The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (101 page)

More influential was the work of Kern who argued that 2 Thess 2:1—2 assumed the preexistence of the belief that Nero would rise to power again
(Nero Redivivus).
This would require a date of composition after 68—70 for the letter, a date too late to allow for Pauline authorship.
¹¹
Kern's arguments were widely accepted throughout most of the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, T. Zahn vigorously defended the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians in his
Introduction to the New Testament.
So many scholars were persuaded by Zahn's arguments that by 1908, G. Milligan could accurately state that the great majority of commentators in Germany and the general consensus of NT scholarship in Britain and America treated the letter as genuine.
¹²
The work of J. E. Frame defending the authenticity of the letter inspired a trend toward acceptance of the letter throughout most of the twentieth century. However, the consensus of opinion shifted again with the publication of W. Trilling's research on 2 Thessalonians in 1972. Trilling raised three arguments against Paul's authorship of 2 Thessalonians: (1) the style of the letter is unlike Paul's normal style; (2) form-critical features suggest that the letter is a forgery; and (3) the theology is incompatible with Pauline tradition.
¹³
However, as the following interaction will seek to demonstrate, none of the concerns advanced by Trilling needs to lessen the modern reader's confidence in Pauline authorship.

Language and Style
Scholars such as W. Wrede have argued that the vocabulary of 2 Thessalonians is so similar to that of 1 Thessalonians that it must be a forgery based on the earlier letter.
¹⁴
But Frame showed that the vocabulary of 2 Thessalonians is nearly as similar to Paul's other letters as it is to 1 Thessalonians. For example, of the 146 words shared in common by 1 and 2 Thessalonians, all but four also appear in Paul's major letters (Galatians, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians). Two of these four appear in the Prison Letters. The only two words shared by 1 and 2 Thessalonians alone are the words “Thessalonica” (which one would expect in two letters addressed to the same audience) and the word “direct”
(kateuthyno;
used 72 times in the LXX and once in Luke). This is hardly compelling evidence for a forgery based on 1 Thessalonians!

Trilling argued that 40 expressions that are unique to 2 Thessalonians suggest that it was written by someone other than Paul. But many of the unique expressions in 2 Thessalonians were required by the unusual problem that the author was addressing in the church of Thessalonica, a problem that Paul did not encounter elsewhere. Moreover, the actual number of
hapax legomena
(words used only once in a document) in 2 Thessalonians is 10, which is half the number of
hapax legomena
in 1 Thessalonians, a letter scholars regard as authentic.
¹⁵
Significantly, Menken, who argued that 2 Thessalonians is pseudonymous, admitted that the vocabulary of the letter is no less Paul's than that of the recognized letters.
¹⁶

Arguments based on stylistic features are equally unpersuasive. For example, some scholars point out that the sentences in 2 Thessalonians tend to be significantly longer than sentences in 1 Thessalonians. But they overlook the fact that the short sentences in 1 Thessalonians are due to its many exhortations. Moreover, many sentences in Paul's accepted letters are quite long (1 Cor 1:4-8; Phil 1:3—11; 1 Thess 1:2-5, perhaps 2-7).
¹⁷

Form-Critical Features
In the second part of his argument, Trilling attempted to use a form-critical investigation of 2 Thessalonians to dismiss Paul's authorship.
¹⁸
Trilling pointed out that the prescripts in 1 and 2 Thessalonians are more similar than any other prescripts. This close similarity suggested to him that the prescript of 2 Thessalonians was forged by someone other than Paul using 1 Thessalonians as a model. But one would expect a greater similarity between the two prescripts if Paul wrote both letters since the letters were written closer in time to one another than any other two extant letters written by Paul and they were written to the same audience.

Trilling also examined the thanksgiving, apocalyptic material, prayers, ethical material, and conclusion of 2 Thessalonians and argued that various features of these sections suggest that the letter is not Paul's. In particular, Trilling asserted that the greater stress on apostolic authority and the impersonal nature of the letter precludes Pauline authorship. But these same criteria could be used to determine that Romans and Galatians, letters almost universally recognized as authored by Paul, were actually not written by him. Romans is largely impersonal in nature. Galatians, though much more personal than Romans, greatly stresses Paul's apostolic authority. Although the impersonal nature of Romans can be explained as a result of the fact that Paul had not previously visited Rome, the impersonal nature of 2 Thessalonians is also easily explained since Paul had very recently written a more personal letter to the Thessalonians that freed him to write his second letter more expeditiously.

Wanamaker correctly argued that Trilling was wrong to assume that Paul's letters are “a homogenous set of writings holding to a standard pattern.” Although 2 Thessalonians, for
example, may have a thanksgiving section that differs from Paul's other letters, Galatians completely lacks a thanksgiving section, but no one has argued that the absence of the section precludes Paul's authorship. Scholars generally recognize that Paul's letters are highly situational, that is, they were written to address particular needs and to respond to specific issues in a local congregation. The unique needs and issues of various congregations significantly influenced the form, style, and tone of Paul's communication.
¹⁹

Theology
Trilling argued that certain theological themes in 2 Thessalonians stand in tension with Paul's theology elsewhere. His most important arguments relate to the themes of Christ's return and divine judgment and the image of God and Christ. Trilling argued that the discussion of Christ's return in 2 Thessalonians placed an emphasis on divine judgment and retribution that found no parallel in Paul's undisputed writings.
²⁰
This emphasis, Trilling claimed, reflected the point of view of later NT writers and did not seem to fit in one of Paul's early letters. Paul never elsewhere referred to God's judgment of the wicked to comfort believers who are being persecuted.

