(25 votes, average: 4.72 out of 5)
Loading...A key to understanding the central role of the Holy Spirit in the early Christian communities is to realize that the earliest Christians did not think there was going to be on ongoing Christian community. I discussed that a bit in my previous post and here I can continue the thought
The apostle Paul is our earliest Christian author, and it appears that on this particular point he was in agreement with his predecessors, the very first followers of Jesus who came to believe he had been raised from the dead. They thought that the messiah’s resurrection demonstrated that the resurrection had already begun, and they expected, then, that it would be completed right away.
It is clear this this is what Paul thought. Just consider the earliest of his letters that still survives, 1 Thessalonians. Scholars usually date the letter to 49-50 CE or so, just some 20 years after Jesus’ death. Paul had earlier brought his missionary zeal to Thessalonica, and while there he converted a number of people. Based on what he says in 1 Thess. 1:9-10, it is clear they had been pagans, not Jews. He then regularly met with them and taught them his gospel message, before leaving for another missionary territory.
The reason he is writing back to the community in Thessalonica is fundamental to our interests here. There are hints for why Paul wrote the letter throughout, but the matter comes to a climax in chapter 4. Members of the Thessalonian community have died since Paul left, and those in the church are very concerned about the fate of the deceased. Paul had taught his converts that Jesus was soon to return from heaven in judgment on the earth and to bring in God’s great kingdom. Those who believed in Christ would be given a great reward and would be granted a glorious eternal life in this kingdom.
But that hasn’t happened. And now these church members have died in the meantime. It appears the Thessalonian Christians are upset, thinking that those who have already passed away have missed the boat. When Christ returns – they will not get their reward. And members of the community are grieving for their lost ones (1 Thess. 4:13).
Paul responds by
It is easy to see the rest of this post. Just join the blog! It costs very little and your entire membership fee goes to help those in need. You get something, they get something, and the world is a better place! Click here for membership options
“…the dead, will be the first to rise from their graves to meet Christ in the air…
The dead in Christ will be especially rewarded when it happens.”
Do you think Paul made this up to comfort them or do you think he had been taught this by those who were Christians before him?
I really don’t know.
Wasn’t a general resurrection a common Jewish Apocalyptic idea back then? Or are you saying you don’t know about the specific stuff about meeting Christ in the air?
Sorry, I’m not sure which comment of mine you’re referring to (I don’t have your comment to which I replied). A general resurrection was indeed a common idea.
Mr Ehrman, I took some notes from your awesome lecture, some 5 weeks ago, where you discussed the delayed parousia, and I would like to ask you something.
You mentioned then that Twin the Blind knew 2 Peter was forged. Do other Fathers of the Church openly point out cases of forgery in the Canon? Or are there just intimations in their writings about them?
(Haven’t yet read “Forged”, I’m currently on “How Jesus became God”, which, by they way, is pretty incredible!)
Sometimes, but rarely. More often they say that the matter is “disputed.” (You find a whole category of books like that in Eusebius’s discussoin in the early fourth century) But that means that some Christians were indeed saying that these books *were* forged and others were syaing they were not…. Unfortunatley we don’t have records of the discussions. I have a lengthy discussion of htis in my longer book Forgery and Counterforgery.
“…to meet the Lord in the air.” Is the Lord here referring to Jesus or to some Apocalyptic person like the Son of Man or to THE LORD (God) of the Old Testament?
Jesus, definitely (look at the context and you’ll see).
Is it possible that the Christian delegation would meet Jesus “on high”,e.g. on a some mountain where he was expected to descend? Clouds could simply be decorative as in previous incidents of ascension and descent of divine men (Moses, Elijah)?
Interesting idea. But it does talk about meeting him “in the air”
A lot of people try to find fault with the Jehovah Witness because of multiple wrong predictions about the world’s end but other churches as well as the apostles days also made wrong predictions based upon misinterpreted scriptures.
Sort of goes like the boy whom cried wolf! Wolf when there was no wolf but with some sincerity
“Blessed are those who die waiting, for they shall not be disappointed.” I made that up. But the failure of Jesus to return, and the failure of the kingdom to appear, seems to have been the crisis that defined Christianity, and made of it what it is today, what it was forced to become if it was going to survive at all. Fascinating story. “Meanwhile, I was still waiting”… I think Chuck Berry said that.
> will be snatched up
Do you place any significance on the use of “ἁρπαγησόμεθα” in that passage?
My Greek is pretty non-existent, but as I understand it the action described by ἁρπάζω is sudden, forceful or even violent, unanticipated by the snatchee, quite non-consensual and likely terrifying. Not at all a blissful floating up into the air. An eagle (even a harpy eagle) snatching up a rabbit seems to convey the idea.
