First and Second Thessalonians Read online

  The Beginning of Christian Literature

  As noted above, 1 Thessalonians is often thought to be the oldest of Paul’s surviving letters, and therefore the oldest surviving Christian text. Second Thessalonians may very well be the second oldest. Paul’s Letters are the only ancient Greek letters that many modern readers have ever encountered, so it is easy to miss the ways in which they were very ordinary and the ways in which they show Paul’s creativity. Here are two short, non-Christian letters for comparison. The first was written by a son to encourage his parents, who were worried that they would be caught up in a civil war:

  Esthladas to his father and mother, greetings and health. As I have often written you to be courageous and to take care of yourself until things have settled down, you would once again do well to exhort [parakaleō] yourself and those who are with you to be courageous. For I have just discovered that Paos is sailing up river in the month of Tubi with sufficient forces to subdue the mobs at Hermonthis and to deal with them as rebels. Take care of my sisters also and Pelops, Stachys and Senathuris. Farewell. [Egypt, 130 BC]22

  The second example also happens to be from a son to his mother:

  Apollinarius to Taesis, his mother and lady, many greetings. Before all I pray for your health. I myself am well and make supplication for you before the gods of this place. I wish you to know, mother, that I arrived in Rome in good health on the 25th of the month Pachon and was posted to Misenum, though I have not yet learned the name of my company; for I had not gone to Misenum at the time of writing this letter. I beg you then, mother, look after yourself and do not worry about me; for I have come to a fine place. Please write me a letter about your welfare and that of my brothers and of all your folk. And whenever I find a messenger I will write to you; never will I be slow to write. Many salutations to my brothers and Apollinarius and his children and Karalas and his children. I salute Ptolemaeus and Ptolemais and her children and Heraclous and her children. I salute all who love you, each by name. I pray for your health. [Rome, second century AD]23

  Readers familiar with Paul’s Letters will immediately notice similarities. These letters, like Paul’s and most others, begin with “Person A to Person B, greetings.” After the greeting, many letters include a thanksgiving section in which the author reports thanking or praying to the gods on the recipient’s behalf. In the second letter quoted above, the soldier tells his mother that he makes “supplication for you before the gods of this place.” Paul’s Letters typically include a similar thanksgiving section. Like 1 and 2 Thessalonians, both of these letters attempt to comfort the recipients with news that will ease their worries. Also like the Thessalonian letters, the first letter exhorts (parakaleō) the recipients to a certain type of behavior (e.g., 1 Thess 4:1).24 Finally, letters often conclude with greetings from those who are present with the author, as well as to those present with the recipient. We see such greetings in the second letter above and often in Paul’s Letters (e.g., Phil 4:21–22).25

  What would have stood out to the Thessalonians is the way Paul tinkered with letter-writing conventions. In the opening of the letter he changes the word “greetings” (chairein) to the related noun charis (“grace” or “gift”) and adds the traditional Jewish greeting “peace” (Greek eirēnē), from the Hebrew shalom. The Pauline greeting “grace and peace” also appears in various forms at the conclusions of his letters, replacing the typical “farewell.” The result is a subtle reminder at the beginning and end of his letters of God’s generosity, a key motif in his thought. Paul’s Letters are also unusual because he writes as part of a team, including Silvanus and Timothy in the opening introduction and frequently speaking in the first-person plural (“we”). Moreover, unlike most letters, these were written to be read aloud to a gathered assembly (1 Thess 5:27). Finally, the length and complexity of Paul’s Letters along with the authority with which he speaks in them give his letters unusual gravitas. It has been suggested that all these factors came together to form a new epistolary genre, the apostolic letter.26 With the benefit of hindsight, we can certainly say that 1 Thessalonians kicked off a tradition of Christian letter writing that continued in later New Testament books and the Church Fathers.27

