Excursus - A World of Difference
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus will come back to destroy Jerusalem, her temple, and then the whole world, in AD 70.
Excursus
The present excursus is a stand-alone digression from our ongoing critical study on interpreting the Book of Revelation in the context of Covenant Eschatology. It offers an extended discussion on the exegetical difficulty of reading the Greek word aiōn, (“age”) as “world” at Matthew 24:3.
A World of Misunderstanding
Throughout James S. Russell’s (1816–1895) book, The Parousia, his classic apologetic support for the preterist approach to the Second Coming of Christ, there are references to several translation choices made in the most prominent English version of his day that he believed negatively skewed the English-only reader’s understanding of New Testament eschatology (emphasis mine).
Much confusion has arisen from the indiscriminate use of the word ‘world’ as the translation of the different Greek words [aiōn], [kosmos], [oikoumenē], and [gē]. The unlearned reader who meets with the phrase ‘the end of the world,’ inevitably thinks of the destruction of the material globe, whereas if he read the ‘conclusion of the age, or æon,’ he would as naturally think of the close of a certain period of time—which is its proper meaning. We have already had occasion to observe that [aiōn] is properly a designation of time, an age; and it is doubtful whether it ever has any other signification in the New Testament. ... The proper word for the earth, or world, is [kosmos], which is used to designate both the material and the moral world. [Oikoumenē] is properly the inhabited world, ‘the habitable,’ and in the New Testament refers often to the Roman Empire, sometimes to so small a portion of it as Palestine. [Gē], though it sometimes signifies the earth generally, in the gospels more frequently refers to the land of Israel. Much light is thrown upon many passages by a proper understanding of these words.1
The End of the Age
As a late 19th century writer, the English Bible that Russell reproaches for indiscriminately using the single word “world” to translate those four distinct Greek words is, of course, the Authorised Version, or, as it is more commonly known today, the King James Version (KJV). The most notorious occurrence of these problematic translations is the decision to render aiōn as “world” in the disciples’ precursor query to the Olivet Discourse at Matthew 24:3. Below is the KJV reading of this question, alongside my transliteration of Stephanus’ KJV-era Greek Textus Receptus (STR),2 and three contemporary English NT readings.3 Take note of the emphasised Greek words, and their English counterparts.
KJV: Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming,
and of the end of the world?
STR: eipe ēmin, pote tauta estai kai ti to sēmeion tēs sēs parousias
kai sunteleias tou aiōnos?
ESV: Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming
and of the end of the age?
NET: Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of your coming
and of the end of the age?
NIV: Tell us … when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming
and of the end of the age?
As the modern versions indicate, the problem Russell had with the wording of this verse subconsciously pairing the concepts of the Lord’s Second Coming (Parousia) and the end of the physical world, in the mind of “the unlearned reader,” has been rectified. Still, the primacy of the KJV in English-speaking churches lasted so long that even today this verse remains the primary prooftext underlying the futurist eschatology of pastors and laity alike. So, despite this modern reading of "age" in Matthew 24:3, Russell’s "world" of misunderstanding still has not come to an end.
Aiōn as Kosmos
In fairness to the KJV translators, however, it should be noted that their translating “end of the age” as “end of the world” is not nearly as indiscriminate as Russell’s quote indicates, given that there is a legitimate etymological justification for it, as Lutheran Herman Sasse’s (1895–1976) “Aiōn, Aiōnios” entry in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament explains (emphasis mine).4
In the plural [aiōn] formulae [e.g., eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn, “unto the ages of the ages,” “forever and ever”] the meaning of [aiōn] merges into that of a long but limited stretch of time. In particular, [aiōn] in this sense signifies the time or duration of the world, i.e., time as limited by creation and conclusion. At this point [aiōn] is used to indicate two things which are ... antithetical, namely, the eternity of God and the duration of the world. This twofold sense ... points back to a concept of eternity in which eternity is identified with the duration of the world.
In the NT [aiōn] is used in the sense of the time of the world in the expression [sunteleia tou aiōnos] (“the end of the aeon”) which Matthew uses for the end of the world. The expression is to be explained by the penetration of the term into eschatological formulae in place of other temporal concepts like [ēmerai “days”], [chronoi “times”], [kairoi “seasons”], [etē “years”].
The sense of “time or course of the world” can easily pass over into that of the “world” itself, so that [aiōn] approximates closely to [kosmos]. In Mk. 4:19 and the parallel Mt. 13:22 the phrase [ai merimnai tou aiōnos] means “the cares of the world” (cf. [o gamēsas merimna ta tou kosmou], 1 Cor 7:33). Paul uses as equivalent expressions [“wisdom of the world (kosmos),” “wisdom of this age (aiōn),” and “wisdom of this world (kosmos)” (1 Cor 1:20; 2:6; 3:19). To the description of the end of the world as [“end of the age (aiōn)”] there corresponds the description of its beginning as [“foundation of the world (kosmos)”].