Yup, “snatched” or “grabbed” is a good rendition. But in this context it appears to be joyful rather than terrifying; Paul explicitly says that this scenario should be “comforting”
At what point did Christians give up on the imminent return of Jesus and transition to a religion putting down roots and settling in for the second coming at some undetermined time in the future?
Many never did! They are still very much with us today. But it stopped being the single dominant view probalby already by the beginning of the second century.
How much in competition was the Baptist movement to Christianity? From what we know of John, there is no expectation of a messianic figure who will appear on earth. I realize some early Christians did perceive the Baptism in a christological fashion, hence, the appearance of an epiphany of God as Jesus rose from the water that made its way into the synoptics. But should this be understood as a purely theological interpretation of what Jesus meant to those later Christians as they mythologize elements about Jesus and not as a real historical event? Since Jesus was convinced that the kingdom, or “God’s Rule,” was presently manifest, how should we understand the christological titles such as “Son of man” or “Son of God?” Is it crucial toward our understanding of ancient Christianity that Jesus’ person be separated from the later kerygma?
Those are long and complicated questions. There was almost certainly competition — it is evidenced even in the NT (pretty clearly in Acts 19; but also in the birth narrative of Luke and the baptism narratives of Matthew and John). Jesus did appear to think the Kingdom was beginning to be manifest in a small way (hence the idea of the mustard seed), but he very much thought it wold reach a climax with the coming of the Son of Man from judgment. And yes, to understand earliest Christianity you absolutely need to differentiate between Jesus’ teaching, the very earliest kerygma based on belief in his resurrection, and then the highly developed variationsof that kerygma over time.
In your reading of Paul’s authentic letters do you detect any hint that Paul may have eventually backed away from his early belief in an imminent Parousia?
thanks
Yup, I talk a out this in my book Heaven and Hell. Philippians 2 and 2 Corinthians 5 both show Paul expecting possibly to die before it comes adn to be in an interim state for a time….
In your opinion the idea of the death of Jesus as an atonement was conceptualized together with the idea of the resurrection of Jesus as the begin of the resurrection and the judgement for all mankind or was it a later idea?
I think they must have appeared at about the same time, very early.
Seu livro Heaven and Hell tem previsão de ser publicado em português no Brasil?
There are no plans to do so just now.
Is there any indication that the eventual disappointment of Pauls hope cost him in terms of credibility among the churches? After Paul died one would think the concerns would resurface with all new consternation. And that with no one left to explain! Except maybe John. But John seemed to have no opinion on any of this as the last man standing.
We don’t have any record of a loss of credibility; instead, his churches reinterpreted his views in ways more compatible with their own beliefs and situations (as in the Pastoral epistles; or even 2 Peter). On John, you’re right that the tradition was that he died only as a very old man, the last apostle standing; that view *may* have been based on the idea that John’s Gospel was written last, and therefore long after the days of Jesus, and so John must have been old. But since John himself didn’t write the Gospel (or so scholars have long argued), then I”m not sure exactly when John did die….
You say in the post that Paul “includes himself among those who will be alive at the time: ‘We who are living and still remain…”. Paul still expected Christ to return very soon, in his lifetime.” My Greek is not good enough to know if there is a difference, but this English text would most naturally be read to mean “those of us who are living [now] and still remain [then].’” This could include Paul himself, but not necessarily. On your reading it would seem to mean that he expects ALL of the people he is writing to to still be around at the parousia, which would be a surprising expectation given that some have already died since he founded the church. If the meaning instead is that he expects at least some but not necessarily all to still be around, there may not have been as big an evolution in his thought as implied in your penultimate reply above. (Although of course Paul may have seen his own prospects differently because of an expansive view of his own centrality in paving the way, and maybe that evolved in some way over time.)
It’s usually read in the sense of “those who die, but we who survive this crisis…” in which the speaker thinks s/he will be one of the survivors. Others will not be.
I agree that the Thessalonian believers felt discouraged because they initially believed that all of them would live to see Christ’s return, yet some of them unexpectedly died. But I disagree that Paul’s use of the word “we” unequivocally implies that Paul definitely expected to live to see Christ’s return.
For example, if Paul’s use of “we” implies that Paul believed that he would definitely live to see Christ’s return, then Paul’s use of “we” would also imply that everybody hearing the first reading of the letter would also definitely live to see Christ’s return.
Given the above, do you believe that Paul believed that everybody listening to the first reading of his letter would definitely live to see Christ’s return?
