Loading...In this series of “nutshell” overviews of each of the books of the New Testament, we move now to one of the most intriguing instances of a book that claims to be written by Paul, but was apparently, instead, written by someone else who wanted his readers to think he was the apostle.
2 Thessalonians is an intriguing case because the book certainly sounds a lot like Paul’s other letters and does indeed appear to be a kind of follow-up letter to 1 Thessalonians. It also has numerous word-for-word similarities to 1 Thessalonians. It too, for example, is written by “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy” (1:1) and is addressed “to the church of the Thessalonians in in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:2) – both verses being virtually identically to 1 Thessalonians.
Moreover, its contents are closely related to the other letter: both are concerned about the suffering the Thessalonian Christians are experiencing through persecution and especially about their misunderstanding about when Jesus is to return on the Day of Judgment. Near the conclusion of 2 Thessalonians the author assures the readers that he really is Paul, and indicates the “proof” – as in all his letters he is signing off in his own hand (meaning a scribe has taken down his dictation for the letter and now he himself writes the ending so the readers can verify his handwriting).
It certainly seems like a slam-dunk case that this is a follow up letter by Paul and his companions.
But
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This is not related to today’s topic but I have wondering about this for some time. How did Jesus come by his ideas of universal altruism, as we see e.g. in the goldern rule?
I’ll be dealing with that a bit in my book. It appears to be rooted in his sense that God created all people and would redeem all people (as indicated in the book of Isaiah) and that therefore all people matter.
Two things strike me when I read 2 Thessalonians against a backdrop of 1 Thessalonians and other early Pauline letters. The first is that there is abosultely no effort to justify the authority that the author cliams. No “I was the one who originally brought you my gospel” nor, “I laboured night and day”, nor “I received my message from the Lord, not from any man”, nor any such language. Just being Paul is supposed to suffice.
Second the “man of lawlessness” terminology does not sound very Pauline to me. When Paul mentions the law it is almost always the Mosaic Law, and his main message is that Gentiles have *no reason* to subject themselves to that Law. Which does not make lawlessness sound like the epitomy of evil. (I realise this is a bit too simplistic: Gentile Christians are supposed to behave well even without the Law, and the man of lawlessness is probably not a Christian at all. Yet my point stands.)