Here are a few more comments about the short letter of Paul to Philemon, whose major themes and emphases I discussed yesterday.   It may indeed seem a rather peripheral letter – it’s a private letter about a slave returning to his master, not about Paul’s great theological views or highly informative discussions of his life.  But even so, this brief one-pager can provide us with some important insights into Paul’s view of his apostolic ministry, and even more about the role of social justice in his ministry (specifically: does he condone slavery?). One thing to observe is Paul’s reciprocal relationship with his converts in this letter.  In his other letters, he occasionally appears to be the all-knowing and all-powerful apostle, who makes his demands and expects people to follow them.  On certain points that he feels strongly about, such as what his congregations believe about his apocalyptic message and how they treat the Jewish law, he is altogether adamant. But on other issues, he falls short of making demands.  In the present instance, [...]

Here is an annotated list of books on the Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles with a couple of commentaries that deal with 2 Thessalonians.  One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. ****************************** Beker, J. Christiaan. The Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1991. A clear assessment of the theology of the Deutero-Pauline, especially in light of the views embodied in the undisputed Paulines. Ehrman, Bart D. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Biblical Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. San Francisco: Harper One, 2010. An account of the phenomenon of literary forgery (pseudepigraphy) throughout the early Christian tradition that asks how and why a Christian author would try to deceive his readers about his own identity, written for a popular audience; it it I deal [...]

I continue now with my nutshell overviews of the Pastorals by summarizing 2 Timothy and Titus.  I begin with a 50-word overview of the book Timothy. 2 Timothy, a more intimate letter (allegedly) by Paul to Timothy, recounts their past relationship, expresses hope that his disciple will come to visit him in prison in Rome, and urges him to fulfil his duties as leader of the church by quashing false teaching and maintaining his upright character. Here is a longer sketch of the book from my New Testament Introduction. 2 Timothy The second Pastoral epistle presupposes a somewhat different situation from th efirst. It too is written by “Paul” to Timothy (2 Tim 1:1). Now, however, “Paul” is in prison in Rome (2 Tim 1:16–17; his location in 1 Timothy was not specified), and he is clearly expecting to be put to death soon (4:6–8) after a second judicial proceeding (the first one evidently did not go well; 4:17). He writes to Timothy not only to encourage him to continue his pastoral ministry [...]

In this series providing summaries of each book of the New Testament “in a nutshell” I have dealt with three of the letters that claim to be written by Paul but probably were not: Colossians, Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians.  We now come to the three letters that are grouped together and called the “Pastoral Epistles,” 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. For reasons we will see, there is a wide scholarly consensus that these books were not actually written by Paul.  Before addressing the issue of authorship, I’d like to note the ostensible distinctive themes and emphases of these books, both as a group (since most scholars are reasonably certain that they all came from the same pen) and individually. The three letters are grouped together as Pastoral epistles because each claims to be written by Paul to a person he has appointed to lead one of his churches: Timothy, his young companion left to minister among the Christians in Ephesus, and Titus, his companion left on the island of Crete. Moreover, these epistles contain [...]

I thought it migh be interesting for readers who like on occasion to get down into the weeds of scholarship to see a more detailed argument for how the *similarity* of 2 Thessalonians to 1 Thessalonians suggests not that Paul wrote both of them but that a later author (of 2 Thessalonians) was imitating Paul's authentic letter (1 Thessalonians).  Here's how I express the case in my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press).  [Don't worry about the Greek: you can either just see the similar letters or look up the verses in your English translation]:   2 Thessalonians as a Forgery One reason the case for the inauthenticity of 2 Thessalonians has occasionally seemed wanting, even to some very fine scholars, is that critics have often resorted to a shotgun approach, citing every possible argument, good or bad, in support of their position.   It is all too easy to dismiss bad arguments, leaving an appearance of evidence in balance, pro and con.  And so, for example, the letter is often said to lack Paul’s customary [...]

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.  [...]

Here is a list of readings on 1 Thessalonians, most of which are relevant to all the undisputed Pauline epistles, with a couple of commentaries specifically on this significant, short letter.  One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. I devote a fuller discussion of 1 Thessalonians (an entire chapter) in my textbook, Bart Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2024), ch. 20.  That’s a good place to start for a fuller exposition of what I have given here in my nutshell posts.  If you have an earlier edition of the book, it will be pretty much the same, except for the expanded bibliography.    ****************************** Aune, David. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Includes a superb discussion of the practices of letter writing in Greco-Roman antiquity as the social context for Paul’s epistles. [...]

Now that I have given an overview of the major themes and emphases of 1 Thessalonians, I can say a few more things about what we know about its authorship, when it was written, and why. The book, of course, is always called “Paul’s” first letter to the Thessalonians but as you’ll notice, the opening verse indicates that it comes from “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.”  And throughout the letter the first-person plural pronoun predominates “WE give thanks” “WE know” “OUR visit” and so on. So, was this a letter written by committee?  If so…how does that work exactly? Aspects of the letter make it pretty clear that the three named authors did not take turns writing (Silvanus writing one passage, Timothy another, Paul yet another) but that it comes from one hand, and the hand was Paul’s.   Timothy in particular does not appear to be involved in the writing of the letter, since in chapter 3 the author(s) indicate that when they were in Athens they were distressed not knowing what was [...]

Here is an annotated list of books on Colossians, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles (that is, the letters that are assigned a “secondary” standing in the New Testament collection of Paul’s letters because scholars doubt they were actually composed by Paul himself) with a couple of commentaries specifically on Colossians.  One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. ****************************** Beker, J. Christiaan. The Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1991. A clear assessment of the theology of the Deutero-Pauline, especially in light of the views embodied in the undisputed Paulines. Ehrman, Bart D. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Biblical Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. San Francisco: Harper One, 2010. An account of the phenomenon of literary forgery (pseudepigraphy) throughout the early Christian tradition that asks how and why a Christian author would [...]

We continue in this series that explains each book of the New Testament “in a nutshell” by turning to the letter to the Colossians.  This is a book that claims to be written by Paul, but as we will see in the next post, there are very good reasons for thinking Paul himself did not write it, but that it was written in his name by a later follower claiming to be Paul. For now, we are interested in the letter itself, it’s major themes and emphases. I begin by trying to explain the book in 50 words. The letter to the Colossians, allegedly written by Paul from prison, praises the Christians in Colossae and warns them against false teachers who urge them to follow the Jewish law, live strictly ascetic lives, and worship angels; for this author, Christ alone represents the godhead and deserves to be worshiped. Here now is a fuller account of the main features of the book. ****************************** “Paul” is in prison for preaching the gospel (Col 4:3). While there, he [...]