How do we determine how documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution should be interpreted? Let’s check with those who were there when they were written and the circumstances for their construction. Such a methodology comes to mind with a book I read as a child, We Were There at the Driving of the Golden Spike (1960).Eyewitness accounts are the starting point (e.g., Luke 1:1-4; 1 Cor. 15:1-8).
• “The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is, to discover the meaning of those, who made it. The first rule, subservient to the principle of the governing maxim, is, to discover what the law was, before the statute was made. The inference, necessarily resulting from the joint operation of the maxim and the rule, is this, that in explaining a statute, the judges ought to take it for granted, that those, who made it, knew the antecedent law.” — James Wilson (1742–1798), who was one of the six original justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
• “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” — Thomas Jefferson
There’s little difference in how the Bible should be interpreted. We need to carry ourselves back to the time, people, and places where the events took place. We need to study the vocabulary based on how words and phrases are used in Scripture. The Bible is the best interpreter of itself. Our study of the Bible needs to start with the Bible.
A Beginner's Guide to Interpreting Bible Prophecy
With so much prophetic material in the Bible — somewhere around 25% of the total makeup of Scripture — it seems difficult to argue that an expert is needed to understand such a large portion of God’s Word and so many “experts” could be wrong generation after generation. If God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path” (Psalm 119:105), how do we explain that not a lot of light has been shed on God’s prophetic Word and with so little accuracy? A Beginner’s Guide to Interpreting Bible Prophecy has been designed to help Christians of all ages and levels of experience to study Bible prophecy with confidence.
Buy NowPut yourself in the first century. A scroll about the life of Jesus has been delivered to an assembly of believers you are associated with. You heard the gospel through the work of traveling missionaries. Now you can read or have read to you a first-hand account of Jesus’ life and ministry. If you are not a Jew, you most likely would not have access to manuscripts of what we call the Old Testament, either in Hebrew or a Greek translation (Septuagint/LXX), which were not generally available to the public. Any first reader or hearer of Matthew’s gospel would need to understand it in terms of how he laid out the story and the words he used, especially if the same word appears multiple times.
Christians in the first century would not have had access to a 26-page double-spaced article on the meaning of “this generation,” a 37-page doctoral dissertation with numerous charts, or a four-hour or even a two-hour YouTube presentation. The four-hour “The Preterism Paradox,” by Peter Goeman, appeals to Ryan Meyer’s Ph.D. dissertation “‘This Generation’ in Matthew 24:34,” in which he mentions the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) database, founded in 1972, which “contains 8,483 instances of the lemma**[1]** γενεά, almost always translated as “generation.” Did anyone in the first century have access to the TLG database? Of course not. Did they need it? They did not; otherwise, the Bible would have been unintelligible for nearly two millennia.
Some Bible students, such as Ian Hicks, Ryan Meyer, and Peter Goeman, contend that we need to go to Deuteronomy 32 to understand how genea should be understood in a “transgenerational” way. That’s not the case in Matthew 1:17, where the plural of genea is made up of singular generations. Meyer admits, “Γενεά is used in Greek literature to refer to ‘the sum total of those born at the same time’ or ‘all those living at a given time.’[2] Matthew appears to use γενεά in this way in his opening genealogy (1:17). Jesus also uses γενεά frequently in Matthew in reference to His contemporaries (11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 16:4; 17:17; 23:36).” That should be the end of the story, but he adds, “However, γενεά can refer to more than temporal contemporaries.” Not in Matthew’s gospel, especially as it’s used in Matthew 23:36 and 24:34.
Anyone reading Matthew 1:17 would have known exactly what was meant by genea. No TLG database was needed. Not “this kind of generation,” or “this race,” or “the generation that sees these signs” (except it seems the generation to whom Jesus was addressing in 23:35, a verse that Myer does not discuss with its two uses of the second person plural). Genea meant people living at the same time, not spread out over millennia. We name our generations: The Lost Generation (1883-1900), the Greatest Generation (1901-1927), the Silent Generation (1928-1945), the Baby Boom Generation (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1980), Millennials (1981-1996), and Generation Z (1997-2012).
In fact, that’s how the words generation and generations are used in Deuteronomy 32. The wilderness generation was “a warped and crooked generation” (32:5) and “a perverse generation” (32:20), as is evident in that it did not make it to the promised land. The use of “generation” refers to a single generation as compared to “the years of all generations” (32:7). The use of “generation” in the singular is specific in its meaning and identifies a particular generation. It’s no different from the way “this generation” is used in Matthew’s gospel. Each generation is judged on its own merits or the lack thereof. Cain, the people of Noah’s generation, and those in Moses’ generation paid the price for their covenant-breaking. This is contrary to the trans-historical approach proposed by some to neutralize the statement made by Jesus in Matthew 24:34. Meyer argues that “in Matthew 24:34, η γενεα αυτη denotes the people of Israel who are unfaithful to God.” And what specific “people” was this? “This generation” refers to the generation alive in Jesus’ day. The singular meaning of genea begins in 1:17 and is consistent with its use elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel. The addition of the near demonstrative “this” seals the deal. Like the wilderness generation, the generation of Jesus’ day is identified by Jesus as the one that would undergo a devastating loss of life, covenant, and property.
Wars and Rumors of Wars
A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.
Buy NowThe Apostle Paul follows a similar perspective. He mentions “other generations” (Eph. 3:5) and “all generations forever and ever” (3:21), which are distinct from the then present generation that Peter describes as “this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40). Why was it perverse? Because godless men of that generation nailed the hands of Jesus to a cross and put Him to death (2:23).
How is it morally attributable that the guilt of turning Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified should be accounted to a yet future “this generation” of Jews who had no part in the death of Jesus? Each generation is guilty of its own sins. It’s not that other generations can’t be perverse; they can, but not for the single sin of having crucified “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8) by turning Jesus over to the Romans for execution and then declaring, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).
[1] A lemma refers to the base form of a word, which is used to represent all its inflected forms. For example, “run” is the lemma for “running,” “ran,” and “runs.”
[2] BDAG, s.v. “γενεά,” 191.