The letters to the Thessalonians were elements of an innovative solution to a grave predicament. The apostles had been thrown out of town and were banned from returning. They had removed themselves to a distance of 190 miles (300 km) as the crow flies. Now, how could they keep in touch with their newly planted church? In the case of these letters, there were exceptional circumstances: the church was only a few months old; it was undergoing fierce harassment; persecution had cut off their lines of communication to the apostles; Satan himself was conspiring to keep the apostles and the church apart. The Thessalonian church urgently needed a word of encouragement from its founders.
In the middle of this crisis, Paul and Silas fixed on a fresh stratagem: they commissioned the junior member of the missionary team to serve as their traveling representative. While in hindsight this method seems characteristically Pauline (see Acts 19:22), it may not have been an obvious choice when he first tried it. After all, Timothy himself was new to the ministry. Nevertheless, he put himself at risk, traveling north and slipping into Thessalonica, not once, but three times (a subsequent visit after the church was planted and then to deliver the two letters). While there, he would have acted by the light of “What would Paul and Silas do?” His commission also involved listening and observing. He needed to return safely to Paul and Silas to tell them the questions that the church was asking. The crucial first round trip resulted in the writing and sending of 1 Thessalonians.
Paul and Silas were hugely relieved when Timothy returned from that first deputation to tell them that there was still a Thessalonian church. The church had not only survived hell’s onslaught but was positively thriving: “just now Timothy has come to us from you and has announced the good news” (1 Thess 3:6). First Thessalonians is an outpouring of their relief and gratitude to God for his protection of their Thessalonian “children.”
On his second and third trips to Thessalonica, Timothy arrived with a small scroll in his baggage.1 The two Thessalonian letters are short notes and can be read one after the other in less than an hour. The first letter especially sparkles with life: reading it aloud in the Greek lets the hearer capture the alliteration and other devices that Paul included—for example, the repetitive use of π in 1 Thess 1:2. Paul also favored triads, groups of three words to express a theme in a striking manner (so 1:5—“not simply as words … but also with miracles and in the operation of the Holy Spirit, and in the great sense of certainty”). They were read to all the local brothers and sisters (5:27). Within a few years, the letters were copied and collected for the edification of all Christians, people far separated in space and time from the original recipients. Thus, these early examples of long-distance apostolic communication came to form part of the canon.
Letters, carried and interpreted by Paul’s associates, were the medium by which any Pauline church could hear from its apostle within weeks of having posed questions to him, even if he were in another region. Only in the last century and a half has the speed of interchurch communication surpassed what Paul attained when he sent 1 Thessalonians.
Thessalonica, a city at the crossroads. From AD 44 on, Thessalonica served as the provincial capital of Macedonia. Like many of Paul’s urban centers, it was a well-populated city that was built on a crossroads. It was a stopping point along the Via Egnatia, the Roman road that ran from Byzantium (Istanbul) westward, eventually terminating at the embarking point for travel by sea to Italy and Rome. Thessalonica lay ninety miles (144 km) west along the Via from Philippi. It also straddled north-south trade routes. Thessalonica was, and still is, a natural port. The southwest view from the city across the bay is stunning; there is Mount Olympus, home of the pantheon headed by Zeus.
As a “free city,” Thessalonica had a fair amount of local autonomy that the city’s leaders were anxious to retain; this may explain why the local officials seemed particularly nervous about political disturbances. The city was a prominent center for the worship of the Roman emperors.
Thessalonian Jews. Jews had imperial permission to acquire land and erect synagogues, conduct regular worship, and raise funds to send to Jerusalem. Despite their legal status, many of their neighbors disliked Jews as a people (see comments on 1 Thess 2:14–16). For example, Roman historian Tacitus “criticizes Jewish proselytism, misanthropy, separatism, and their refusal to worship the emperor.”2
Acts 17:1–2 indicates that the Thessalonian Jews, unlike their counterparts in Philippi, possessed their own synagogue building.3 Jews met on the Sabbath to recite creedal statements, pray, hear the Scriptures read, hear some sort of exposition and exhortation, and perhaps sing. If Gentiles wished to hear the Bible taught, they might have had to stand apart from the Jewish worshipers. Perhaps they would hear a message similar to this:
Let us, therefore, fix deeply in ourselves this first commandment as the most sacred of all commandments, to think that there is but one God, the most highest, and to honour him alone; and let not the polytheistical doctrine ever even touch the ears of any man who is accustomed to seek for the truth, with purity and sincerity of heart.4
Thessalonian pagans. Most Westerners are familiar with the labors of Hercules or other classical myths and legends. Nevertheless, one cannot understand a religion simply by reading its formative stories. Greek religion was a system of rituals directed to heaven. Ritual was vital in popular thinking. Worshipers had to perform visible actions, since the gods could not read minds and could only understand people’s motives through what they did.
Religion existed on two levels, the civic and the domestic. To be a good citizen meant to pay respect to the patron deities. This included participation in feasts, sacrifices, celebrations, games, and other public events. Every occasion had its religious turn, from banquets to games to business transactions.
