Joseph Plevnik, «1 Thessalonians 4,17: The Bringing in of the Lord or the Bringing in of the Faithful?», Vol. 80 (1999) 537-546

The image of bringing in, which, in dependence on Hellenistic parousia depictions, denotes the bringing in of the Lord at his coming, does not fit the imagery and the theology of Paul in 1 Thess 4,13-18. Hellenistic parousias depict the citizens making the royal visitor welcome in their city, whereas 1 Thess 4,13-18 depicts the effect of the Lord’s coming on them. The faithful are raised; the faithful are taken up. 1 Thess 4,13-18 really depicts the bringing in of the faithful, not of the Lord. The implication is that they do not return to the earth, but stay with the Lord forever.

additional evidence from Hellenistic and Roman antiquity that in 1 Thess 4,13-18 Paul imagined the Lord’s coming along the model of a Hellenistic parousia²⁵. According to Peterson, 4,17 is to be understood as follows: "The Kyrios, i. e. Christ, is coming down from heaven.... But while he is still on his way from heaven to earth, Christians, those still alive as well as the deceased, go up on the clouds to receive him. They meet him in the a)h/r, i. e. in the layer of air which belongs to the earth"²⁶.

        Peterson focused on the encounter, referred to here as the a)pa/nthsij, which he understood to be a technical term in the parousia descriptions. Here the a)pa/nthsij does not indicate a casual meeting, but rather "the legal, civic usage, according to which the people induct high personages (especially kings and their representatives) at their parousi/a according to a prescribed ceremony"²⁷. The a)pa/nthsij here indicates an official welcome or reception. According to Peterson, "The concept of Einholung implies that one leaves one’s home city and meets the honored visitor some distance from the city in order to accompany him into their city"²⁸. The fact that Paul did not find it necessary to explain this welcoming reception (a)pa/nthsij) to his readers suggests that he presumed they knew its specific meaning²⁹. Peterson concedes, however, that this meaning of returning with the Lord is only weakly indicated in 1 Thess 4,18 with "and we will always be with the Lord", kai_ ou#twj pa/ntote su_n kuri/w| e)so/meqa. According to him, the a)h/r, the air, where the meeting occurs, was in antiquity thought to be within the sphere of the earth; hence going up here does not mean leaving the earth. It is rather like going out of the city to another place on earth. Hence the faithful really never leave the earth. Going up in Paul’s presentation in 1 Thess 4,17 is like going out in Hellenistic parousias.

        Peterson noted the occurrence in these documents of the terms sunanta=n, a)panta=n, u(panta=n, u(pa/nthsij, and u(papa/nthsij. According to him, these are synonyms indicating that, in antiquity, the induction was expressed in a variety of ways. In fact, the words a)pa/nthsij and u(pa/nthsij are often employed interchangeably, as the textual vacillation in 1 Thess 4,17 indicates³⁰.