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Loading...I now move on in my “New Testament in a Nutshell” series to the letter of 1 Thessalonians, which for-roughly-ever has been one of my favorite books of the New Testament. It is not one of the most widely read as a rule, but I think it is both unusually important and interesting. For one thing, it is the first letter of Paul that we have and, therefore, the very first piece of Christian writing of any kind that we have. That in itself makes it unusually significant in my view. THE earliest words from any Christian! Whoa.
When I taught Greek at Princeton Theological Seminary (some millennia ago) this was the book we had beginning students first translate once they had all the important elements of Greek grammar down. It’s not excessively hard Greek, but it is challenging for first-timers, and it’s the kind of book that if you read carefully – as you have to do when you’re basically going one word at a time trying to figure out the Greek – you find all sorts of interesting features and puzzles. You can read in five minutes or so in English (and should!); even so, this afternoon when I reread it in Greek I actually came to understand parts of it better than ever before – after knowing it well for, uh, 50 years!
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Is the concept of the “rapture” supported by any other NT writing or is this something Paul made up to reassure the Thessalonians?
Ah — I have a post on that coming soon.
Greeting, Bart. At times, Paul plays down his own oratory skills and his physical presence. Yet, to your point, he was clearly a persuasive fellow. Do you believe Paul was just being self effacing or might he have had some other super power?
I don’t think he had any super power. He may well have been one of those people who was convincing even thogh he was not a great rhetorician.
Dr. Ehrman:
Which Greek New Testament bible do you read? Also, do you recommend the Nestle Aland 28th edition as excellent?
Yes, that’s the standard, and just about everyone uses it. I have about 28 copies lying around for some reason….
Dr. Ehrman,
What makes you think that Paul wrote 1 Thess.? There was a school of critics who only allowed Gal., 1 & 2 Cor., and Rom. as authentic.
It’s a probability judgment, but given the issues, themes, concerns, vocabulary, writing style, presupposed historical situation and so on, it looks authentic. The four you mention are sometimes called the Hauptbriefe because they were thought to form the core of Pauline teaching.
The Judeans who “drove us out, and displease God, and oppose all people”
While Acts depicts the Jews in Jerusalem as suspecting and opposing Christians, being “driven out” puts a different spin on that, for sure. Do we have collaboration for this depiction of Christian position in Judea?
Also, Paul convincing gentile pagans that Jesus will save them from the coming Wrath of God implies that gentiles were open to the idea that judgment was coming. How widespread was “apocalypticism” in the Roman world?
What is the consensus among critical scholars on Jewish persecution of the followers of Jesus in the first century CE, in the years and decades after Jesus’s death? To what extent is it historical?
There almost certainly was some, but it’s hard to know what forms it took or how severe it was. Paul indicates himself that he was flogged five times by synagogue authorities, and I don’t think there’s any good reason to think he was making it up.
With this knowledge is there any method & order to reading these 4 letters to best understand St Paul’s essential teachings- Gal., 1 & 2 Cor., and Rom.
I haven’t read any book in the Bible for at least 2 decades as I was accustomed to church prudes telling me to just open the Bible& read & you will find the answer. That’s why I placed so much importance on “The New Life” by Andrew Murray as the S African Preacher from 150 years ago vetted a system to achieve Overcomer status as only mentioned & qualified in Revelation
Most any sequence will work!
“1 Thessalonians is a heartfelt connection from Paul to some of his converts where he tells them how well he thinks they are doing, to keep on keeping on, reminding them to avoid sinful natures, and to be patient now that some have fallen asleep, because the end is near.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve read it and I am struck with “…You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus…”
“…the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus…”, in the earliest Christian document we have?????
Dr. Ehrman, what are your thoughts on that? I didn’t remember Paul saying something so matter of fact blaming Jews for the death of Jesus.
Yup, it’s a trickhy passage. The important thing to notice is that he is talking about people in a *region* not people according to their “religion.” Some gentiles in Thessalonica have persecuted Christians just as Jews in Judae persecuted Christ. Moreover — possibly even more important — the Greek word translated “Jew” in English is also the word for “Judean,” and depending on how it is used in a particular context, it should be rendered in one way or the other. Given the regional reference here, it is much better to translated it “Judeans”
I am surprised by the sentence with which you summarize the paragraph(s) (2:1-16). Not only can I find no mention of apostasy, the author passes most of his time showering praise on himself (or themselves, as this is written in the plural), with only the very end of the passage making any allusions to the suffering of the Thessalonians at the hands of their own people. But the latter seems to be mainly an occasion for taking a brutal swipe at the Jews for opposing (persecuting?) the churches if Judea, in addition to killing Jesus and their prophets (really?) and chasing Paul. In fact I am surprised of this virulent anti-Jewish rhetoric in this very first of the Christian literature, given that Paul himself was (and remained) a Jew; I always thought that such rhetoric had developed over time in an attempt to shift away the blame for Jesus’s crucifixion away from the Romans.
I also wondered how “the Judean churches suffered from the Jews” reads in in Greek, given that there “Judean” and “Jew” are the same word; but in an answer above I learn “Jew” is in fact mistranslated here. But did the (contemporary) Judeans kill their prophets?
I think virulent rhetoric against Jews strikes non-Jews as more suprising than it does Jews. It’s worth noting that Paul is equally virulent against his (Christian) opponents in Galatia. “Jew” is not a mistranslation. The Greek word means both “Jew” and “Judaean” in English.
With “mistranslation” I was referring (somewhat obliquely) to your own remark “Given the regional reference here, it is much better to translate it ‘Judeans’ ” in your answer to Old_Agnostic just above my comment. And I fully agree: it makes perfect sense to say “you suffer from your own countrymen just like the churches in Judea suffered from the Judeans”.
And what extra sense does rendering the final word as “Jews” provide to English readers (apart from a modern ethno-religious connotation that is certainly misplaced) ? It might limit the reference to those Judeans who (if they are men) were circumcised; but I would guess most of them were, and would Paul really be making this implication?
But the swipe I mention in my comment are the extra (unnecessary) verses 12:5-16 that Paul adds, to express his profound loathing of those Judeans, who perscuted them (Paul+?) and tried keep them from speaking to Gentiles. Which almost sounds like the Judaizers in Galatians (presumably Jewish Jesus followers), except that another accusation against them is that they killed Jesus and their own prophets. I’m truly confused as to who exactly this might be referring to.
I think I was trying to say that translating it “Jew” is misleading, since most (say, American) readers do not think “ancient Judean” when they hear the word “Jew.”