Domestic religion involved women more than did the public; it was their temple, although the male head of the family was the titular priest. There were household shrines to Hestia, goddess of the hearth. Banquets were dedicated to the gods. Births, marriages, rites of passage, and funerals all included their religious element. Fortune-telling and astrology were important facets of life; so were pilgrimages to oracle shrines (such as the famous one at Delphi): people sought answers to questions of love, success at business, and health.
Jews in Thessalonica were taught to live in accordance with the Mosaic law; meanwhile, the Gentiles lived according to an entirely different set of mores. The gods of Mount Olympus were said to live as lusty mortals would, if mortals had magical powers. More sophisticated Macedonians would have regarded the sexual adventures of the gods as metaphors, designed to teach some philosophical truth or another.
Thessalonica had all the vices of any bustling trade city. Theatrical works slid more and more toward the violent and sexually crude. Arrivals by sea or land would demand drink, gambling, and sex, and part of the economy of the city was keeping its visitors satisfied. Young men in particular were expected to have an active sex life, with slaves, prostitutes, or lovers. Engaging in too much sex was thought to be a sign of self-indulgence and economic wantonness, but not an offense against God or the gods. Bisexuality was more common in Macedonia and Achaia than in other parts of the empire, especially because of the shortage of marriageable women.5 Friendships between men even might be cemented by a sexual relationship. Forcible homosexual intercourse was shameful only for the “female” in the relationship. Women for their part were expected to keep themselves faithful to their husbands, in great part so that they were guaranteed to bear only legitimate children. Not all women kept themselves faithful. Men were expected to keep their wives from any embarrassing fallout from their activities; fathering illegitimate children was one sure way to shame the wife.6
Some have suggested that the Thessalonians in particular had depraved sex lives, based on infiltration of the so-called Cabiri cult into local culture.7 This was a mystery cult based on the myth of how two brothers kill a third brother. The nature of their practices is obscure, in part because of the difficulty in excavating the ancient city. Some have suggested that there was a gross sex cult in Thessalonica that emphasized the male organ; this suggests a possible background for Paul’s use of σκεῦος (lit.,“vessel”) with the meaning of male genitals in 1 Thess 4:4. Nevertheless, Koester gives a wise summing up when he says that while the Cabiri cult was present, we have little idea what it was like and no clue as to whether Paul was writing against it in 1 Thess 4.8 At this time it seems best not to appeal to the Cabiri cult in favor of any particular exegesis.
What we call Paul’s second missionary journey began around the year AD 49, some time after the Jerusalem Council had affirmed that Gentiles were full Christians and not obligated to follow the Mosaic covenant (Acts 15:1–29). The team launched out from Antioch (15:40) and, at the beginning, consisted only of Paul and Silas; along the way they added young Timothy (16:1–3). The journey began as an inspection tour of the churches that Paul and Barnabas had planted in Galatia. Although the team apparently had designs to go on to evangelize western Asia Minor (16:6–8), they were summoned by God to preach in Macedonia (16:9–10). They began with the city of Philippi, where they planted a church but also receive a vicious whipping from the Roman authorities (16:11–40).9 From there they followed the Via Egnatia westward to Thessalonica.
The walk to Thessalonica would have taken about four days if Paul and Silas were able to maintain a normal pace after their beating in Philippi. Paul, Silas, and Timothy are the only three ever mentioned in connection with the work in that city; the three also seem to have labored together in the subsequent ministry in Corinth (2 Cor 1:19).
For those fortunate enough to have seen Paul on his first Sabbath there, they heard a word of exhortation from a man who, with his companion, had obviously been physically abused in a brutal fashion. The gossip was that they had been shamed: accused of being instigators, publicly stripped of their clothes, beaten with rods, and then thrown into prison (see 1 Thess 2:2). Paul availed himself of his right to speak in the Thessalonian synagogue, always focusing on a scriptural exposition of how a man named Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 17:2–3).