My view is that he is differentiating between those who will be dead at the time and “we others” who will still be alive. The dead could certainly include those who die, say, between the time Paul writes the letter and the Thessalonians receive it. Or those who died thereafter. But he won’t be one of them.
I am not feeling compelled to agree with you on this point based on my readings, and I will read more about it. In the meantime, I wonder. Is this interpretation a strong scholarly consensus or this a view with reasonable objectors?
I think among critical scholars (i.e., those who are examining the text without consideration of personal religious views) it is the standard interpretation.
“The apostle Paul is our earliest Christian author, and it appears that on this particular point he was in agreement with his predecessors…
They thought that the messiah’s resurrection demonstrated that the resurrection had already begun, and they expected, then, that it would be completed right away.”
Can we be certain that this is what his predecessors (James & the apostles) actually thought? Is it not possible that the whole sequence of when & how Jesus will return was something that Paul thought up? We know that Paul had his own ideas about the meaning of Christ’s death&resurrection as well as the adherence to Jewish Laws. That was all part of his own “gospel” as he says. Could it not be that his understanding of the second coming was also unique to him? Or do we have some solid evidence to believe that the Jerusalem Church had the same understanding as what Paul mentions?
Thank you.
The real difficulty is that we don’t have any writings from these others. But since they were followers of Jesus, they clearly accepted his message. And Jesus thought the end of all things was at hand and that there would be a resurrection of the dead when God set up his kingdom soon. If someone came to believe that Jesus himself was raised from the dead, that would almost certainly make them think the resurrection had started. This is one broad area that Paul and Jesus’ disciples were agreed on.
Oh interesting. I didn’t realize there was a scholarly consensus that Jesus’s disciples had the same view as Paul about when the resurrection would happen.
It’s clear that Jesus’ disciples believed Jesus was raised, but it seems like they viewed this as a special event which proved that he was the Messiah and had been redeemed by God (earliest Christology as you have mentioned), not that the resurrection in general had started. We don’t find any indication in Romans that this community shared Paul’s belief that the resurrection had started. It appears to me that all of Paul’s ideas about how the imminent the end was and how it would play out was part of the revelation that he had received.
Your single sentence opened up a lot and I have only 200 words 🙂
1st, I disclose that I want to develop competency in critical New Testament scholarship written in English for my work in theology and philosophy. And I need things dumbed-down that assume the reader does not know Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, German, and French. For example, you do a great job with that in your blog and I will begin to explore your books.
2nd, is there a technical term for critical biblical scholars/scholarship that you describe above?
3rd, what biblical commentaries written strictly in English, single volume and series, do you recommend?
4th, I merely comment. The term “standard interpretation” can have various meanings. For example, the consensus of quantum and particle physicists says that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is tentative while the standard model of particle physics makes amazing predictions without fail but is ultimately flawed beyond repair because it does not permit a coherent explanation for gravity.
All in all, every standard proposition about literary interpretation, history, or science is tentative, and some standard propositions have a stronger basis than others. In this case, I will need to dig in more.
1. Great! Good luck with it. 2. It is usually called “historial criticism” 3. One-volume: I like the HarperCollins Bible Commentary; multi-volume: the best are the volumes on individual books in the Anchor Bible and in the Hermeneia Series.
@BDEhrman May 28, 2021 at 11:11 am. Thank you. I have the HarperCollins Bible Commentary and read some from the Anchor Bible and Hermeneia series and see they sprinkle in some Greek phrases. I hope for a commentary series that you deem credible in historical criticism that is a step down from Anchor and Hermeneia in that it is written only in English. Do you know of any? If not, perhaps you could write all the New Testament volumes for it, LOL!
There are lots and lots, but since I don’t ever have occasion to read them (for my research I only deal with the hard-hitting ones; and look at commentaries only for my research) I don’t really know. MOst *series* are “uneven,” meaning some volumes by some authors will be fantastic and others not. You might try the New Interpreters Bible Commentary. Or possibly some people on the blog know of some. There are other good one-volume numbers, such as the New Jerome Bible Commentary.
“The Second Coming” or Rapture idea sold by writers like Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and many others are nothing more than “fairy tales” after reading how you have explained Paul’s belief on the return of Jesus.
As a scholar how do you see this doctrine of dispensationalism and how it developed?
Have you written about this is any of your books?
It’s part of the book I’m working on now!
Can’t wait for the new book on that subject.
Will continue to buy your other books and read them.
Thank you for making this information available and so helpful for me answering questions I have had for almost seven decades.
Your education, sacrifice and intellect have opened a new world for me!