Footnotes
Footnotes
I.On the TQbingen School, see the section Date in chap. 6 above.
2.J. E. Frame has made a detailed examination of the words and phrases used in these two letters and shows conclusively that the language points to Pauline authorship of both. He reinforces this by an examination of what he calls the "Personal Equation,” indications of the personality back of the words. (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, ICC [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912], pp. 28-37).
3.See Leon Morris, "απαξ και δις,” NovT 1 (1956): 205-8. The phrase απαξ και δις (hapax kai dis) seems to mean "more than once”; with και (kai) prefixed, it signifies "both in Thessalonica and more than once (elsewhere).” There is no contradiction even if Acts gives the total time Paul spent in Thessalonica.
4.Moffatt reminds us to take a commonsense attitude to problems like this: "It is capricious to pronounce the epistle a colourless imitation, if it agrees with Acts, and unauthentic if it disagrees” (p. 71).
5.Typical is J. A. Bailey, who strongly argues that 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul but in the last decade of the first century by a writer who opposed Gnostic teaching and insisted on the place of apocalyptic in the Christian message ("Who Wrote II Thessalonians?” NTS 25 [1978-79]: 131-45).
6.B. Rigaux offers lists of such passages (Les epftres aux Thessaloniciens [Paris: Gabalda, 1956], pp. 133-34).
7.Johnson remarks, "Second Thessalonians is sometimes considered inauthentic, although it is difficult to make that case convincing” (p. 266). E. Best observes, "It is curious how the vast majority of the commentators accept the letter as genuine while its rejectors are found among those who approach the letter from the aspect of ‘introduction’” (A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians [London: Adam & Charles Black, 1977], p. 52) Robert Jewett has a useful survey of arguments about authenticity. He sees the first epistle as Pauline and the second as probably authentic also (The Thessalonian Correspondence [Philadelphia: Fortress,
1986], pp. 3-18). On the latter he says, "While the likelihood of definitely proving Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians remains at a modest level, the improbability of forgery is extremely high” (pp. 17-18).
8."Is not the role of a secretary (cf. 2 Thess. 3:17) an important factor in solving the difficulties?” (Harrington, p. 230).
9.McNeile remarks that "the boldness, or worse, of adding iii.17 is greater than we can admit to be possible, even in an age when pseudonymity was a recognized literary artifice” (p. 117).
10."This is an extremely blatant forgery, if it is not Pauline” (D. E. Whiteley, Thessalonians [London: Oxford University Press, 1969], p. 11).
II.Holland Hendrix, in a review of Jewett’s book, points out that if inauthenticity is to be established, "the explicit avowal of Paul’s signature as a practice in all of his letters (2
Thess. 3:17) must be rendered comprehensible as an authenticating tactic on the forger’s part” (JBL 107 [1988]: 765).
12.Moffatt finds the references to Achaia (1 Thess. 1:7-8) "enough to prove” that the letter was written from Corinth (p. 73).
13.See chap. 7 above. See also Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), pp. 24-26.
14.E.g., R. H. Fuller draws attention to the considerations noted above (and comments on the Philippian gifts to Paul, "two in a fortnight is rather a lot!”), but he still dates 1 Thessalonians in A.D. 50 (p. 20). In any case Fuller and those who agree with him on two gifts to Philippi while Paul was at Thessalonica are interpreting the Greek too confidently. It probably refers to no more than one gift at Thessalonica. See the section Contents above, along with n. 3.
15.Enslin, p. 244.
16.Perrin/Duling see this letter as "a deliberate imitation of 1 Thessalonians by a member of a Pauline school” and locate it at "the stage we know from the book of Revelation, itself a text from the end of the first Christian century” (pp. 208-9) But they do not mention the difficulty of its inclusion in Marcion’s canon if written as late as this.
17.Marxsen, p. 44.
18.A Harnack, "Das Problem des zweiten Thessalonicherbriefs,” SAB 31 (1910): 56078. Kirsopp and Silva Lake argue that 1 Thessalonians was written mainly to Greeks and 2 Thessalonians "exclusively to the Jews.” They see the second letter as written to the Jewish Christians when Paul found that the first letter would not satisfy them (Lake, pp. 134-35).
19.So F. F. Bruce, 1 and2 Thessalonians, WBC (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1982), p. 190.
20.The difference is between απαρχήν (aparchen, "as [his] firstfruits”, from απαρχή, G569) and απ’ αρχής (ap’ arches, "from [the] beginning”, from αρχή, G794). The MSS evidence is divided, and good support may be urged for either view. Transcriptional probability favors "from the beginning,” for this is not a typical Pauline expression, whereas "firstfruits” is (and therefore scribes would tend to alter "from the beginning” to "firstfruits” rather than the reverse). Paul never elsewhere links firstfruits with election, but he does tend to join election with some expression placing it in the beginning. R. V. G. Tasker favors "from the beginning,” as this seems "in keeping with Paul’s thought” (The Greek New Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1964], p. 440)
21.Martin Dibelius, A Fresh Approach to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1936), p. 152.