The author of Acts states that Paul spent “three Sabbath days” in Thessalonica (Acts 17:2). It is virtually certain that he is referring only to the initial stage of their work there and not to their entire stay. (1) Luke tends to telescope events together in order to focus on his larger theological interests, not on the small details. (2) From what may be gleaned from the Thessalonian letters, the depth of their doctrinal understanding seems well out of proportion to a visit of only a few weeks. (3) Time would have been needed for the team to show themselves a model of manual labor (1 Thess 2:9; 2 Thess 3:6–9). (4) Time would also have been needed for the conversion of Gentiles straight out of paganism (1 Thess 1:9), people who would have taken more time to disciple than the others. (5) The Philippians more than once sent him financial help while he was in Thessalonica (Phil 4:16). (6) There needs to have been sufficient time to designate what seem to be leaders of the church (1 Thess 5:12).10
It is probable that Jason was the host for the band of new disciples (Acts 17:7); it was a generous act that would shortly land him in trouble. Within a short time, the Christian preachers became city-wide news. A riot was instigated by some Jews and carried out by local ruffians (17:5). Jason was physically dragged before the city leaders with some other Christians (17:6).11 Paul’s Jewish opponents twisted his message, just as the Sanhedrin had done before Pilate, making out that Jesus was a rival to Caesar’s throne (17:7). Jason was forced to post bond as guarantee against a breach of the peace.12
Paul and Silas were compelled to leave the city. Rather than continue along the Via Egnatia, they got off the main highway, traveling south for fifty miles (80 km) to preach in a relatively small town called Berea. It is possible that this was not their original itinerary. Had they kept heading west along the Via they would have eventually arrived at Dyrrachium, where a ship could have taken them over the Adriatic Sea to Italy. Romans 1:13 suggests that Rome had been Paul’s goal for some years. Was the stopover at Berea an expedient, from which location the team could keep a close eye on Thessalonica and Philippi without jeopardizing Jason or the others?13
Whatever the plan, Jews from Thessalonica derailed it by following them to Berea and again stirring up a mob (Acts 17:10–15). What followed next has to be inferred from 1 Thess 2–3 and Acts 17. Paul traveled by sea to Athens (Acts 17:14), leaving instructions “for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible” (17:15). It seems that Silas and Timothy did in fact join him in Athens. Still “Satan blocked us” (1 Thess 2:18c)—that is, Paul and Silas—from returning to Thessalonica, and so “we” instead sent Timothy (3:1–2). Silas too went to Macedonia but apparently not to Thessalonica (there is no mention of it either in Acts or in the letter).14
Finally, Timothy and Silas rejoined Paul in Corinth, Timothy bearing good news of the believers in Thessalonica (Acts 18:1, 5; 1 Thess 3:6). Timothy had little time to rest, since the most likely interpretation is that it was he who immediately returned with the letter of 1 Thessalonians. That letter bears the names of all three and indicates their presence together in Corinth when it was composed. A round trip from Athens to Macedonia would have taken 3–4 weeks, not to mention the time that the travelers spent with the churches.
The first letter is at heart a record of the apostles’ gratitude to God. Their thanksgiving must not be glossed over as a formality, as if they were bowing their heads to give thanks before getting to the “meat” of the letter (in 1 Thess 4:1). The giving of thanks and the reports of their prayer are in fact a large part of the letter’s substance. Next, they provide a model for how the church should live; the Thessalonians must imitate the apostles (1:6; 2:1–12) and also the Judean churches (2:14–16).15 The closest New Testament parallel is found in Acts 20:17–35, where Paul reminds the Ephesian elders that he had lived among them as an example, and he instructed them to “keep watch over yourselves and all the flock” (Acts 20:28, 35); Paul implies they should follow the pattern he has given. In the same way, the Thessalonians must have blameless character, labor hard, take diligent care of their charges, and endure persecution. Next, he teaches them about the resurrection of the saints, a doctrine they seem to have forgotten or failed to apply (see below under “Eschatology in Thessalonica”).
Upon his next return to Corinth, Timothy brought back further questions from the church, prompting the second letter hard on the heels of the first. The church had perhaps been shaken by news that the day of the Lord was at hand. Paul has a cure: that Day must be preceded by the final Apostasy and the coming of the “Man of Lawlessness.” Beyond that, the general theme of the letter is the justice of God as revealed in the gospel. Christ will come and save his people and destroy those who have rejected him. In a time of great persecution, the Thessalonians are assured that God is watching over them and that in the future he will make all things right.
Jewish apocalypses often dealt with the issue of theodicy, the problem of evil in the world. Most particularly they wondered, Why do the wicked persecute the saints, and what will a just God do to rectify the matter? First Enoch 62:11 is but one example: the Lord will deliver the rulers of the earth “to the angels for punishments in order that vengeance shall be executed on them—oppressors of his children and his elect ones.” In other letters, Paul does not go into details about the parousia as the moment of God’s vengeance on those who mistreat the church. Nevertheless, it is a theme that he would have found throughout Daniel and in the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24:41–46) and would later be developed in the book of Revelation.
The composition of the church. Acts 17:4 states that “some” Thessalonian Jews came to the faith, along with “a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.” First Thessalonians paints a different picture: when Paul addresses the group as a whole, he states that they had “turned away from idols to God” (1 Thess 1:9); that is, they seem to have been converted from full paganism with no stopover in the synagogue system.
This tension may be explained by how the gospel would spread in a new city. Paul would plant his churches with Jews and God-fearers and some pagans. Then, rapid growth took place among Gentiles, with less growth among the smaller population of Jews. By the time Paul wrote his first letter to Thessalonica, the church in the majority was already Gentile Christian.
Who was the typical Christian in Thessalonica at the time of 1 Thessalonians? He or she was from a pagan background, spoke koinē Greek as a first language, could not read or write, kept house or was a manual laborer or a slave,16 had never set foot inside a synagogue, had newly pledged to an ethic that was sharply different from that of the local environment, shared his or her faith with unbelievers, experienced serious harassment from family and society, and knew someone who had been physically punished, imprisoned, or maybe killed for the faith.
