Lloyd, I don’t understand what you are saying about using ‘covenant’ rather than ‘historical’. Both thoughts are relevant, but they mean different things.

The word parousia signifies, or at least strongly suggests, a bit more than just ‘presence’. I think it is reasonable to hear in the use of the word biblically the idea of ‘presence as a consequence of a recent coming’ - it records the impact of the new or unexpected presence of a significant figure. To what extent this nuance is meant to capture the ‘coming’ (erchomenon) of Jesus’ recollection of Daniel 7:13 I’m not sure. But the significance of the Son of man vision suggests that movement plays some part in the overall conception - it is just not a movement to earth. You also have the question of whether the thought of the parousia of a ruler to a town has any bearing on Paul’s conception of Christ’s parousia. Here again you have the connotation of coming in order to be present, of a recent arrival. Finally there is the Old Testament motif of YHWH coming from Mount Zion either to judge his people or to rescue them from their enemies - I’m quite sure that this also plays into the overall apocalyptic narrative in the New Testament. This is a hastily thrown together assortment of ideas, but while I agree with the in general terms about the meaning of parousia, I would suggest that the whole notion is a bit more complex than you suggest.

The suggestion that Jesus ‘ascended to the Father’ between the appearance to Mary and the appearance to the disciples in John 20:17-19 seems rather too fanciful, and in any case not easily squared with the narrative in Hebrews 9. I suppose one could just about imagine that John thought that Jesus ascended immediately after the meeting with Mary and then came back again, but to superimpose on this the high priest typology is too speculative for my liking.

I don’t find the argument about the scapegoat very convincing, particularly in relation to Matthew 25:31-46. i) There is no apparent allusion to the scapegoat narrative in this passage - and there are too many goats. ii) It is the nations who are separated, not faithful from apostate Israel. iii) There are three, not two groups involved: the sheep who treat the disciples well, the goats who mistreat them, and the disciples themselves who will suffer hardship and who, I would have thought, correspond most closely to the ‘martyrs’. The sheep are rewarded not for dying but for taking care of the disciples.

I agree with your basic argument about the suffering of the martyrs, but I am also very wary of over-interpreting scripture. We have a bad habit of reading arguments - even good biblical arguments - back into texts where they don’t belong. I’m sure I am guilty of this myself, but I think that the emerging church has a particular aversion to over-enthusiastic theologizing - there is a need, therefore, for restraint, relevance, and realism in our approach to the reading of scripture.