Like Everette Hatcher, Roger Hutchinson has been given page after page of opportunities to defend his inerrantist position. Hutchinson's task was to establish that Jesus's reference to "this generation" (genea aute) in Matthew 24:34 meant a generation at least two thousand years into the future. Hutchinson's reply to Mark Smith's definitional analysis of genea was published in the January/February issue, and now Smith's reply has been published immediately above. Unless Hutchinson can present some different arguments to support his position in this matter beyond his obvious desire for genea aute to have a meaning that won't contradict other parts of the Bible, this matter will also be closed with this issue of TSR.
Smith referred above to the 125 Christian scholars whom he had quoted in his article and then correctly noted that Hutchinson made no attempt in his January/February reply to refute the general consensus of these scholars. Hutchinson based much of his response to Smith on an accusation of selectivity. In other words, he claimed that Smith had selected only scholars who agreed with his position. I'm sure readers will know from my exchanges with Everette Hatcher that I agree that anyone with a religious belief can always find books that agree with his belief, but Hutchinson went a bit too far when he accused Smith of selecting translations that agreed with his view. After all, Smith quoted fifty-two different translations, and it would be practically impossible to find 52 English translations of the Bible that had mistranslated the same verse in order to promote a particular interpretation or doctrinal view. That this many English translations rendered genea aute to mean the generation at the time Jesus was speaking is rather compelling evidence that this was the intended meaning of the expression.
Hutchinson complained that some of the translations Smith quoted have inserted the word present to make the expression read "this present generation" but that actually "there is no Greek word for ‘present’ in the verse" (January/ February, p. 8). Such a complaint shows a colossal linguistic ignorance on Hutchinson's part, because just about any bilingual person could tell him that "translating" from one language to another will sometimes require adding words that are not actually in the language being translated.
Many translations like the KJV, ASV, and RSV tried to maintain readings that were as close as possible to literal or word-for-word translations, but even the KJV, probably the most conservative of them all, couldn't always meet this goal; hence, readers will encounter italicized words and expressions throughout the KJV that the translators thought were necessary additions to make the text understandable to English readers. Later translations used such additions more freely than did the earlier ones, but the inclusion of an English word that does not have a direct counterpart in the original text does not equate to mistranslation.
The Greek word outos, for example, from which aute was derived in the disputed text, was a word that meant this but apparently in a much more immediate sense than the English this. Although this in English can, and often does, mean that which is immediate or near, it doesn't have to. Arndt and Gingrich, on the other hand, define outos as "referring to someth[ing] comparatively near at hand, just as echeinos refers to someth[ing] comparatively farther away" (A Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, 1957, p. 600). Brian Rainey and others have pointed this out to Hutchinson in the "Mailbag" column, but apparently with no success in convincing him that he is trying to ride a dead horse. If aute conveyed the sense of the generation that was close at hand to the speaker, why did the translators err in rendering genea aute "this present generation," especially if they were aware of efforts by those of Hutchinson's persuasion to make outos convey the meaning of echeinos? Hutchinson complained that Smith should have "explain[ed] what caused some translators to add the word ‘present’" (January/February, p. 9). I have now explained it, so he should be satisfied.
"Force-fitting" one’s notions? Hutchinson said that "(o)ne should not define the term generation in a way that limits context and then force fit one's notions into that definition" (p. 9). I guess Hutchinson wrote this with a straight face, but I would think that he could see that this is exactly what he has done. He has defined genea to mean a group of people who "share unique traits not common to those outside the group" and then has "force fit[ted]" the context of Matthew 24 into that definition, even though he is short on lexicological support for his definition. As their first definition of genea, Arndt and Gingrich gave "those descended fr[om] a common ancestor" and noted at the end of this definition, "the meaning nation is advocated by some in Mt. 24: 34... but s[ee] also 2." Their definition 2 was "the sum total of those born at the same time, expanded to include all those living at a given time, generation, contemporaries..." (p. 153). They then cited several scriptures as examples of this usage, some of which are the very ones that Hutchinson has tried to "force fit" into his definition.
One of these was Matthew 12: 41 where Jesus said that the men of Nineveh would stand up in the judgment with "this generation" (geneas tautes) and would condemn it, because they had repented at the preaching of Jonah, and a greater than Jonah was here (speaking to that generation), so the context very clearly showed that Jesus meant for his audience to understand that "this generation" was the one he was speaking to and not one that would live at some distant time in the future and never hear him preach.
To his credit, Hutchinson did go on to recognize that I had explicated this very passage (one of his own proof texts) and had "properly appealed to context to identify the generation in Matthew 12 and Matthew 23" (p. 8). Well, if Hutchinson recognized that I had used the contexts of these passages to correctly identify the generation that Jesus was referring to, why is he still dragging out this discussion? How many of us will have to explicate the contexts to show the proper meaning of the word as Jesus used it before Hutchinson will shut up? Does he mean that if one skeptic properly explicates the context to show the meaning of the word but another doesn't, he is still entitled to go after the one who failed to analyze the context? How many will have to explicate the context properly before Hutchinson will give up on a lost cause?
Predicting the Dow-Jones average. In one of the silliest analogies I have seen in a long time, Hutchinson asked, "If a man were to prophesy in 1929 that the Dow Jones Average will reach 20,000, would he be a false prophet if that event had not occurred by December 2000?" Even a student in a freshman logic class should immediately recognize the falseness of the analogy. This prophecy contained no time limit, but what if the man had prophesied in 1929 that his generation would not pass away until the Dow-Jones average had reached 20,000? Certainly, there would still be people living in December 2000 who were alive in 1929, so no one could yet accuse the man of being a false prophet. But what if December 4000 came around and the Dow Jones average had not yet reached 20,000? Would any reasonable person feel a need to defend Hutchinson's hypothetical prognosticator with the sort of excuses that he has made for the failure of Jesus's prophecy? Would Hutchinson try to define "this generation" in the Dow-Jones prophecy as just people with "shared characteristics," such as an interest in trading stocks, and so since there were people with this shared characteristic still living in December 4000, the Dow-Jones prophecy hadn't really failed?
Of course, he wouldn't, because he would recognize that it was far more likely that this hypothetical prophet had simply erred in his prediction than that he had had such a strained meaning of "this generation" in mind. In nonbiblical matters, Hutchinson has no difficulty using his common sense. It is only when his emotional attachment to a collection of ancient documents is threatened that he feels a need to take leave of his senses.
The facts in this matter are simple enough that any reasonable
person should see them. In his alleged speeches, Jesus referred to
"this generation" in contexts that clearly meant the generation living
in his time. There is nothing in the context of Matthew 24:34 to
indicate that he was using the term any differently, and no one -
including Roger Hutchinson - would argue otherwise if the standard
meaning of the word did not result in an obvious prophecy failure that
proves the Bible to be an errant work.