Meetings. By the time of 1 Thessalonians, that church may have consisted of several assemblies, each with a few dozen members, in various parts of the urban area. Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica were able to serve as trustees of the Jerusalem offering (see Acts 20:4), probably because they were men of means. Perhaps they, along with Jason, were patrons of house churches. The assemblies did not meet in temples, shrines, or theaters, but in homes.17 “All in all, in the context of the cult expression of religion in the Roman era, earliest Christian worship would have seemed a fairly modest, even unimpressive affair.”18 Still, Christians from the lower strata must have been impressed: they found themselves received into rich surroundings, not as servants but as members of a family.
A “family church.” Jews and Greeks defined themselves through their kinship relationships. The Thessalonian church was famous for a new species of family love (φιλαδελφία, 1 Thess 4:9) of one member for another regardless of blood ties or class structure. What a comfort that must have been, since the Thessalonian believers had been torn away from family, friends, and city and, for the Jews, synagogue and nation. This trauma was deeper than would be a similar experience in our contemporary Western world, where tribal and civic connections are not so strong. There exists a social science category of “fictive family” or “fictive kinship” that is defined as treating others “as if” they were members of a new family. The Christian gospel stretches those categories past the breaking point: because God truly was their Father, the believers regarded other Christians as brothers and sisters on a deeper, even literal, sense.19 An outsider to the faith would have found remarkable the leveling effect that the gospel had on human relationships. At least in theory, no Christian was less important than the most rich, powerful, or well-connected. No one was considered too dull to learn God’s truth.20 For the women, religion was no longer confined to the home, since the “sisters” stood side by side with men as cobelievers and worshipers.21
Scripture. The new Christians, particularly those from a Greek background, moved within a culture that venerated the spoken word. They might have gone to public readings of poetry or literature, witnessed Greek plays, or listened to orators. Some few may have listened to philosophers. The church honored group readings, too, since the Word read there was from God himself (1 Tim 4:14). The believers learned to correlate their experience of God with the Jewish Scriptures, celebrating their faith that they were the beneficiaries of a new covenant (see comments on 1 Thess 3:13; 2 Thess 2:6–7). Meanwhile, in another location in the city the synagogue met and studied the same Scriptures. Yet the Christians understood that the Jews had rejected the Messiah promised in the prophetic writings (1 Thess 2:15).
Letters. As the apostolic envoy, Timothy would have been the first to read the Thessalonian letters to the believers there, most of whom were illiterate. If he read it aloud, it would take less than a half hour to go straight through 1 Thessalonians. The letters we now know in the NT were not originally documents for exegesis, to be stored in a library. It is better to think of 1 Thessalonians as a script, which Timothy read aloud, recreating as it were the presence of Paul and Silas and himself. Since he had heard Paul dictate it, he could provide the nuances of expression that he had heard from Paul. In the earliest church, such readings from apostolic literature began to supplement readings from the OT.22
Teaching. The apostles were known principally as teachers, and Timothy did his share of instructing the church (1 Thess 3:2). First Corinthians 14:26 implies that there might be plural teachers within any given meeting. Whether there were regular, appointed leaders in Thessalonica cannot be proven conclusively, although they are probably mentioned in the first letter: “those who labor among you and who lead you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess 5:12).
Charismata. The Thessalonian church was a charismatic church. If Paul found any fault with their experience of the Spirit, it was that they were a trifle timid about the gift of prophecy. Paul exhorts them to pay due attention to supernatural utterances and to be discerning (1 Thess 5:19–21).
Evangelism. Paul implies that the Thessalonians actively shared their faith. This may have taken the form of one-on-one evangelism and even extensive mission work. The question of Thessalonian evangelism is one of the larger interpretative issues of 1 Thessalonians. See “Were the Thessalonian Believers Evangelistic?” at 1 Thess 1:8.
Persecution. The Thessalonian churches knew from the beginning that following Christ would lead to trouble, some of it violent (1 Thess 1:6; 3:3–5; 2 Thess 1:6–7; see also 1 Thess 2:14). Persecutions may have been economic, familial, social, or physical. The persecution seems to have begun with the arrest of Jason (Acts 17:6) and been ongoing. It is not certain that persecution led to the death of any Christian in Thessalonica (1 Thess 4:13), although 2:15 may be a hint that it had. But given the relatively high death rate among them, it is also possible that the Thessalonians had died of age, illness, accident, or in childbirth.
Paul finally was able to revisit Thessalonica during his third missionary journey, around the year AD 55–56. He left his main base of ministry, Ephesus, to pass through Macedonia (Acts 20:1); he then went south to Achaia for three months (Acts 20:2–3). Paul mentions in 2 Cor 7:5 only that “when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within.” He returned north and traveled to Jerusalem, perhaps in the year AD 58 (Acts 20:3), setting out from Philippi (Acts 20:6).
