GERMAN LANGUAGE PRETERISM
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Seit der Zerstörung des jüdischen Tempels in Jerusalem durch die Römer im Jahre 70 n. Chr. leben die Juden in der Diaspora, also verteilt in aller Welt. Die Hoffnung auf einen eigenen Staat geben sie jedoch nie auf.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID
Thomas Ice: The End Times Controversy: The Second Coming Under Attack (2003) “German Preterism – Firmin Abauzit (1679-1767) of Geneva, who was a friend of Rousseau and Voltaire, published a commentary on Revelation in 1730 titled Historic Discourse on the Apocalypse, in which he advocated a more complete preterist view than his predecessors. Abauzit’s work also broke new ground in that it was the first “in this period to attack the canonical authority of the Apocalypse”
Preterist Moses Stuart says of Abauzit that his “book is generally regarded as marking the commencement of a new period in the criticism of the Apocalypse.” Stuart describes Abauzit’s views as follows: “His starting point was, that the book itself declares that all which it predicts would take place speedily. Hence Rome, in chap, xiii-xix. points figuratively to Jerusalem. Chap. xxi. xxii. relate to the extension of the church, after the destruction of the Jews.”
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is credited with adopting Abauzit’s understanding of the Apocalypse and also saw it as “emphasizing) the Jewish catastrophe.” Herder expressed his views in his book entitled Maranatha, which was published in 1779 “Stuart said this about Herder’s form of preterism: “Although he seems to move in a narrow circle, as to the meaning of the book; limiting it so generally to the Jews, yet he makes God’s dealings with them, and with his church at that period, symbolical of the circumstances of the church in every age.”
In 1791, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827) produced a commentary on Revelation that was exalted, emulated, and admired in critical German circles for many years.137 While Eichhorn did not see all of the Apocalypse being fulfilled in the first century, as did Abauzit and Herder, he did see a number of Jewish fulfillments in the second half of Revelation. Eichhorn was a typical German preterist—he did not believe the Bible was inspired by God, nor did it contain predictive prophecy. Stuart says, “I do not and cannot regard Eichhorn as a believer in Christianity, in the sense in which those are who admit the inspired authority of the Scripture.”
European preterism of the post-Reformation period, especially the German variety, was attractive to those of the liberal persuasion. Froom observes: “Preterist principles have been adopted and adapted by those of rationalistic mind as the easiest way to compass the problem of prophecy, throwing it into the past, where it does not affect life today. It has had a sizable following among rationalists, of which Modernism is the modern counterpart.” Preterists in our own day may be pleased about the historical evidence for the spread of preterism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe. However, they cannot be happy that the foundational support for this growth of preterism was based upon German rationalism and unbelief.” (The End Times Controversy, pp. 55-56)
19TH CENTURY
Dr. W. Hoffman
Julius Kossarski
- Titus ober die Zerstorung Jerusalems (1855 PDF) – Dramatic play
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
- Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Matthew (1858) “This end, the laying waste of the temple and the unparalleled desolation of the land that is to accompany it. ” Translation of: Kritisch exegetisches Handbuch über das Evangelium des Matthäus, Translated into English in 1884
20TH CENTURY
Theodor Klette
- Die Christenkatastrophe Unter Nero (1907 PDF)