The equation of [aiōn] and [kosmos] is to be explained in the NT by Jewish linguistic usage.5
Although the TDNT’s exhaustive diachronic word study on aiōn was originally published in German in 1933, the scholarship behind it was clearly available to Russell and his contemporaries, as evidenced by how neatly it concurs with him, and with the synchronic entries on kosmos and aiōn in the American Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature of Methodist theologians McClintock (1814–1870) and Strong (1822–1894), which was published, like The Parousia, a full 50 years earlier (emphasis mine).
The following Greek words are also translated “world:”
Αἰών, Aihn, the world, or age, the present time, or the future, as implying duration (Mt 12:32; Mr 10:50; Mr 3:28-29; Lu 18:30); the present world or age, with its cares, temptations, evils, etc. (Mt 13:22; Lu 16:8; Lu 20:34; Ro 12:2; 1Co 1:20; 1Co 2:6,8; 2Co 4:4; 2Ti 4:10; Tit 1:12; Ga 1:4); and men of the world, wicked generation (Eph 2:2; Lu 16:8; Lu 20:34); also the world itself, as an object of creation and existence (Mt 13:40; Mt 24:3; Heb 1:2; Heb 11:3). This term also denotes the age or world before the Messiah, i.e., the Jewish dispensation (1Co 10:11; Heb 9:26); also, after the Messiah, i.e., the Gospel dispensation (Heb 2:5; Heb 6:5).
κσόμος, kosmos, the world, universe (Mt 13:35; Mt 24:21; Lu 11:50; Joh 17:5,24; Ac 17:24; Ro 1:20); the inhabitants thereof (1Co 4:9); also the earth, as the abode of man (Mt 13:38; Mr 16:15; Joh 1:9; Joh 3:19; Joh 6:14; Joh 16:21,28; Joh 21:25; Heb 10:5; Mt 4:8; Ro 1:8); the inhabitants of the earth (Mt 5:14; Joh 1:29; Joh 3:16; Joh 17:14,25; Ro 3:6,19; Heb 11:7; 2Pe 2:5; 1Jo 2:2); the multitude, as we say "everybody" (Joh 7:4; Joh 12:19; Joh 14:22; Joh 18:20; 2Co 1:12; 2Pe 2:5); also the heathen world (Ro 11:12,15). It likewise designates the state of the world, as opposed to the kingdom of Christ (Mt 16:26; Mr 8:36; Joh 18:36; 1Co 3:22; 1Co 5:10; Eph 2:2; Ga 6:14; Jas 4:4) and men of the world, worldlings (Joh 12:31; 1Co 1:2; 1Co 3:19; 2Co 7:10; Php 2:15); also the Jewish dispensation, founded on Sinai and ended on Calvary (Eph 1:4; 1Pe 1:20; Heb 9:26).6
Even allowing for the semantic synonymity of the expressions “end of the age (aiōn)” and “end of the world (kosmos),” and then allowing further that, contra Russell, when the Evangelist had the disciples ask Jesus about the sunteleias tou aiōnos, he had in view the “destruction of physical creation,” Matthew 24:3 still presents a challenge to the futurists regarding the timing of this cataclysmic event.
Matthew’s Imminent End of the Aiōn
Sound exegesis of Matthew 24:3–36 demonstrates incontrovertably that the First Evangelist believed that the “end of the aiōn” is coincidental with the future return of the Lord, that is, his Parousia. Nolland acknowledges this coincidence in his commentary on the Greek text (emphasis mine).
In the NT only Matthew uses the phrase ‘completion of the age’ ([sunteleias tou aiōnos])—see at [Mt 13:39]. This will be the time when the Son of Man arranges the final separation of the wicked from the righteous. In the Greek text ‘your coming’ and ‘the completion of the age’ are marked as belonging together by sharing a single definite article. In the general part of their question the disciples ask about when: ‘When will these things be?’ But in relation to the ‘coming’ and the ‘completion of the age’ they ask, ‘what will be the sign’ of these things? The Markan text has the difficulty that nothing later in the text is identified as this sign. Matthew will make good this deficiency with his very clear reference to ‘the sign of the Son of Man’ in 24:30.7
To be clear, Nolland is saying that the sign of the Son of Man (Mt 24:30) is the Matthean Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ sign query (Mt 24:3), and that the coming of the Son of Man (Mt 24:30) corresponds to the “your parousia” of the same query (Mt 24:3). This means, therefore, that Matthew believed that the Parousia would occur at the same time as the “end of the aiōn,” that is, according to the KJV and many of today's futurists, at the end of the physical world.
It is this paring of Matthew's that is a problem for futurists, because, together, Matthew 24:29–30 say that the coming of the Son of Man, that is, the Second Coming of the Lord, will happen “immediately after [Grk: eutheōs meta] the tribulation of those days.” These tribulations refer to every calamitous event adumbrated in the Olivet Discourse, leading up to the throwing down of every stone of every building in the temple (Mt 24:2), that is, the predicted destruction that provoked the disciples’ query in the first place. Aware of the parallel Olivet Discourses in the other two Synoptics, and their corresponding placement of these tribulations in Judea, virtually all scholars accept that this was a prediction of the climactic event in the accumulating devastation of Palestine in the First Jewish–Roman War (AD 66–73). And that means that, according to the Gospel of Matthew, immediately after this series of horrors, Jesus will come back to destroy Jerusalem, her temple, and then the whole world, in AD 70.