  The Thessalonian Letters in the Church

  First Thessalonians has always belonged in the context of worship, beginning with Paul’s command that the letter be read out loud to the gathered church (5:27). After the Thessalonians heard the letter, it is likely that they retained a copy for future reference. Paul and his coworkers may have also kept copies of these and other letters.28 As the years went by, the Thessalonians may have traded copies of Paul’s Letters with other churches, as the churches in Colossae and Laodicea were instructed to do (Col 4:16).29 We don’t have any direct evidence of how 1 and 2 Thessalonians were used in the remaining decades of the first century, but from around AD 100 we find Christian writers using phrases that seem to have been gleaned from them, either directly or through the language of the letters passing into common Christian parlance.30 For instance, the late first-century letter 1 Clement describes how a bishop should act in a “blameless and holy way” (amemptōs kai hosiōs [44.4]), which is very similar to the description of the apostles in 1 Thess 2:10.31 St. Polycarp, a bishop of Smyrna until his martyrdom in the mid-second century, wrote a letter to the church in Philippi asking them to “shun every kind of evil” (To the Philippians 11.1; see 1 Thess 5:22) and not to treat erring Christians as enemies (To the Philippians 11.4; see 2 Thess 3:15). Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyon both discuss the coming of the lawless one (see 2 Thess 2:3–9), and Irenaeus is clearly well acquainted with 1 and 2 Thessalonians.32 The oldest surviving collection of Paul’s Letters, which dates roughly to around 200, includes 1 Thessalonians and probably 2 Thessalonians as well.33 Both letters appear on all the earliest lists of the New Testament canon.34

  The earliest and best commentary on the Thessalonian letters is that of St. John Chrysostom (d. 407). This commentary is actually a series of homilies, but Chrysostom lingers over Paul’s every word and expects the listening congregation to do the same.35 Chrysostom revered Paul for his pastoral wisdom, and this makes his homilies on the Thessalonian letters particularly good. Unlike some of Paul’s other letters, 1–2 Thessalonians do not attempt a great deal of theological heavy lifting. They are primarily letters of consolation and moral exhortation, both of which Chrysostom delights in bringing to his congregation. In the years and centuries to follow, commentators on the Thessalonian letters such as Theodoret of Cyrus (d. ca. 457) and John Damascene (seventh–eighth century) owed much to Chrysostom’s homilies. The present commentary turns to Chrysostom for help time and again.

  From late antiquity into the medieval period, readers read 1–2 Thessalonians for pastoral wisdom. In 1564, the Catechism of the Council of Trent cited the description of the apostles’ behavior (1 Thess 2:1–12) as a template for how parish priests should behave. The Thessalonian letters have also been an important source of instruction on the obligation of Christians to work rather than relying on others (see especially 1 Thess 4:9–12 and 2 Thess 3:6–15). In the ancient Church these passages were important for monks who taught one another that loafing and taking handouts would be their spiritual doom. Above all, 1–2 Thessalonians have been read in the Church as advent letters; that is, they speak of the future coming of the Lord. Paul’s prayers that God would find the Church worthy at the last judgment are echoed in various Church liturgies from the ancient Church to today (see Reflection and Application on 2 Thess 1:11–12). Late ancient and medieval Christians pored over Paul’s description of the lawless one (2 Thess 2:3), debating whether this would be a particular individual, perhaps someone already alive, or whether this was a description of anyone who opposes God. The best-known and best-loved passage in these letters is 1 Thess 4:13–18, where Paul comforts the Thessalonians with the news that the dead in Christ are not lost but rather will be raised and reunited with the Lord and with the living.

  1. For a recen
t attempt to figure out the order in which Paul’s Letters were written, see Douglas A. Campbell, Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014). Campbell dates 1 Thessalonians to the early 40s, almost a decade earlier than most scholars.

  2. Cassander named the city after his wife, Thessalonikē, who was Alexander the Great’s half-sister. See Strabo, Geography 7.21.

  3. The work of Charles Edson is still helpful. See “Cults of Thessalonica,” HTR 41 (1948): 153–204.

  4. Acts 17:2 could imply that Paul was in Thessalonica for only two or three weeks, but Paul was in Thessalonica long enough to receive assistance from Philippi more than once (Phil 4:16).