In 2 Cor 8:1–5, Paul speaks of the warm generosity of the Macedonian Christians for the Jerusalem fund—and that despite their “extreme poverty.” This description could characterize both Thessalonica and Philippi. Paul’s plan, it seems, was that each church would appoint one or two men to represent them and to verify that the money arrived in Jerusalem. Thessalonica selected Aristarchus and Secundus. We know little about Secundus.23 Aristarchus was a Jewish believer (Col 4:10–11). He was present when Paul was swept up in the Ephesian riot (Acts 19:29). He accompanied Paul by ship to Rome (Acts 27:2) and seems to have accepted imprisonment with him (Col 4:10; Phlm 24).
When Demas deserted Paul, he went to Thessalonica (2 Tim 4:10)—a large city where maybe he could spend his life without seeing any Christians. Thessalonica, like most Pauline churches, then disappears from the New Testament narrative. Yet, two additional footnotes are appropriate. First, after nearly two millennia, including five centuries under Turkish rule, there is still a church in the city of Thessalonica. A more horrific note concerns the Jewish people of the city. From about AD 1500–1700, Thessalonica was host to the single largest Jewish colony in the world. In 1943, under the Nazi occupation, nearly the entire Jewish population was deported and executed.24
A few have suggested that one or both of the letters is a “composite”; that is, some later scribe stitched together several shorter Pauline letters into larger ones. Walter Schmithals, for example, dissected 1–2 Thessalonians into four original letters. He then rearranged these components in chronological order so as to reveal the evolution of Paul’s dealings with Thessalonica. Supposedly they show the picture of a church that was infected with Gnosticism.25 The reconstruction is extraordinarily speculative and based on his overarching and unproven premise that Gnosticism existed in the middle of the first century, and that Paul was fighting it on every front.
A regular presupposition in these reconstructions is that Paul could not have written a letter that jumped from theme to theme as 1 Thessalonians might appear to do. Why, for example, would a single letter need two thanksgiving sections?26 Some help is afforded us by remembering that Paul was not writing as a professor of rhetoric, but as a pastor, one whose exuberant style was due to his relief that his church had avoided disaster. In seminary, homiletics professors insist that every sermon must have one main idea; after all, there is always the next Sunday to develop a new topic. But a letter is not a sermon. It is a communiqué that would take weeks to deliver by hand, weeks to digest, and weeks to receive a reply if and when one was sent. Therefore, an apostle writing from Corinth to Thessalonica did not have the luxury of writing on one theme only; he had to touch on all the topics that lay at hand.
According to one theory, 1 Thess 2:13(14)–16 is an “interpolation,” an anti-Jewish message that found its way into the letter some time after Paul’s death. B. A. Pearson’s 1971 article has been the touchstone for discussion in recent decades.27 He argues that the text was interpolated early enough into the manuscript transmission so that the original text did not survive. He takes the statement to be some scribe’s thoughts about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.28
Against Pearson one should consider several things. First, the syntax of the paragraph fits within its context.29 Second, Pearson must assume that the divine “wrath” refers to AD 70, not to some event in Paul’s lifetime or to the eschatological judgment. Third, he disregards the way in which the passage fits within the letter as a whole, with its themes of persecution and imitation.30 Fourth, he cannot account for the fact that all ancient manuscripts and versions contain this paragraph.31 There is little solid proof that 1 Thess 2:13–16 did not come from Paul’s pen. We are left to wrestle with its meaning as we do with any other difficult passage.
There is no serious debate over whether Paul wrote the first letter. The same cannot be said of 2 Thessalonians, and in some circles it is now taken as a given that it is post-Pauline or even anti-Pauline.32 This is a wholly modern concern and has been most extensively argued by Wolfgang Trilling.33 The earliest lists of the New Testament books, including Marcion’s, contained two letters to Thessalonica. For example, the Muratorian Canon states that Paul wrote to Corinth and Thessalonica once, and that “he wrote to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians once more for their reproof.” Irenaeus refers to the letter as “Second Thessalonians” (Irenaeus, Haer. 3.7.2).
The objections to 2 Thessalonians fall into two categories. (1) Literary: the style of the letter looks close enough to 1 Thessalonians that it makes some think it is a poor imitation of the real letter; or, the second letter lacks the warmth of the first. (2) Theological: 2 Thessalonians shows that the day of the Lord cannot be at hand, since the eschatological Apostasy and the Man of Lawlessness are not on the scene, whereas 1 Thessalonians 5:2 makes the parousia a “thief in the night” that will take all by surprise.
The fact that the author placed his own signature at 2 Thess 3:17 has not convinced everyone that Paul signed it. Perhaps it was a sort of “stealth” letter, sent in to discredit and replace 1 Thessalonians. By the same token, the warning against false letters (2 Thess 2:2) has been taken to mean that the author is denouncing 1 Thessalonians as the fake—a letter as “supposedly, from us”—and offering his own version of apocalyptic eschatology as genuine. With regard to this issue, we will argue under “Eschatology in Thessalonica” later in this introduction that both letters are firmly rooted in the Olivet Discourse; the gospel tradition itself teaches both the suddenness of the parousia and the coming of apocalyptic signs before the end.
