Featured David Chilton and the Greek

Excellent.

If anyone has "retreated into a Christian turtle shell" (I don't know anyone like that), they are certainly not understanding dispensational eschatology. The Rapture should encourage living closer to Christ, according to 1 John 3:2-3--"2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

It is my belief that those who see premil dispensationalism in this way are ill informed about it.

Praise the Lord!

 

Any complete view of worship in the NT must consider all of the words translated "worship" in the NT, both nouns and verbs.

 

Chilton sources David Estrada and William White Jr., The First New Testament (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978) on p. 5. I have this book. Please stay with me here, since this is a little bit complicated.

Chilton is using their work as proof for an early NT. First of all, it’s not correct to call their studies “archaeology,” as Chilton does, but rather it is textual criticism. So, as I said before, Chilton did not understand textual criticism. But then you can't understand textual criticism without knowing Greek, right? And even then it takes a lot of study.

Now, the reference to Estrada and White's book is in a footnote for this statement in the text of the book: "The Canon of Holy Scripture was entirely completed before Jerusalem fell." In other words, Chilton is citing Estrada and White as evidence that Revelation was written before AD 70. The only problem is, Estrada and White do not list Revelation as being in the documents they studied (p. 138 in their book), so they are definitely not dating Revelation in their book. Chilton is thus being disingenuous, outright lying, or ignorant (meaning he never read the book).

In another odd twist, Chilton refers to John A. T. Robinson's work, Redating the New Testament, in the same footnote. The problem with Chilton using this guy is that Robinson was a flaming, all out liberal and a universalist. Probably the only thing Chilton would agree with him on is the early dating of the NT. It would have been nice if Chilton had told us this, rather than just presenting him as an authority on the subject. (I normally don't recommend Wikipedia as anything other than giving a direction to actual research, but according to their article, Robinson also recommended to Christians the reading of a certain dirty book, defending it in court.)

 

There is a critique of Days of Vengeance by a fellow postmillennialist to Chilton here: <Option>SW197--The Aftermath of Jewish Wars. In this critique a reference to an error in Greek grammar by Chilton is made, viz:

Let me briefly explain. In koine Greek, each preposition must take a certain case in the other words in the prepositional phrase. Students are taught to memorize these cases when they memorize the prepositions themselves, like this: "en with the dative." The student would learn "epi with the genitive" and then "pro with the accusative," and thus easily understand that the change in case simply means a different preposition is being used. Once again, it is plain that Chilton did not even take first year college Greek.

 

Chilton makes a similar error in the footnote on p. 315 about Rev. 12:11, where he writes, "Blood and word are both in the accusative case, but the preposition should be read in the sense of means as well as grounds here."

However, as the beginning student learns in his very first semester, "dia with the genitive" means "through; by," and "dia with the accusative" means "because of; on account of" (Learn to Read New Testament Greek, by David Alan black, p. 62 in the vocabulary list).

 

And your point is re the OP?

 

Okay, thanks. I'm not sure what statement.... As for Darby, my understanding is that he didn't actually systemetize dispensationalism, but merely laid the groundwork. We've come a long way since then.

Thanks and you're welcome. I've noted that you do seem to know the Greek. Keep up the good work.

 

I thought I was done with this thread, but have found more "junk Greek" by Chilton. In The Great Tribulation, 27-28, he wrote:

"Instead of the simple form of the word, the term used by Jesus has the Greek preposition epi prefixed to it. This is a favorite New Covenant expression, which intensifies the original word. What Jesus is saying, therefore, is that the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 will reveal Him as having come with clouds to receive His Kingdom; and it will display His Church before the world as the full, the true, the super-Synagogue.'

This is malarky (to use a technical term ). When a preposition is added to the front of a Greek verb, the meaning simply becomes the combination of the two words, not some "intensified" word, as Chilton would have it. So ek (out) + ballo (I throw) becomes "I throw out," not "I throw intensely." In this case, sun (with) + ago (lead) = sunago, "I gather together." Then add epi (on) to the beginning, and it means "gather to one place," as any lexicon could have showed him. So Chilton's whole preterist point is negated, and he is shown once more to be making up his Greek grammar.

 

Again in The Great Tribulation, pp. 25-26, he contradicts himself in one paragraph.

“Finally, Jesus announced, the result of Jerusalem's destruction will be Christ's sending forth of his 'angels' to gather the elect. Isn't this the Rapture? No. The word angels simply means messengers (cf. James 2:25), regardless of whether their origin is heavenly or earthly; it is the context which determines whether these are heavenly creatures being spoken of. The word often means preachers of the Gospel (see Matthew 11:10; Luke 7:24; 9:52; Revelation 1-3). In context, there is every reason to assume that Jesus is speaking of the worldwide evangelism and conversion of the nations which will follow upon the destruction of Israel.”

So he starts out by saying the word "simply means messengers." So far so good. He's right. And it could mean actual angels or human messengers. He's right there, too. but then he contradicts himself and says that it can mean "preachers of the Gospel," and he has lost all credibility. Look at the passages he gives. No one preaches in those passages. Messengers do not preach in the Greek, they are sent with a task or a message. I checked several lexicons, and not a one of them had "preacher" for a meaning. So again, Chilton wrecks his own point by fake Greek semantics.

 

That's my position.

 

I have to apologize. A Greek scholar friend of mine informed me that sometimes the preposition added to the verb does intensify the word. He pointed me to A. T. Robertson's big grammar, where he quotes Winer, another grammarian, who wrote that the added preposition is due to "a love for what is vivid and expressive" (Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek Testament, p. 163).

On the other hand, my friend also pointed out that Estrada and White's book, referenced by Chilton's and commented on by me in post #44 above, has been debunked by the scholars--it does not prove any early dates, and does not appear to even quote the NT, but rather the mss. fragments referred to fit the LXX.

On the other hand (the third hand? ), my scholar friend points out that John Wenham, the father of Gordon Wenham who wrote Chilton's foreward, is a credible scholar for early dating. Personally, I've looked at the evidence and agree that a pre-70 date for Revelation is possible, but even if that were true it wouldn't change my theology. There is too much in the book that could not have been fulfilled in AD 70.