Excellent article on various interpretive models

[RabbiKnife]

Just for grins, and some actual thinking.

https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/49/49-4/JETS_49-4_767-796_Noe.pdf

[agnostic]

Thanks for the link. I'll give it a read over lunch.

[agnostic]

I found the article a good introduction, but I have criticisms in its categorization method.

1. The author, Noē, says the "four major" views are preterism, premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. This is a mixture of categories. The first is a view on when the Revelation is fulfilled (our past), and should have been listed alongside futurism (our future), historicism (across history), idealism (abstractly). The other three are a secondary view on when Jesus returns relative to the millennium (before, after, after), and what the millennium's nature is (literal, symbolic, either). I can't think of any other author who mixes the categories like Noē does.

2. Noē claims that preterism is one of the "four major" views. This would normally be fine, except he specifically mentions that by "preterism" he means "full preterism," which is not how most people use the word. And though preterism is a major view, "full preterism" has never been a major view. I doubt there are hard numbers on this, but I would guess that fewer than 1% of all preterists are "full" preterists, so "full" preterism doesn't deserve its own category.

3. Another major problem with his version of the "four major" views is with the other three he lists. Premil, amil, and postmil are all views on when Jesus returns relative to the millennium, and what the millennium actually is. He never explains what they are -- search in the PDF, the words "millennium" and "thousand" are never used -- so why is he using them as categories in the first place?

Noē should have listed the "four major" views like everyone else does: preterist, futurist, historicist, idealist. He could have relegated full preterism to a single paragraph under the umbrella of preterism, and he could have explored how the three millennium views manifest within each of the other four categories (example: amillennial preterism usually looks like this, while postmillennial preterism looks like that).

I have thoughts on the views themselves, but I won't tread over those here. These are just my thoughts on how the article could have been improved as a whole.

[RabbiKnife]

I understand that.  I too felt there was some mixing of apples and Studebakers, but, then, imprecision is the science and art of expositional explanation!