Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Grief with hope, and the welcoming party
Paul tells a grieving church that believers who have died are not lost: when the Lord comes down from heaven with a shout, the archangel's voice and God's trumpet, the dead in Christ will rise first, and the living will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, in every translation this tool compares.
Some in the church have died, and Paul writes so that the others will not grieve like people with no hope. Because Jesus died and rose, God will bring the believing dead with him. When the Lord comes from heaven with a shout and a trumpet call, the dead will rise first and the living will join them to meet him, and then they will be with him always. What the meeting in the air implies is debated.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/burial-and-mourning\/","n":"Burial and mourning","s":"Mourners came at once, the dead were buried the same day, wrapped in linen in rock tombs, and family carried the duty of burial. Pagan mourning, with little hope beyond a shadowy underworld, could be bleak.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/resurrection-of-the-dead\/","n":"The resurrection of the dead","s":"Most Jews, with the Pharisees, expected God to raise the dead to bodily life at the end of the age. The Sadducees denied it. Nobody expected one man to rise ahead of everyone else.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/angels\/","n":"Angels","s":"God's messengers and his heavenly army. Jews of Jesus' day spoke of guardian angels, of the greatest angels standing before God's face, and of angels coming with God at the judgment.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/son-of-man\/","n":"The Son of Man","s":"Plain Aramaic for a human being, and also the figure in Daniel 7 who comes on the clouds and receives a kingdom. It is Jesus' favorite way of speaking about himself in the Gospels.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/hailing-a-king\/","n":"Hailing a king","s":"A colt nobody had ridden, cloaks on the road, waving branches, kneeling, the cry Hail, and the delegation that went out to meet a visiting ruler: the public gestures that greeted a king.","r":""}
Consolation letters were common, but "rarely with the kind of hope Paul offers here" (the cultural backgrounds article on Jesus' teachings). Keener writes that "Most pagans believed in a shadowy afterlife in the underworld", though the Dionysus mysteries promised initiates bliss (Arnold). Martyrdom was probably rare around AD 50 (Keener and his notes); Carson, Moo and Morris think the survivors feared the dead would miss the Lord's coming. Word of the Lord probably means a saying of Jesus (Keener and his notes); the article finds these images clustered only in Jesus' teaching, while the ESV Study Bible thinks a revelation to Paul more likely. Parousia could mean a king's visit, and the word for meeting meant that "people welcoming him would go to form his escort en route to his destination" (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener; the ESV Study Bible). What follows is disputed. Keener, his notes, Wright and Wright and Bird read the welcoming party as turning back with the king; the CSB Study Bible and the Zondervan dictionary read a taking up of living believers, the dictionary listing three timings without choosing; and Keener notes that a rapture before the tribulation is first explicit around 1830.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and on 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 4:15 and 4:16-17, and on 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on 1 Thessalonians 4:17
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Jesus' Teachings as Background in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on 1 Thessalonians 4:15 and 4:16-17
- CSB Study Bible, note on 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and word study harpazo
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, comment on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 18, The Argument of 1 Thessalonians, and box Emails from the Edge: Rapture Theology
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 2, Dionysus: God of Sensual Pleasure
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 14, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Occasion
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entries Thessalonians, Letters to the, and tribulation, the great
