In a later issue, Mark Smith's reply to Hutchinson's article will be published, but I will use the limited space now available to comment on two of his quibbles and to point out some major issues in the genea debate that Hutchinson has conveniently evaded. Quibbling and evading have always been Hutchinson's stock in trade, so in that respect his article above was no surprise.
The first quibble: Hutchinson spent much of his time accusing Smith of having selected translations of Matthew 24:34 that agree with his position. This, of course, is ludicrous, coming from someone who was caught shopping around for a translation of Jeremiah 7:22-23 that would fit the meaning he was reading into it. This is now the third time that I have mentioned this in reply to Hutchinson's continued accusations that his other opponents and I quote only Bible translations and commentators who agree with us. I deny that we do this, but if he is going to constantly accuse us of it, the least he could do would be to refrain from it himself. His hypocrisy in this matter brings to mind a scripture that he may want to give some thought to: "Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.... (Y)ou, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You that forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you rob temples? You that boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law" (Rom. 2:1, 21-23)? An appropriate paraphrase of this passage could be directed at Hutchinson: "You who preach against translation shopping, do you shop for translations yourself?"
Smith's use of translations in the genea debate is not even close to what Hutchinson did in quoting the NIV rendition of the passage in Jeremiah. Smith quoted 52 different English translations of Matthew 24:34, so obviously he wasn't picking out only those translations that agreed with his position, because it would be difficult to find 52 different translations that agreed with one's position unless there was a virtually unanimous consensus on the meaning of the text. Hutchinson, on the other hand, quoted only the NIV in trying to show that the text in Jeremiah really meant that at the time of the exodus Yahweh had not spoken to the Israelites only about burnt offerings and sacrifices. He quoted only this one version because it was the only translation he could find that had put the idea of "only" or "just" into the text. If he could have found 50 versions that supported this translation, you can be sure that he wouldn't have hesitated to cite them.
Hutchinson's definition: Both Smith and Rainey have pointed out that Hutchinson has created a definition of genea that has nothing to support it except a fanatical desire to remove a discrepancy from the Bible. Hutchinson brushed aside Smith's observation on this point by saying that maybe "some generous reader could send Mr. Smith a decent dictionary and paper clip the page on which the term, generation is defined." Well, I would certainly appreciate Hutchinson's gift of a dictionary so paper-clipped to show the definition he is defending, i. e., one that would be applicable to a group of people over a period of thousands of years. I just haven't been able to find one that supports that meaning.
Even if Hutchinson could shop around and find a dictionary with that definition, it would be irrelevant, because the issue is not what the English word generation can mean but what the Greek word genea, which Jesus used in Matthew 24:34 meant. On this matter, Hutchinson struck out swinging, because he, in effect, admitted that lexicons define genea in just two ways: (1) a "whole multitude of men living at the same period of time..." (2) "a group of people living specifically at the time of Christ...." Either definition pretty well leaves Hutchinson up that famous creek without a paddle, because neither definition will fit the meaning that he is trying to give genea.
The second quibble: That brings us to Hutchinson's second quibble, which is the old "contextual" one, for where the ellipses (...) appear in the quotations above, Hutchinson parenthetically threw in that these definitions must be determined by "context." Well, of course, we knew that. Whenever an inerrantist is confronted with a clear discrepancy in the Bible, you can count on hearing him talk about context, but context is the very thing that Hutchinson has not been able to deal with in this discussion. In my part of this discussion, I have dismantled the "proof texts" that Hutchinson used to try to show that genea could mean people with common characteristics who lived over extended periods of time, and I did this through contextual analyses that plainly showed that Jesus was using the word in reference to the people he was speaking to.
One of these texts was Matthew 16:4, where Jesus told those who had asked to see a sign that "(a)n evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." From this "context" Hutchinson determined that the genea (generation) Jesus meant here was just a group of people who seek signs regardless of when they may live, but I examined the context of a parallel passage in Matthew 12:39 ( which Hutchinson had also quoted) to show that Jesus obviously meant the generation of people living at that time, because he went on to say that "(t)he men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here" (v:41). He added that the same was true of "the queen of the south," because she had come from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, but "a greater than Solomon was here." There is no way that the context of this passage could make these statements applicable to just any people who seek after signs regardless of when they may live, because Jesus allegedly lived at a particular time, so he would not be present in every generation to give the people living at that time the opportunity to hear his preaching and wisdom. "This generation," as Jesus used it, clearly referred to the people he was speaking to at the time.
Context is certainly important in determining the meaning of texts, but Hutchinson, like most inerrantists, is not content to let the context interpret meaning. If the context indicates a discrepancy, the inerrantist will force the context to say what he wants it to say. Hutchinson is doing that in the case of Matthew 24:34. In "When the Fig Tree Puts Forth Its Leaves" (May/June 1999, p. 16), I showed that the statement about the generation that would not pass away "till all these things be accomplished " was in the context of a speech that Jesus made to a specific audience, which he repeatedly addressed as you (plural).
We should also notice that in his analogy of the fig tree, Jesus was speaking in the second person to his disciples. An examination of the chapter will show that he had done this consistently all the way through his discourse. He said to them that you will hear of wars and rumors of wars and went on to say that you should not be troubled (v:6). He told them that persecutors would deliver you up to tribulation and to kill you (v:9). He told them that you will see the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place" (v:15).
A much longer discussion of this point is in the original
article, which neither Hutchinson nor anyone else defending the
accuracy of Jesus's statement has yet addressed. Clearly, Jesus was
telling his disciples that you [they] would experience all of
these things; hence, there is no contextual basis for Hutchinson's
claim that in saying "when you see all these things you
know that he is near" (v:33), Jesus was referring to a distant
generation.
