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The Bible and the translation · Claim record

The Kingdom Interlinear's appendix moves in a single paragraph from the lexical claim that παρουσία means “presence” to the doctrinal claim that at Matthew 24:3 it “refers to the royal presence of Jesus Christ since his enthronement as King in the last days of this system of things” — that is, to an invisible presence beginning in 1914. Nothing in the lexical evidence supplies that date or that invisibility.

Claim ID claim-bible-parousia-1914-inferenceConcerns 1985Strong implication
Strong implication · 1985 Verified

The Kingdom Interlinear's appendix moves in a single paragraph from the lexical claim that παρουσία means “presence” to the doctrinal claim that at Matthew 24:3 it “refers to the royal presence of Jesus Christ since his enthronement as King in the last days of this system of things” — that is, to an invisible presence beginning in 1914. Nothing in the lexical evidence supplies that date or that invisibility. The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell, Scott and Jones), 1940

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The organisation's appendix supports the lexical point from Liddell and Scott, the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and Israel P. Warren's The Parousia (1879), and treats the application to Christ's enthronement as following from the Bible as a whole rather than from the word alone.

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, “Appendix 3B: Christ’s Presence (Parousia)”

1985 · pp.1147-1149 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“The word pa·rou·siʹa occurs 24 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures … In these 24 places the New World Translation renders pa·rou·siʹa as “presence.” … Liddell and Scott’s A Greek-English Lexicon, 1968, p. 1343, gives as the first definition of pa·rou·siʹa the English word presence. … In Matthew 24:3, as well as in other texts such as 1 Thessalonians 3:13 and 2 Thessalonians 2:1, the word pa·rou·siʹa refers to the royal presence of Jesus Christ since his enthronement as King in the last days of this system of things.”

The organisation's defence of 'presence', and the doctrinal conclusion drawn from it. The appendix also quotes Israel P. Warren's 1879 book The Parousia at length and Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker on parousia as 'the official term for a visit of a person of high rank'.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Appendix opened in full on wol.jw.org on 19 September 2026; page markers 1147, 1148 and 1149 read from the page-number spans. I confirmed from Liddell, Scott and Jones directly that 'presence' is indeed sense A; I have not opened Warren (1879) or the printed BAGD.

Corroborated by. src-nwtv-lsj-parousia

Notes. The final sentence is the load-bearing one for the 1914 doctrine: the lexical claim ('presence') and the doctrinal claim ('since his enthronement as King') are placed side by side, but the second does not follow from the first.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-nwtv-int-app3b

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell, Scott and Jones), “παρουσία”

1940 · entry παρουσία · Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, revised by Sir Henry Stuart Jones · Clarendon Press, Oxford; digital text hosted by the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University

“παρουσ-ία, ἡ, (πάρειμι) A. presence, of persons, δεσπότου, etc., A. Pers. 169 … 2. arrival, ἡμῶν κοινόπουν π. S. El. 1104, cf. E. Alc. 209, Th.1.128 … 5. in NT, the Advent, Ev.Matt.24.27, al.”

Liddell, Scott and Jones give ‘presence’ as sense A.1 and ‘arrival’ as sense A.2, so ‘presence’ is a well-attested classical sense. The same entry also gives, as sense A.5, ‘in NT, the Advent’, citing Matthew 24:27 — the New Testament sense the lexicon itself distinguishes from the classical ones.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The Perseus entry page was opened on 19 September 2026 and the entry text read directly from the page HTML. I did not consult a printed copy of LSJ, so no page number of the printed lexicon is recorded. Independent audit, 19 September 2026: the earlier version of this record quoted only senses A.1 and A.2 and omitted sense A.5, ‘in NT, the Advent, Ev.Matt.24.27’, which bears directly on the passage at issue. Sense A.5 has been added so that the record does not present the lexicon as more favourable to one side than it is.

Scan provenance. Perseus Digital Library's digitisation of the 1940 ninth edition.

Corroborated by. src-nwtv-int-app3b

Notes. This confirms the Kingdom Interlinear appendix's citation of Liddell and Scott, and also shows what that appendix does not mention: that the same entry gives 'arrival' as a second sense.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-nwtv-lsj-parousia

Claim page

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