Origin and meaning of the New Testament term Parousia

Abstract

Just at the time when the outline for this thesis had been determined and the work begun I had the disturbing privilege of reading the manuscript for chapter eight of James Barr's book 'The Semantics of Biblical Language' (1). In this chapter, entitled 'Some Principles of Kittel's Dictionary', Kittel is charged with pursuing a history of concepts by means of a dictionary of words. The pursuit of a history of concepts is of course recognised as quite valid, but not by means of the lexical method of the TWNT. This raised some questions in my own mind about the approach that I had adopted for this thesis. I had before me the article on ' parousia' by A. Oepke (2), which in some measure does merit the criticism made by James Barr (3). I also had before me the research of P. L. Schoonheim published under the title 'Een Semasiologisch Onderzoek Van Parousia' (4), which, as the title suggests, confines itself in large measure to a strictly linguistic analysis of the problem. It did not seem to me however that either quite answered the questions uppermost in my own mind: why did so many of the New Testament writers judge this term equal to the task of giving expression to the concept of the coming of Christ, and what is its relationship to that concept. With some hesitation I would suggest that Oepke failed in part because he was too much concerned with the larger concept of the coming of God to man, and Schoonheim because the task of exegesis was made subservient to his lingusitic analysis. In saying this of course I do not want for a moment to depreciate the value of either of these works. The latter especially I found to be most helpful. But the problem of the relationship of the word to the concept still remained, and great care had to be taken that the method by which these questions might be answered did not fall prey to the criticisms offered by Barr.