This will be my last post on the question of whether Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians.  If you’ve been following all this, you know that my view is that he did not.  My sense is that a lot of people have trouble accepting that view simply because it’s not what they’ve always heard and thought.  It’s hard to change your mind about something that just seems sensible and right, even if you haven’t really given it much thought or attention.  We’re *all* inclined to think what we’ve always thought. For most people, of course, the question doesn’t matter a twit.  Who CARES?   Well, some of us care.  And if you’re one who does, then I’d suggest being open to changing your mind if the evidence takes you in a different direction.  If you don’t want to change your mind, or are just on principle disinclined to do so, fair enough.  We all have to decide that to think and also what even not to bother thinking about. (But then why are you reading these posts?!?  J) [...]

I now come to the crux of the matter, the argument that for me seems the most convincing that Paul probably did not write 2 Thessalonians.  I already stated the argument in its simple form last week, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-paul-really-write-2-thessalonians/   Now I want to show how the argument gets grounded in a much deeper exploration of the text itself; in part this is to show that it’s not a particularly simple matter and in part it’s to illustrate, again, how scholars make argument like this to other scholars (as opposed to summarizing the results more broadly).  That may not be your cup of tea – but if so, then be assured, another pot is brewing. Once more, this comes from the blog (five years ago), and can be found with footnotes (if you’re a real glutton for punishment) in my monograph Forgery and Counterforgery.  I have translated most of the Greek here.   For further guidance, among the technical terms I use, “realized eschatology” refers to the idea that believers are *already* enjoying the full benefits of [...]

I have made the following post available to all readers, whether they belong to the blog or not.  Rarely on the blog do I show how scholars make arguments to other experts in the field of biblical studies (as opposed to scholars who simply summarize the results for non-scholars); even more rarely do I make such posts available to anyone who wants to see.  But here is an example -- just in case you're interested and would like to know.   (You'll notice that once you get into the meat of the discussion, about half-way through, it's not the sort of thing that would occur to regular-ole readers of the Bible, even if they've been reading it their entire lives.)  This is a "re-post" of a post I made some five years ago. If you were a member of the blog, you could read five posts a week, nearly always written at a popular level for non-scholars, but always based on scholarship "behind the scenes" (like this).   So think about joining! ************************************************************* In my previous two [...]

In a previous post I began giving the scholarly version of why 2 Thessalonians is often considered to be non-Pauline – that is, to be forged in the name of Paul by someone wanting you to think he was Paul even though he was someone else.   That  discussion was taken from my book Forged, written for a broader audience   Now that I have given a (very) brief sketch of the history of the scholarship on this problem (the previous post) I can begin to discuss the actual evidence, taken from my deeper analysis in Forgery and Counterforgery. This is where the discussion gets down to business with more serious argumentation.  As you'll see, it's not that the ideas themselves are hopelessly complex (we're not talking astro-physics here....) but that to write at the scholarly level requires assuming lots of background not usually known to normal people, -- only to abnormal biblical scholars -- and, correspondingly that it requires the use of Greek. That's the only kind of approach that will convince.    (Not that scholars [...]