The Parousia of the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4.13–18 as an Adventus

Abstract

In 1930 Erik Peterson put forth the argument that in 1 Thess. 4.13–18 Paul depicts the Parousia of Jesus as an adventus. That is, just as citizens and other inhabitants of ancient cities, in an elaborate ceremony, would go to meet a visiting king, emperor, or other notable outside the city walls and then return, escorting the visitor into their city, so Paul envisioned the return of Jesus. While Peterson’s evidence and arguments have often been followed in Continental scholarship, English-speaking scholarship has often been troubled by the absence of any description of the return to the earth. In this essay, it will be argued that Peterson was correct. Paul did not need to state explicitly what his first-century readers would have assumed. This is shown by the cultural importance of the adventus in antiquity, by the technical terminology Paul used, by the weakness of the arguments for only a Jewish ‘background’ for 1 Thess. 4.13–18, and by his language of descent from heaven.