Of course, for scholars today, the overwhelming majority of whom give little to no credence to the notion of fulfilled prophecy, biblical or otherwise, this prediction is just another example of vaticinium ex eventu,8 written after the fact, and placed in the mouth of Jesus, in order to furnish him retroactively with preternatural insight. To them, its imminency is just another curious feature of Matthew’s particular Son of Man doctrine. However, for believing futurist scholars, those few poor souls who look forward to a literal end of creation at the bodily return of Christ, it is devastating. Convinced as they are that Matthew’s grammatically singular event is actually two separate events, the “end of the temple,” and the “the end of the world,” they are left with no other choice but to conclude that, like all the other NT authors, Matthew's Jesus was right about the prophecy, but wrong about the imminency, and that his use of “immediately” in verse 29 is merely a sad testament to just how wrong he was.
In “The Significance of 70,” the second chapter of his persuasive Redating the New Testament, A. T. Robinson discusses how modern scholarship’s presuppositions regarding the nature of biblical prophecy is an illegitimate impediment to its accepting a pre-AD 70 composition date for the First Gospel. Although a futurist himself, judging from his remarks below about “unfillable predictions,” Robinson demonstrates just how sub-biblical is the futurist insertion of a 2000+ years-and-counting interval between the judgement of Jerusalem and the Parousia of the Lord (emphasis mine).
Matthew’s material without parallel in the Markan tradition ([Mt 24.26-8; 24.37-25.46]) has no reference to the fall of Jerusalem but, like the additional signs of the parousia in 24.30f., solely to ‘the consummation of the age’. Yet his version of the ‘Q’ material in 24.26, ‘If they tell you, “He is there in the wilderness”, do not go out’, clearly shows that in his mind the scene is still in Judaea (in the Lukan parallel in [Lk 17.23] it could be anywhere). It is significant therefore that in 24.29, ‘the distress of those days’ (i.e., on the assumption of ex eventu prophecy, the Judaean war) is to be followed ‘immediately’ [eutheōs] by the coming of the Son of Man, whereas in Mark 13.24 it is promised vaguely ‘in those days, after that distress’. Normally Matthew edits out (if this is the relationship between them) Mark’s incessant use of [euthus]. … This makes it extraordinarily difficult to believe that Matthew could deliberately be writing for the interval between the Jewish war and the parousia. So conscious was Harnack of this difficulty that he insisted that the interval could not be extended more than five years (or ten at the very most), thus dating Matthew c. 70-5. He would rather believe that Matthew wrote before the fall of Jerusalem than stretch the meaning of [eutheōs] further. It seems a curious exercise to stretch it at all! … The only other way of taking this verse retrospectively is to say that ‘the coming of the Son of Man’, though not ‘the consummation of the age’, did occur with the fall of Jerusalem. But it is a fairly desperate expedient to seek to distinguish these two (joined by Matthew by a single article in 24.3) in face of the usage of the rest of the New Testament.
Finally, Matthew retains unaltered Jesus’ solemn pronouncement, ‘The present generation will live to see it all’ ([Mt 24.34]), preserving also (as the equivalent of Mark 9.1) the saying, ‘There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’ ([Mt 16.28]). Most notoriously of all, he has, alongside the apocalyptic material from the Markan tradition which he sets in his mission charge, the promise, ‘Before you have gone through all the towns of Israel the Son of Man will have come’ ([Mt 10.23]). If, on the usual reckoning, the evangelist is writing some 50-60 years after the death of Jesus, it is surely incredible that there are no traces of attempts to explain away or cover up such obviously by then unfulfillable predictions. One would equally expect modifications to prophecies after the non-event.9
2. Stephen’s 1550 Textus Receptus: With Morphology. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2002. The transliterated text is identical to the text in Kurt Aland, et al. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th Edition. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012.
3. Respectively: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016; The NET Bible. Biblical Studies Press, 2005; and The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.
4. Significantly, Sasse also penned the TDNT entries on the Greek terms ἀΐδιος (“eternity”), “γῆ, ἐπίγειος” (“earth/land”, “earthly/of the land”), καταχθόνιος (“subterranean”), “κοσμέω, κόσμος, κόσμιος, κοσμικός” (“world”).
5. H. Sasse, “Αἰών, Αἰώνιος,” TDNT, 1:202–4.
6. James Strong and John McClintock, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1880), “World”.
7. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 2005), 961.
8. The Latin phrase vaticinium ex eventu is “literally translated ‘prophesying from an outcome.’ … a prophecy placed in the mouth of a narrative figure in light of an event … that actually did transpire. In the Gospels, for example, some interpreters have claimed that vaticinia ex eventu occur in Jesus’ sayings, such as his prediction of the destruction of the temple.” Arthur G. Patzia and Anthony J. Petrotta, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 127.
9. John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 23–24.
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