  5. Many today suppose on the basis of Acts 18:5 that Timothy rejoined Paul in Corinth and that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians from there. Conversely, some ancient manuscripts of 1 Thessalonians label it as having been written in Athens, a view that is based on a plausible interpretation of 1 Thess 3:1–6. Either city is a possibility.

  6. For other issues related to love of neighbor, see 1 Thess 5:12–15.

  7. Acts 17:1–4 mentions that some Jews in Thessalonica were persuaded by Paul’s message, but the letter’s recipients are explicitly described as former idol worshipers. Nijay K. Gupta has argued that these former idol worshipers could include “God-fearers” (“The Thessalonian Believers, Formerly ‘Pagans’ or ‘God-Fearers’? Challenging a Stubborn Consensus,” Neotestamentica 52 [2018]: 91–113).

  8. See, e.g., 1 Cor 8; 10.

  9. Karl P. Donfried, “The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Correspondence,” NTS 31 (1985): 336–56. On Acts 17, see C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 91–103.

  10. Some argue that 1 Thess 2:13–16 was added by a later editor. See commentary on that passage.

  11. Based on Paul Foster’s informal survey at the 2011 British New Testament Conference. See Foster, “Who Wrote 2 Thessalonians? A Fresh Look at an Old Problem,” JSNT 35 (2012): 150–75, esp. 171.

  12. For a full-length defense of the non-Pauline origin of 2 Thessalonians, including possible scenarios not discussed here, see, e.g., M. Eugene Boring, I & II Thessalonians, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 209–27. For a full defense of Pauline authorship, see, e.g., Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 32B (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 349–74.

  13. Biblical commentators have often claimed that writing in the name of others was seen as morally unproblematic, but recent studies have rightly challenged this. See, most recently, Armin D. Baum, “Content and Form: Authorship Attribution and Pseudonymity in Ancient Speeches, Letters, Lectures, and Translations—A Rejoinder to Bart Ehrman,” JBL 136 (2017): 381–403.

  14. See the table in Béda Rigaux, Saint Paul: Les Épitres aux Thessaloniciens, EBib (Paris: Lecoffre, 1956), 133–34.

  15. In 1983 I. Howard Marshall noted the flimsiness of this argument; see 1 and 2 Thessalonians, NCBC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 34.

  16. See the summary in Campbell, Framing Paul, 205–16.

  17. Rigaux, Les Épitres aux Thessaloniciens, 152.

  18. Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 357.

  19. Campbell, Framing Paul, 201–2.

  20. In the commentary I note occasionally how certain passages would be understood differently if the letter had been written by someone else.

  21. See Thomas Aquinas, Principium biblicum 2.1204.

  22. P.Dryton 36. Translation from Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity, LEC 5 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 97–98.

  23. P.Mich. 8 491 (A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, trans., Select Papyri, vol. 1, Private Documents, Loeb Classical Library 266 [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1932], 303).

  24. Stowers (Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 96–97) gives this letter and 1 Thessalonians as examples of paraenetic letters—that is, letters written to commend certain types of behavior and to discourage others.

  25. For a list of epistolary clichés running throughout 1 Thessalonians, see Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 90.

  26. Boring, I & II Thessalonians, 38.

  27. See, e.g., 1 Clement.

  28. Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 96–101.

  29. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 96–101.

  30. See Rigaux, Les Épitres aux Thessaloniciens, 112–20.

  31. The words amemptōs and hosiōs never appear together in Greek literature until 1 Thess 2:10 and then 1 Clement, according to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database.

  32. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 32.4; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.6.5.

  33. Chester Beatty Papyrus 46. Not all of Papyrus 46 has survived, but it would have had room for 2 Thessalonians.

  34. Both 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians are missing from the list given in the sixth-century codex Claromontanus, but this is usually thought to be accidental.

  35. It is not clear if these homilies were preached in Antioch or Constantinople, nor is it clear that they were preached sequentially. See Pauline Allen, “John Chrysostom’s Homilies on I and II Thessalonians: The Preacher and His Audience,” StPatr 31 (1997): 3–21.

