StrongerBible

parousia

παρουσία

GreekG3952“coming, presence, ...”

Appears 24 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 24:3Mat 24:27Mat 24:37Mat 24:391Co 15:231Co 16:172Co 7:62Co 7:72Co 10:10Php 1:26Php 2:121Th 2:191Th 3:131Th 4:151Th 5:232Th 2:12Th 2:82Th 2:9Jas 5:7Jas 5:82Pe 1:162Pe 3:42Pe 3:121Jn 2:28
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradepah-roo-SEE-ahnoun

What parousia means

the arrival of a person and the presence that follows: someone's coming and being there

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its root the word names two sides of one event: a person arriving, and that person now being present. The opposite of this word is absence, and Paul sets the two side by side when he speaks of his being there with the Philippians as against his being away from them. So whether the focus falls on the moment of arrival or on the staying that follows, it is the same idea: a particular person has come and is now here.

In the wider Greek world the word had picked up a special use for the official visit of a king, an emperor, or a governor to a city, an arrival staged with great ceremony, and a parallel use for a god showing up in power to help. The New Testament writers do not lock the word into that grand sense. Paul uses it just as readily for the arrival of traveling friends, for his own unimpressive showing in person, and even, with bitter irony, for the counterfeit arrival of the man of lawlessness who works by Satan's power.

The word becomes weighty only when it is attached to the Lord. By far its most frequent use is for the Coming of Christ, his future arrival in glory as king and judge. That force does not live inside the word itself; it comes from naming Christ as the one who arrives. The ceremonial background of a royal visit gives the picture its color: the King is coming, and his people go out to meet him.

Nuances

1athe arrival or presence of an ordinary person
1Co 16:172Co 7:62Co 7:72Co 10:10Php 1:26Php 2:12
1bthe Coming of Christ: his future arrival in glory as king and judge
Mat 24:3Mat 24:27Mat 24:37Mat 24:391Co 15:231Th 2:191Th 3:131Th 4:151Th 5:232Th 2:12Th 2:8Jas 5:7
1ca counterfeit coming: the arrival of the man of lawlessness, staged by Satan in mockery of Christ's
2Th 2:9

What scholars say about parousia

The standard reference works agree that the word has two basic poles, presence and arrival or coming, and that its eschatological force is not built into the word but comes from the contexts in which the New Testament applies it to Christ. BDAG organizes the entry as presence and as arrival or coming, noting that it became the official term for a high-ranking person's visit, especially a king's or emperor's. LSJ lists presence, arrival, and the visit of a royal or official personage, and a separate New Testament sense the Advent. Albrecht Oepke's TDNT article remains the anchor of the discussion and stresses that presence and arrival are not really separable and that the word never means return. Adolf Deissmann's Light from the Ancient East gathered the papyri and inscriptions showing the word as a fixed term for the formal visit of a sovereign, and observed that the Latin versions rendered most New Testament instances as adventus. The word is essentially absent from the Greek translation of the Hebrew canon and appears only in mundane senses in the later Greek books, so the technical Christian use is a Christian development built on Hellenistic civic and religious models. Paul's ordinary uses, for the arrival of Titus and of other coworkers, for his own weak bodily presence, and for the parody coming of the lawless one, are taken by Malherbe, Best, Fee, Fitzmyer, and Plevnik as decisive proof that the word is not intrinsically technical. Whether the New Testament writers deliberately mobilized the imperial-visit background as anti-imperial polemic is the live debate, argued by Donfried, Koester, Wright, and Harrison and contested by Kim, Barclay, and Miller. Bauckham's work on 2 Peter shows that the future Coming is in view at 1:16 and that the so-called delay was met by long-standing Jewish strategies rather than being evidence of a fading hope. Matthew alone among the Gospels uses the word, in chapter 24, which Davies and Allison, France, Luz, Hagner, and Nolland take as the first evangelist's editorial work. The fixed first-and-second-coming scheme is later, crystallized by Justin Martyr in the mid-second century.

Where scholars disagree about parousia

Whether the New Testament writers deliberately drew on the imperial royal-visit background of the word to make a pointed contrast with Caesar, or whether they simply used ordinary Greek vocabulary whose imperial resonance is only the modern historian's reconstruction.

  • contestedPaul and others consciously took up the imperial-visit and ruler-cult language of the word, clustered with related terms at Thessalonica, as a deliberate counter-imperial claim that Jesus, not Caesar, is the true arriving Lord.; Karl P. Donfried, 'The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence,' NTS 31 (1985): 336-56; Helmut Koester, 'Imperial Ideology and Paul's Eschatology in 1 Thessalonians,' in Paul and Empire, ed. R. Horsley (1997), 158-66; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013)
  • contestedThe imperial resonance is real background but the New Testament writers did not mobilize it as polemic; the eschatological force comes from context, and treating shared vocabulary as deliberate political coding overstates both the evidence and the actual reach of the imperial cult in these cities.; Seyoon Kim, Christ and Caesar (Eerdmans, 2008); John M. G. Barclay, 'Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul,' in Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (WUNT 275, 2011), 363-87; Colin Miller, 'The Imperial Cult in the Pauline Cities of Asia Minor and Greece,' CBQ 72 (2010): 314-32

Whether the word is already a semi-technical term in the New Testament, carrying the royal-visit sense in itself, or remains ordinary Greek vocabulary that becomes eschatological only when it is attached to Christ.

  • majorityThe word is not intrinsically technical even in Paul; his ordinary uses, for the arrival of coworkers, for his own weak bodily presence, and for the parody coming of the lawless one, show that its eschatological force comes only from the genitive "of Christ" or the pronoun attached to it.; Albrecht Oepke, 'παρουσία,' TDNT 5:858-871; Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Anchor Bible 32B, 270-72
  • minorityThe word is at least semi-technical in the New Testament, carrying the imperial royal-visit sense as part of its meaning rather than only from its context.; Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, NICNT; Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Pillar (2002), 222-25
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. παρουσία, 780-81lexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. παρουσίαlexicon
  • Albrecht Oepke, 'παρουσία,' TDNT 5:858-871theological-dictionary
  • NIDNTTE, ed. Moisés Silva, vol. 3, s.v. παρουσίαtheological-dictionary
  • Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (ET 1927), 368-78monograph
  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, 497lexicon
  • Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Anchor Bible 32B, 270-72commentary
  • Jaroslav Plevnik, Paul and the Parousia (1997)monograph
  • Karl P. Donfried, 'The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence,' NTS 31 (1985): 336-56article
  • Seyoon Kim, Christ and Caesar (Eerdmans, 2008), 28-33, 66monograph
  • John M. G. Barclay, 'Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul,' in Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews (WUNT 275, 2011), 363-87monograph
  • Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, WBC 50 (1983), 205-17commentary
  • Richard Bauckham, 'The Delay of the Parousia,' Tyndale Bulletin 31 (1980): 3-36article
  • John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (2005)commentary
  • George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (1974/1993)monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of παρουσία

dative f s

παρουσίᾳ

1Co 15:23, 1Co 16:17, 2Co 7:6, 2Co 7:7, Php 2:12, 1Th 2:19, 1Th 3:13, 1Th 5:23

genitive f s

παρουσίας

Mat 24:3, Php 1:26, 2Th 2:1, 2Th 2:8, Jas 5:7, 2Pe 3:4

nominative f s

παρουσία

Mat 24:27, Mat 24:37, Mat 24:39, 2Co 10:10, 2Th 2:9, Jas 5:8

accusative f s

παρουσίαν

1Th 4:15, 2Pe 1:16, 2Pe 3:12