With regard to the similar language, these alone of Paul’s letters purport to have flowed from his pen within months or more likely weeks and indicate that his posture toward the church had not changed. The tone is calmer in the second letter, because Paul was not writing as a man who has recently been relieved from a huge burden of anxiety.
There are two viewpoints with regard to the second missionary journey of Paul. The view that is held by the great majority of scholars states that Paul and team arrived in Macedonia during the reign of Emperor Claudius (AD 41–54; see Acts 11:28). His arrival at Corinth is rather easily dated because of the so-called “Gallio inscription” discovered in Delphi. The inscription implies that Gallio’s proconsulship began in 51 or 52. The book of Acts states that he was proconsul when Paul had already been in Corinth for a year and a half (see Acts 18:11–12). This puts Paul’s arrival in Corinth around AD 50, and his work in Thessalonica earlier that same year. A second datum is the arrival of Aquila and Priscilla and Corinth, which is said to have taken place after they had been expelled from Rome (see Acts 18:2), an event that is hard to pin down precisely, but probably took place in AD 49.
Most scholars date 1 Thessalonians and (if genuine) 2 Thessalonians during Paul’s earlier months in Corinth, perhaps before the arrival of Gallio. We could thus reconstruct the events:34
The other major viewpoint is most famously associated with Gerd Lüdemann, building on the research by John Knox. He argues that Aquila and Priscilla were expelled from Rome in AD 41 and not, as is commonly calculated, in 49. Paul must have already evangelized Macedonia before he met them in Corinth. This would place the Macedonia campaign in the very late 30s and 1 Thessalonians in the year 41.35 Therefore, he concludes, the book of Acts gets it wrong when it places the Galatian ministry before the Greek one, and Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians long before the time of Gallio. The great majority of scholars have rejected the Knox-Lüdemann thesis as untenable, depending as it turns on a redating of the Jewish expulsion and a highly skeptical reading of the book of Acts.
For some centuries, a minority of scholars has argued that while both letters are genuine, their order in the canon is reversed. If the early church canons got the order wrong, it was because they tended to list the longer letter first (e.g., 1 and 2 Corinthians). The most recent major commentary that holds to the priority of 2 Thessalonians is that by Charles Wanamaker. His argument is complex and depends on internal evidence, for example, that Paul is more likely to have autographed his original letter than his second (2 Thess 3:17). He argues that reversing the order of the letters can help resolve some issues of interpretation.36 This theory has failed to convince most scholars, and its supposed evidence is usually capable of being interpreted to support the priority of 1 Thessalonians.37
Some expect that the eschatology of 1–2 Thessalonians should bear a strong resemblance to Mark 13, since all were composed in the first Christian generation. In particular, Beasley-Murray in his influential monograph compared the Thessalonian letters principally with Mark.38
A better method is to compare the two letters with all three Synoptic apocalypses. That sort of study reveals that neither Mark nor Luke contains parallels to all the material found in these two letters. Only Matthew’s gospel (1) provides parallels for all of Paul’s eschatological teaching in the two letters, and (2) uses technical vocabulary in the same way that Paul does. From textual considerations, it could even be supposed that Paul knew and taught something resembling the Matthean tradition.39
There are four elements in Matthew’s special material and in the Thessalonian epistles that are not found in Mark: (1) Matt 24:12: “the love of most will grow cold” (not in Mark or Luke; see Paul’s concern about love in light of the coming of Christ in 1 Thess 3:12; 5:13; 2 Thess 1:3, and other passages). (2) Matt 24:10: many “will turn away.” (3) Matt 24:43: “If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming” (in Luke, not in Mark). (4) Matt 24:49: people in the world are drunk (in Luke, not in Mark). If Paul’s eschatological terms come close to the teachings of any gospel, it is Matthew.40
There are other synoptic traditions that inform Paul’s teaching, all found in Matthew and many found in Mark or Luke as well.
In 1 Thessalonians:
In 2 Thessalonians:
And in both letters:
Paul and Matthew coincide in the use of a semitechnical word group. Paul uses ἀπάντησις, which may be paraphrased as going out to “welcome” the Lord (see comments on 1 Thess 4:17). Matthew too knows of a “meeting” (ἀπάντησις) in Matt 25:6 and a cognate (ὑπάντησις) in Matt 25:1. That is, only Matthew’s version of the Olivet Discourse and Paul use this word group to refer to the church going forth to meet Christ at his coming, and neither Mark nor Luke nor the other NT writers use it eschatologically.
There is one point that is absent from the Olivet traditions of all three Synoptic Gospels: the resurrection of the saints. In fact, Jesus’ pronouncement that “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt 24:13; see also 10:22) might sound unnervingly close to “salvation will come to those who manage not to die before Christ returns.”
