I. Thanksgiving, Narrative, And Prayer (1:1-3:13)
I. THANKSGIVING, NARRATIVE, AND PRAYER (1:1-3:13)
Almost all letters from the Greco-Roman period5 begin with a threefold salutation: The Writer, to the Addressee, Greetings.6 Very often the next item in the letter would be a wish (sometimes a prayer) for the health or well-being of the addressee. Paul’s letters, which generally follow this standard form, usually include a thanksgiving7 — also directed toward God. In some cases he also includes a prayer report, telling them not only that he remembers them in prayer, but also spelling out in some detail the what of such prayer.8 These features are already identifiable in this first extant letter.9 But they are so in some contrast to those that will come later — including 2 Thessalonians — where each of the elements becomes more easily identifiable, even when elaborated somewhat. Such is not the case for 1 Thessalonians, with the result that chapters 1-3 have come under all kinds of scrutiny and differing analyses.10
It is not that the elements themselves cannot be identified. After all, 1:2-3 have all the markings of Paul’s thanksgiving reports, while the (very typical) prayer report finally appears in 3:11-13. But the distance between these two items is part of the problem — along with two other matters that make analysis difficult. First, the thanksgiving report in this case does not come to a neat conclusion. Even though 1:4 is grammatically dependent on “we always thank God” in verse 2, what follows, beginning with verse 5, seems to move away from explicit reasons for thanksgiving, and evolves instead into a long, extended narrative of the apostles’ (Paul, Silas, and Timothy) recent past relationships with the Thessalonians. The same thing happens again in 2:13, where the thanksgiving report is resumed (or repeated) from 1:4 — only to be lost again in the continuation of the narrative, now explaining his own anxiety about them in the meantime. This finally eventuated (as they themselves now know) in the sending of Timothy to them (2:17- 3:5). The narrative then concludes with an obvious sigh of relief at Timothy’s return, whose report about them (3:6-10) became the immediate cause of the present letter. Thus our first difficulty has to with the nature of this thanksgiving that turns into narrative, with the prayer report appended at the end — halfway through the letter!11
Second, what are we to make of the nature of the long, twofold narrative (1:5-2:12; 2:14-3:10) that dominates this section between the thanksgiving (1:2-4) and the prayer (3:11-13)? The two main concerns in the first narrative section are introduced in verse 5: (a) The fact and nature of their conversion and (b) the nature of the apostles’ ministry among them. These are picked up in turn in 1:6-10 and 2:1-12. In the first instance he begins with their suffering (v. 6), followed by the renown of their conversion (vv. 7-8), and concludes with what conversion in their case consisted of (vv. 9-10). In 2:1-12 Paul reminds them of the nature of his ministry among them, that it was totally unlike that of other itinerants (vv. 2-6) in that his and his companions’ was one of parental care and concern (vv. 7-12).
Following the second thanksgiving, whose emphasis is on their having received the apostolic message for what it is indeed — God’s own message — the narrative resumes by reminding the Thessalonians of their suffering, that it was quite in keeping with that of others who have followed Christ (2:14-16). But the main focus now is on the apostles’ concern for the believers between the time that the three of them had left Thessalonica and the return of Timothy to Corinth with his report as to how the Thessalonian believers were faring. Only then does Paul add the prayer report (3:11-13), of a kind that also became standard in his later letters. Thus the two parts of the narrative together are simply a (chronological) reminder of what things were like at the beginning of their faith in Christ and of the apostolic concern for them from the time the three of them had left the city until the writing of this letter. What Paul has done, then, unique to this first of his letters, is to intersperse a long narrative of past and present relationships between the thanksgiving and prayer report. The emphases in the narrative are best understood as reflecting the historical setting. Although full precision is not possible here, two items recur in chapters 1-3 that allow an educated guess as to the nature of that setting. First, Paul more than once refers to their suffering in the face of opposition (1:6-7; 2:14-16; 3:2-4); second, he also offers a considerable defense both of his ministry while among them (2:1-12) and of his actions since leaving (2:17-3:5). These are best understood as related themes; that is, the persecution the Thessalonian believers are experiencing from their former pagan associations (2:15) is in some way related to their becoming the converts of an itinerant Jewish propagator of a new (non-Greek) religion,12 in which part of the charge originally laid against him and Silas had to do with the legitimacy of such religion and the honor of Caesar (Acts 17:7).13 Paul’s own concern is over whether they are standing firm in their newly found faith, despite his and Silas’s hurried leave-taking14 — and probably before the Thessalonians were as firmly planted in the faith as he would have desired.17