true to the doctrines of the New Testament. Ironically, if Christians today identified directly with the earliest Christian eschatological view of the world, they would be doing away with it completely.
Dean