# Luke 21:32



## KenPierce (Sep 12, 2006)

Luke 21:32, "Truly, I say to you this (genea) shall not pass away until all has taken place."

This is a very difficult verse to interpret. Why is it that translators universally translate genea there as generation, when it can also mean race or people? It occurs to me that, in many other contexts, race or people makes just as good sense as generation, if not better?

NB: I am not trying to build an anti-Semitic argument here!


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## Contra_Mundum (Sep 12, 2006)

In my opinion, those other glosses are derivative, and are useful only when the primary sense of the word renders an implausible sense.

I fail to see how the term "generation" does not answer the context's demands adequately. The "Olivet Discourse" of Matthew (beginning at 24:1-3) is the parallel (and fuller) passage dealnig with the same material, if not the exact same incident.

Jesus clearly speaks in terms that his immedate audience would draw personal, historic application. Note the repeated 2nd person references. Verse 20 begins: "When you see Jerusalem compassed...." Back in verse 6 (and also refer the first verses of Matthew 24), Jesus declares that the Temple--of which so much was made--was doomed. And not alone, but the Temple's obliteration implied the simultaneous ruin of the city that held it (as had occurred once before in the day of the Exile).

Judgment upon those who rejected the Messiah was surely coming. "This generation" was filling up the measure of the sins of the fathers (Mt. 23:32). But what was terrible in one sense, was cedrtainly necessary in another. In some way, the end of the Old Covenant must be marked, the types and shadows of the Lord's Atonement must be removed. God would perform it by means of a judgment against all those who had put the Son to death, _and_ who had spurned that same RISEN Son's offer of forgiveness.

And indeed, in one generation (40 years--A.D. 30 to 70) that grace period came to an end, and the Roman legions did desolate the nation.

In God's providence, there has continued a people who identify themselves with the Talmudic and Pharisaic religion/ethnic identity, and are known collectively as Jews/Israel after the flesh (whether 'genetic' or 'converted' is not germane--thousands, maybe millions of 'foreigners' were grafted into Abrahaic stock for 1500 years or more before Jesus arrived). And it may be that this representative people shall, in God's future providence, be massively converted to Christ, thus abolishing the vestiges of disunity (see Rom. 11).

So, I do not think that Jesus meant that the race or nation--i.e.those who went by the 'Jewish" name would be utterly effaced.


Hope this addresses your question, at least partly.


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