preteristn.adj.

1844 G. S. Faber Sacred Cal. Prophecy (ed. 2) I. Advt. p. xviii To consider certain vituperative prophecies..as already accomplished in the course of the first and second centuries: whence, to commentators of this School, we may fitly apply the name of Preterists.

1854 D. S. Desprez Apocal. Fulfilled i. 2 We have Præterists and Futurists—one class of interpreters believing that the Apocalypse was fulfilled in the first three or four centuries of the Christian æra; another class maintaining that, with the exception of the three first chapters, none of it is fulfilled.

1860 B. Jowett in Ess. & Rev. 371 The Preterists and Futurists..may alike claim the authority of the Book of Daniel, or the Revelation.

1988 Eng. Churchman 20 Nov. 2/3 There were then only three prominent praeterists.

2002 San Diego Union-Trib. (Nexis) 26 Nov. (Lifestyle section) e2 In short, preterists take seriously the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:34, which says, ‘I (Jesus) tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.’

1864 Webster's Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. 1033/3 Preterist, one whose chief interest is in the past.

1925 Indiana (Pa.) Evening Gaz. 7 Nov. 2/1 There is going on in New York today, under a Hungarian artist who is by no means a preterist, an experiment which carries the pendulum back to the seventeenth-century days of Antwerp and the studio of Peter Paul Rubens.

1938 S. Beckett Murphy ix. 183 So far as the prophetic status of the celestial bodies was concerned Murphy had become an out-and-out preterist.

1962 V. Nabokov Pale Fire 35 A preterist: one who collects cold nests.

1846 E. B. Elliott Horæ Apocalypticæ (ed. 2) IV. App. 470 In Germany Alcasar's præterist scheme continued to meet with chief favor.

1872 New Englander (New Haven, Connecticut) Jan. 185 He undertakes to expound or defend formally and systematically no one of the varied prophetic theories, be they ‘historical’, ‘preterist’ or ‘futurist’, which divide apocalyptic expositors.

1878 H. G. Guinness Approaching End of Age (1880) 93 Preterist, Futurist and Presentist schemes of interpretation.

1904 G. Smith Short Hist. Christian Missions i. iv. 43 A Praeterist, or a Futurist interpretation of its visions.

1975 Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) 23 June 2 a/2 (advt.) Luis de Alcazar devised the preterist system. His doctrine was that Revelation deals with events in the Pagan Roman Empire.

2002 Time 29 July 10/2 We believe that all the prophecies given by Jesus Christ and his Apostles were fulfilled at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in A.D. 70. You should have..at least informed your readers of the preterist view.