2. Date of composition of 1 Thessalonians
2. Date of composition of 1 Thessalonians
This letter was clearly written not long after Timothy came to Paul (1 Thess. 3:6; cf. 2:17). This meeting may have been the one that took place in Athens (1 Thess. 3:1–2), but is more probably that in Corinth (Acts 18:5), for the longer period seems necessary for the situation in Thessalonica to develop to the point where advice of the kind Paul gives was necessary. The longer period seems also to agree better with the fact that, by the time the letter was written, the faith of the Thessalonians was ‘known everywhere’ (1 Thess. 1:8).7
While Paul was in Corinth he was arrested and brought before Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:12). Now an inscription at Delphi, dealing with a question referred to the Emperor Claudius by this same Gallio, is dated in the twelfth year of the Emperor’s tribunicial power and after his twenty-sixth acclamation as Emperor. This twelfth year was from 25th January 52 to 24th January 53; and, while the date of the twenty-sixth acclamation is not known exactly, the twenty-seventh was before 1st August 52. Thus Claudius’ decision would have been given to Gallio during the first half of 52. Proconsuls usually took office in early summer and held office for one year. It thus seems that Gallio entered his term of office in the early summer of 51, for there scarcely seems time for him to refer a question to Rome and have the decision back if he was not appointed until 52.8
Our difficulties are that, while we know that Paul was in Corinth for eighteen months (Acts 18:11), we do not know at what point in the eighteen months he appeared before the proconsul, nor at what stage of Gallio’s proconsulship this took place, nor whether Gallio may, exceptionally, have had a second year in office. The impression left from Acts 18:12–18 is that it was early in Gallio’s term of office, and towards the end (though not right at the end) of Paul’s eighteen months. If this is so, then Paul arrived in Corinth in the early part of 50, and 1 Thessalonians would have been written soon after,9 though in view of the uncertainties attaching to the question we can regard this date as approximate only. But it is clear that the letters to the Thessalonians are among the earliest of our New Testament documents. Galatians may have been written earlier, but no other of Paul’s letters.10 The Thessalonian letters must have been written within about twenty years of Jesus’ death.