From: atombomb@sirius.com
Date: Mon Jun 07 1999 - 13:34:48 EDT
Glory to Jesus Christ!
> >Would the word "parousia" mean "coming" or "presence"?
>
> It most commonly does mean "arrival" or "coming", although when one sees
> the participial form PARWN, PARONTES or the like, it may indeed mean no
> more than "being present." But PAREIMI came to be the equivalent of the
> earlier classical perfective verb hHKW, "I have arrived."
>
> In the GNT PAROUSIA frequently (but by no means always) refers to the
> apocalyptic return of Christ (e.g. Mt 24:3). And it is worth knowing that
> the word we use at Christmastime, "Advent" derives from the Latin ADVENTUS,
> which translates the Greek PAROUSIA.
One suspects that the word parousia took on this latter value because
it also referred to the official, state visit of an emperor or a king
to a city. (In one interesting extension of this idea, it also meant
the "situation" of a planet at a given moment in its course through
the zodiac-- what "house" it's visiting, etc-- planets taken as gods).
Regards,
John Burnett, MA (OT)
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