‘For a Meeting With the Lord in the Air’: The Early Christian Exegesis of 1 Thess. 4:13–18

Abstract In a 1930 article, Erik Peterson argued that in 1 Thess. 4:13–18 Paul presents the Parousia of the Lord as an adventus. Much as emperors and other figures of note were received with a meeting outside the city walls and then escorted into their polis by the inhabitants, so Paul’s language implies that the faithful, after meeting the Lord in the air, accompanied him to the earth. Peterson argued that Paul did not describe the return to the earth because he did not need to; he could count on his readers assuming it. It would serve to confirm Peterson’s hypothesis if it could be shown that early Christian interpreters shared this reading of 1 Thessalonians. A careful examination of the patristic evidence from the early fifth century back to the late second century demonstrates that while this was not the only interpretation on offer, it was the earliest and continued well after the demise of millenarianism. The other main interpretation, that of an immediate departure into heaven, first appears in the mid-third century.