  Outline of First and Second Thessalonians

  Outline of First Thessalonians

  I. Address (1:1)

  II. Thanksgiving (1:2–3:13)

  A. The Thessalonians’ Reception of the Gospel (1:2–10)

  B. The Apostles’ Behavior in Thessalonica (2:1–12)

  C. Second Thanksgiving for Enduring Opposition (2:13–16)

  D. Timothy’s Good Report (2:17–3:10)

  E. Transitional Prayer (3:11–13)

  III. Exhortation (4:1–5:22)

  A. Introduction (4:1–2)

  B. Fornication (4:3–8)

  C. Brotherly Love and Manual Labor (4:9–12)

  D. The Fate of Dead Christians and the Return of the Lord (4:13–18)

  E. The Suddenness of the Lord’s Coming (5:1–11)

  F. Final Admonitions (5:12–22)

  IV. Conclusion (5:23–28)

  Outline of Second Thessalonians

  I. Address (1:1–2)

  II. Thanksgiving and Exhortation (1:3–3:5)

  A. Justice for Persecutors and Their Victims (1:3–12)

  B. Events Preceding the Day of the Lord (2:1–12)

  C. Second Thanksgiving (2:13–17)

  D. Prayer for the Apostles and the Thessalonians (3:1–5)

  III. Commands Regarding Work (3:6–15)

  A. The Disorderly Idle (3:6–12)

  B. Instructions for Everyone Else (3:13–15)

  IV. Conclusion (3:16–18)

  Thanksgiving for God’s Work in Thessalonica

  1 Thessalonians 1:1–10

  Ever since Paul was torn away from the new Christians at Thessalonica he longed to return to them and encourage them in their newfound faith. Here in the letter’s opening we see him doing what he had wanted to do in person. He reassures them by reminding them of his ongoing prayers on their behalf. He also recounts the astonishing work of God among them that has enabled them to set out on a new way of life in service to God.

  Letter Opening (1:1)

  1Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace.

  NT: Acts 15–17; 2 Thess 1:1–2

  Catechism: the Church, 751–52; grace, 1996–2005

  [1:1]

  Artists have often imagined Paul alone at a desk, pen in hand, thoughtfully writing to his churches. Deservedly famous works such as Rembrandt’s St. Paul at His Writing Desk or Valentin de Boulogne’s Saint Paul Writing His Epistles continue to shape the way we imagine the apostle at work. Yet right from the beginning of 1 Thessalonians we notice a problem with the image of Paul as solitar
y genius, for this letter says that it is from Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. Paul is working as part of a team here, as he does in five of his letters. The Latin name “Silvanus” almost certainly refers to the companion of Paul known as Silas in the book of Acts. According to Acts, Silas was one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:22) who had accompanied Paul to Thessalonica (17:1–10). Timothy, the other coauthor mentioned in this letter, was one of Paul’s closest companions. In his letter to the Philippians Paul says that Timothy served alongside of him “as a child with a father” (Phil 2:22). Paul also refers to him as a “beloved and faithful son in the Lord” (1 Cor 4:17), “co-worker” (Rom 16:21), and “brother” (1 Thess 3:2). It is with these trusted companions that Paul writes to the Thessalonians. Also, Paul would not have been holding the pen. Instead, he would have dictated to a scribe.1

  Figure 2. Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632). [Public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

  Did Silvanus and Timothy help Paul compose the letter? Scholars are divided on this question. It is clear that Paul is the principal author. His name is listed first, and in 2:18 he refers to himself in the first-person singular (“We decided to go to you—I, Paul, not only once but more than once”). At the same time, the very fact that Paul singles himself out in 2:18 suggests that the rest of the letter is from Silvanus and Timothy as well. Moreover, Paul frequently mentions coworkers who are with him without mentioning them as authors in the opening address.2 He also dictated to scribes who were present but not listed as authors (Rom 16:22; 1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11). This shows that Paul did not list his companions as coauthors simply because they were nearby when he was writing. Though we will never know precisely what role Silvanus and Timothy played in composing the letter, we should presume that the Thessalonian Christians read it as if it were from all three men, but with Paul as the leading voice.