Are we both talking about EZHSAN as it applies to hOI LOIPOI? I can't see
how ANY interpretation of this could leave open the possibility that hOI
LOIPOI were alive before the thousand years were finished, whether or not it
is taken to be ingressive (as it is in all of the 13 translations I have
looked at so far, in three languages).
Or are you saying that the EHZSAN in verse 4 refers to a physical
resurrection, and that hOI LOIPOI were "spiritually alive" but not yet
physically resurrected? If so, why do you think that the author of the
Revelation is making this kind of distinction? Why should the same word,
used twice in a highly parallel construction, mean two completely different
things, without any textual clues to signal the fact?
>But, if we don't assume this, and go only with what the text says, the
>idea being that the rest of the dead lived not (or, did not come alive)
>throughout the thousand year period of time (whether this refers to a
>literal 1000 year period of time, yet future, or figuratively to either
>the time between the 2 advents of Christ or to the eternal life state of
>the believer begun at his conversion and extending into eternity), with
>no necessary implication they ever came alive (we've already discussed
>this), then a physcial resurrection does not follow.
So you are saying:
"They did not live until the thousand years were over" (and by the way,
though the text doesn't tell us this, they didn't live the thousand years
were over, either)
If the writer wrote the first part, knowing the second part to be true, then
this would almost be an intentional attempt to mislead, and I just don't
think the Bible is trying to trick us like that.
Jonathan
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