22.E. Earle Ellis, "Paul and His Co-Workers,” NTS 17 (1970-71): 449-51.
23.Ibid., p. 450.
24.See Richard N. Longenecker, "On the Form, Function, and Authority of the New Testament Letters,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), pp. 101-14.
25.The hypothesis is argued, e.g., by T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), pp. 268-78.
26.By contrast, W. Hendriksen emphasizes "every letter” (NIV "in all my letters”) and comments that this "is easier to understand if this were a second than if it were a first
letter” (New Testament Commentary: Exposition of I and II Thessalonians [Grand Rapids: Baker 1955], p. 17).
27.Guthrie, p. 600.
28.Attention is drawn to the autograph in 1 Cor. 16:21, which is not Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 5:9).
29.According to William Neil, "In each of the topics dealt with—persecution, Second Advent, idleness—there is an obvious intensification of the difficulties, and development of the situation, as described in the first letter, which make any alteration of the sequence impossible.” Neil adds, "The personal reminiscences so characteristic of the first epistle are lacking here—they are no longer necessary in what is virtually an appendix” (The Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950], p. xx).
30.Wikenhauser, p. 370.
31."His words went home; there is not the faintest echo of the apologia in the second epistle” (Frame, Commentary, p. 10).
32.When Marcion is cited, we should bear in mind Kummel’s point that it is "very improbable that Marcion was the first to collect these epistles.” According to Kummel, "At least by the beginning of the second century, then, a collection of Pauline epistles was known in Asia Minor, and it is thoroughly probable that this canon already contained all of the ten epistles in Marcion’s canon” (p. 338).
33.R. Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
34.A. J. Malherbe, Paul and the Thessalonians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).
35.W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983).
36.Best, Commentary, pp. 30-35. J. C. Hurd holds that "partition theories for 1 Thessalonians have seemed arbitrary and are certainly contradictory.” He finds "somewhat more weight” behind the view that 2 Thess. 2:13-16 is non-Pauline, but structural study "makes even this suggestion unlikely” ("Thessalonians, First Letter to,” in IDBSup, p. 900).
37.K. G. Eckart, "Der zweite echte Brief des Apostels Paulus an die Thessalonicher,” ZTK 58 (1961): 30-44.
38.W. Schmithals, "Die Thessalonicherbriefe als Briefkompositionen,” in Zeit und Geschichte, Fs. Rudolf Bultmann, ed. E. Dinkler (TQbingen: Mohr, 1964), pp. 295315.
39.Best, Commentary, p. 35. W. Marxsen finds "the clear structure and inner consistency of the letter” an objection to the hypothesis of a combination of originally separate parts (p. 36).
40.P. Schubert, Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgiving (Berlin: Topelmann, 1939).
41.H. Boers, "The Form-Critical Study of Paul’s Letters: 1 Thessalonians as a Case Study,” NTS 22 (1975-76): 153.
42.F. F. Bruce (1 and 2 Thessalonians, p. xl) examines the view of A. Lindemann ("Zum Abfassungszweck des Zweiten Thessalonicherbriefes,” ZNW 68 [1977]: 3547), who argues that an unknown writer who did not like the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians wrote 2 Thessalonians to replace it. The church did not go along with the rejection, but it accepted the pseudepigraph.
43.Childs, p. 365.
44.Ibid., p. 370.
45.Ibid., p. 371.
46.He has said of others, "It is far from obvious that the pseudepigraphical hypothesis has been successful in describing a suitable historical setting for the letter. The suggestions remain vague and hypothetical with little solid evidence on which to build” (Childs, p. 364). Surely this is a valid criticism to urge against his own view.
47.Marxsen, p. 39. Marxsen’s view involves the further assumption that the author of 2 Thessalonians was not Paul, on which Martin comments, "Marxsen’s thesis falls down on the close linguistic connections between the two epistles” (2:168).
48.Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, p. xlvi. For an examination of the view of W. Schmithals that Paul is faced by a Gnosticism like that at Corinth, see Best, Commentary, pp. 16-19.
49."We are therefore given an insight into the nature of Paul the missionary....Nowhere do we get a more human and lovable Paul” (Neil, Thessalonians, p. xxvii).
50.W. E. H. Lecky summed up the Greek attitude: "A combination of circumstances had raised [the whole class of courtesans], in actual worth and in popular estimation, to an unexampled elevation, and an aversion to marriage became very general, and extra-matrimonial connections were formed with the most perfect frankness and publicity” (History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 3d ed. 2 vols. [London: Longmans, Green, 1877], 2:297).