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul provides the missing datum. The key to understanding the Olivet discourse from a post-Easter perspective is: “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, well … God will gather together with [Jesus] those who have died in him” (1 Thess 4:14). Here is a comparison of the Matthean Olivet Discourse (using ESV) and Paul’s teaching in the two Thessalonian letters:
| Matt 24:30–31 | 1 Thess 4:16–17 | 2 Thess 1:6–7 |
|---|---|---|
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The sign of the Son of Man |
The Lord himself |
At the revealing of the Lord Jesus |
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will appear … in heaven |
will come down from heaven |
from heaven |
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and then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. |
with his powerful angels, with blazing fire |
|
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And he will send out his angels |
with the commanding shout of the archangel’s voice [also “with all his holy angels” 3:13] |
|
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with a loud trumpet call |
with the sound of the trumpet of God |
|
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New information: THE DEAD IN CHRIST WILL FIRST BE RESURRECTED |
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and [the angels] will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. [Note too 25:1, 6: the “virgins” go out to meet the bridegroom] |
Next, we who are still alive and remain will be taken up together with [those who were dead] in the clouds to welcome the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. |
Even apart from the fact that the resurrection is not mentioned in this Matthean material (as it is, for example, in Matt 22:30), it is still not certain how the Thessalonians missed out on that doctrine. In other instances, when Paul addresses any issue in these two letters, there is usually no lack of explanation of why he might have brought up a certain point. But in 1 Thess 4:13–18 there seems no self-evident answer to the singular mystery: Due to what circumstances did Paul now have to inform them about the resurrection of the saints? What could possibly have gone wrong so that the Thessalonians missed out on this doctrine, which, as a casual reading of his letters shows, was central to Paul’s theology? Some of the viewpoints are as follows:
(1) The least probable explanation is that of Walter Schmithals, who finds Gnosticism behind most of the problems that plagued Paul’s churches. In this case, some outsider had taught the Thessalonians that the resurrection was a spiritual experience, not a bodily one.41 This theory has multiple difficulties, not least of which is why Paul did not contradict the Gnostic teaching head-on, but was content to declare flatly that the dead would rise physically.
(2) Equally unlikely is the idea that the Thessalonians had not been taught the resurrection of the saints simply because the doctrine had not yet become a part of Christian doctrine. C. L. Mearns has argued that the earliest church believed that the resurrection was not future but “realized.” Then, within two decades, believers started to die, forcing Paul to invent the comforting idea of a future resurrection.42 Mearns fails to explain the fact that many Christians must have died before AD 50 as, we are told, Paul well knew (Acts 8:1; 9:1). One must also discard the testimony from Acts 23:6; 24:15 and Paul’s letters that he had been a Pharisee and thus, by definition, had believed in the resurrection of the saints long before he believed in Jesus. The Jesus tradition too reveals that the final resurrection was a staple of Christian doctrine. Moreover, if Paul were just now putting the doctrine together for the first time, how may one account for its appearance in books by other authors in the NT canon?
(3) W. D. Davies attributes the church’s confusion to Paul himself. Paul had taught them about the spiritual resurrection, as in Rom 6. He had also told them that physical death was a signal of spiritual failure, as in 1 Cor 11:27–32.43 Therefore, the Thessalonians put two and two together and reckoned that their dead companions had been judged by God, perhaps for some secret sin. As to Davies’s view, it is of course possible that Paul had taught them about a spiritual resurrection—even though he did not write it down in detail until he penned Romans. Yet, the grief in Thessalonica does not seem to be rooted in any supposed moral failure on the part of the dead, nor does Paul point out that those who had died were obviously less righteous than the survivors, which would surely have been the more direct counterargument.
(4) Perhaps the explanation for their being “uninformed” was circumstantial: that the apostles were quickly expelled from the city and did not have the chance to teach the doctrine of the resurrection. Against this, I think it highly implausible that Paul took the time to teach them details such as the Apostasy, the “Man of Lawlessness,” and the restrainer and yet omitted to mention that Christians would be resurrected. This is especially the case when one considers that the resurrection of Jesus, the church’s union with him, and the final judgment of humanity are building blocks of the basic gospel, not to be left for later catechetical instruction under the category of “last things.”
(5) A more credible possibility, developed by Joseph Plevnik and others, is to view 1 Thess 4 against a backdrop of OT and apocalyptic thinking.44 According to this theory, Paul taught them that the living Christians would be “assumed” into heaven. After the apostles left town and believers began to die, the Thessalonians supposed that the dead would forever be disadvantaged. While this viewpoint has the advantage of a set of traditions that actually existed, it has weaknesses as well. It still does not answer why Paul did not teach them about the final resurrection, which, as we have seen, was a basic tenet. If one wished to argue that Paul followed only the gospel traditions that foretold the assumption of believers, the question is still left begging, why did he do so? Of importance too is that when Paul describes the Christian hope, he does not contrast it with the “assumption” model but with paganism, which lacks a resurrection.
