Footnote

a In the expression “this generation,” a form of the demonstrative pronoun houʹtos well corresponds to the English word “this.” It can refer to something present or before the speaker. But it can also have other meanings. The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (1991) notes: “The word [houʹtos] designates an immediate fact. Thus the [aion houʹtos] is the ‘presently existing world’ . . . and the [geneaʹ haute] is the ‘generation now living’ (e.g., Matt 12:41f., 45; 24:34).” Dr. George B. Winer writes: “The pronoun [houʹtos] sometimes refers, not to the noun locally nearest, but to one more remote, which, as the principal subject, was mentally the nearest, the most present to the writer’s thoughts.”​—A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, 7th edition, 1897.