(6) It may be that the resurrection doctrine, while known, had not changed the deep assumptions of the believers.45 This older view is still a promising direction. In a commentary series such as this one, the insights of pastoral theology will shed light on how the Thessalonians’ eschatology was derailed. In the academy, knowledge, once brought into being, is supposed to continue to exist, able to be recovered; a commentator, for example, should be counted on to know and apply Walter Schmithals’s view of Gnosticism. An axiom of pastoral ministry, by contrast, is that the flock, once taught a thing, cannot be assumed from that point on to remain taught. A church is a dynamic, growing, and changing group. Members are added to and subtracted. In the best of circumstances part or all of a church might forget what it has at one time known—by losing knowledge, by forgetting to apply it, or by misapplying it. There is no way I know of to teach a flock so that it retains a doctrine “once and for all.”
In that light, let us pursue this sixth option, given what Paul stresses in the text itself.
Under extreme stress, living as all people did, with death at their elbow and with the additional possibility that members of their group might be killed, their thoughts would have flown in a dozen different directions. We know today better than ever that people who are grieving not uncommonly suffer from lack of concentration and forgetfulness. The Thessalonians’ thought processes, not yet deeply formed by the resurrection doctrine, could have included the inability to apply it properly. Paul’s “we do not want you to be uninformed” (1 Thess 4:13) would be an appropriate introduction or reintroduction to the resurrection doctrine.
It is my opinion that we do not have enough evidence to confirm any of the above viewpoints. Nevertheless, it requires the fewest assumptions and does justice to the known data to conclude that the Thessalonians were earlier taught the resurrection as we know it from 1 Thess 4 and other passages, and that under duress some failed to apply it properly; some “forgot” it altogether.
In 1 Thess 5:2, the day is like a thief in the night; yet according to 2 Thess 2 the believers can know that the day is not at hand. Some scholars have wondered how Paul could have taught two programs that were apparently at variance with each other: in the first, the day of the Lord comes suddenly and surprises everyone; in the second, the day of the Lord cannot come now, because there are signs that must first take place.46
It helps to define our terms, first with regard to the church’s knowledge—the church cannot positively know the time of the day of the Lord (1 Thess 5:2). But negatively, the church can rule out that the day of the Lord is immediately at hand, based on unfulfilled eschatological events (2 Thess 2:3). The church’s ignorance is real but not absolute.
Second, what is meant by “suddenness” (5:3)? Believers should not be taken unaware, if they are walking in the light; unbelievers will be, because they are walking in darkness and because they do not expect Christ to come. The suddenness of the Day is qualitatively different for the world than it is for the “children of light.”
Third is the question of intervening signs. According to Matthew 24, this entire age is marked by evidences that Satan is at work. All sorts of signs must take place before Christ’s return, including the particularly vital work of God, that is, the worldwide spread of the gospel (Matt 24:14). There is no indication that Paul, who was so strongly influenced by this tradition, had jettisoned Jesus’ predictions of the many signs that would precede the (surprising) coming of the end.
Fourth is the meaning of imminence. Evangelicals bandy back and forth the question of whether Christ’s coming is imminent. For example, one exegete deduces from the Scriptures that Christ’s coming is imminent; he then defines the word “imminent,” but not on a firm basis of the relevant texts; he then reads that definition back into the New Testament and concludes that there is an imminent return of Christ (the pre-tribulational rapture) and years later the second coming of Christ.47 This is not a sound methodology. The NT vocabulary must be defined on its own terms, not ours. Neither the Olivet Discourse nor Paul’s letters speak of any imminence that denies that signs will take place before the coming of Christ.48
One must give due attention to the strong intertextuality between Matt 24–25 and these two letters.49 Taken together, the letters jointly exhaust almost all of the material found in the Matthean tradition. Yes, Paul addresses the Thessalonians’ immediate needs based on two interpretative cruxes (the resurrection of the dead; the signs of the end). But the broader paradigm that he teaches in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is what the tradition has given him, and his source material allows the expectation of the “thief in the night” to live side-by-side with warnings about the signs of the end.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, many Bible students have looked to 1 Thess 4:13–17 and 2 Thess 2:1 and asked whether the gathering of the church is to take place before or after the final tribulation and the coming of the Man of Lawlessness. As shown by the parallels provided above, it apparently did not occur to Paul to describe any gathering other than that which occurs at the coming of the Son of Man at the end of the age. The eschatological outline of Matt 24:30–31 is extraordinarily similar to that of 1–2 Thessalonians, save for the additional datum of the resurrection of the saints in 1 Thess 4. Thus, when Paul described the resurrection/rapture, a Thessalonian who was already familiar with the Olivet tradition would have understood it as the same event as the coming of the Son of Man and the gathering of the saints as taught in Matt 24:31. When readers of today ask the Thessalonian texts whether the rapture might not take place before the tribulation, they are seeking something that the letters simply are not designed to provide.50