Trilling's objections are easily answered. First, Trilling seems to have overlooked the specific situation that the author was addressing, which is that 2 Thessalonians seeks to comfort believers who are suffering intense persecution. This setting of persecution that is presupposed in 2 Thessalonians is confirmed by 1 Thessalonians and the book of Acts. The promise of vindication of suffering believers through the punishment of their oppressors served to encourage the believers to remain faithful and to discourage them from withdrawing from the Christian community. Second, although the emphasis on retribution is unusual for Paul, it has parallels in Jewish literature that either predated or was contemporary with the apostle Paul.
²¹
These Jewish texts seriously undermine the claim that any Christian appeal to retribution must belong to the late first century.

Other interpreters have objected to Paul's authorship of 2 Thessalonians because it says that certain events must precede the Second Coming (2:3—12), though Paul elsewhere expected an imminent return of Christ (1 Thess 4:15-17; 5:1-5; Rom 13:11-12; 1 Cor 7:29,31; Phil 4:5). But, although other Pauline texts stress the suddenness of the Second Coming and imply the expectation that Christ would return soon, they do not preclude the necessity of certain events leading up to the return of Christ. Interpreters should not confuse imminence with immediacy. No real tension exists between the eschatology of 2 Thessalonians and that of Paul's other writings.

Trilling also viewed 2 Thessalonians' portrayal of Jesus as “Lord” as evidence of post-Pauline authorship since 2 Thess 1:9 applies the description of the activity of Yahweh in Isa 2:10 to Jesus. Trilling claimed that this reflected the progressive imposition of OT attributes of God to Christ and fits best with a late first-century date for the letter. This argument is puzzling since the title
Lord
is not typically applied to Jesus in the Pastoral
Letters, which Trilling regarded as Deutero-Pauline and to which he appealed to explain this feature. More importantly, Paul's undisputed letters frequently describe Jesus as Lord and do so in contexts that clearly portray Jesus as Yahweh.
²²
For example, 1 Thessalonians, which is widely regarded as Pauline, describes the Second Coming as the “Day of the Lord,” a phrase drawn from the OT prophets in which the title
Lord
translates the divine name Yahweh. This use of the title
Lord
as a substitute for Yahweh appears in a context that is saturated with references to Jesus as Lord. Consequently, the use of the title
Lord in 2
Thessalonians neither suggests a late date nor non-Pauline authorship of the letter. The usage of the title
Lord and
the application of Yahweh texts to Jesus in 2 Thessalonians are consistent with the high christology of Paul's undisputed letters.

The letter claims to have been written by Paul (2 Thess 1:1), describes letters falsely ascribed to the apostle as deception (2 Thess 2:2—3), and confirms Paul's own authorship with a distinctive autograph (2 Thess 3:17). The letter cannot be accepted as written by a person of integrity who writes in the name of Paul to express what he believed to be Pauline doctrine as some scholars have claimed. Either the letter is a genuine document written by the apostle Paul, or it is a forgery written by someone who intentionally deceived his readers. As R. Jewett noted, “The improbability of a forgery is extremely high.”
²³
Both the external and internal evidence affirm Paul's authorship of the letter. E. Best has pointed out that arguments against Paul's authorship have generally come from scholars who have studied the letter superficially: “It is curious how the vast majority of the commentators accept the letter as genuine while its rejectors are found among those who approach the letter more cursorily from the outset.
²⁴
Those who study the letter in greatest detail typically affirm the authenticity of the letter. Modern readers may be confident that the early church was correct in ascribing this letter to Paul.

Order of the Letters

Before the date of the Thessalonian letters may be established, one must first determine the order in which the two letters were written. Although readers may automatically assume that the canonical order of the two letters is the chronological order, the books of the Pauline corpus were arranged according to the length (beginning with the longest and ending with the shortest) rather than according to the date of their composition, and 1 Thessalonians (1,481 words) is significantly longer than 2 Thessalonians (823 words). Thus it is possible that 2 Thessalonians was actually written before 1 Thessalonians.

A handful of twentieth-century NT scholars defended the priority of 2 Thessalonians,
²⁵
though only a relatively small number of scholars have accepted this view. The first, and to date only, commentary to argue for the priority of 2 Thessalonians was the commentary on the Greek text of the letter by C. Wanamaker in 1990. Wanamaker appealed to the five principal reasons for the priority of 2 Thessalonians discussed by Manson and Weiss to support his conclusion.
²⁶
The following section explains these five principal reasons and offers a response.

1. The persecution referred to in 2 Thess 1:4—7 seems to be already past in 1 Thess 2:14. Indeed, 2 Thess 1:4 uses the present tense to describe the Thessalonians experience of persecution, while 1 Thess 2:14 uses the aorist, a past tense. But this would make sense also if the persecution the Thessalonians suffered in association with Paul's visit ended soon after his departure but recurred with new intensity when the citizens of Thessalonica realized that Paul's absence did not ensure the demise of the Christian movement in that city. In addition, other texts in 1 Thessalonians seem to imply that the Thessalonians were in fact suffering persecution at the time the letter was written (e.g., 3:3—10).

2. The disorder in the church appears to be a new problem in 2 Thess 3:11—15, while being treated as though it were a known difficulty in 1 Thess 4:10—12. The evidence here is inconclusive. It is true that Paul dealt with the issue of disorderly conduct more extensively and forcefully in 2 Thess 3:6—15. But most likely 1 Thess 4:10b—12 reminded the readers of his earlier oral teaching. Then, rumors or perhaps a personal report from Timothy on his return from delivering the first letter (2 Thess 3:11) may have required Paul to address the issue again more specifically in 2 Thess 3:6—15.

3. The closing in 2 Thess 3:17 seems to suggest that 2 Thessalonians is the first letter. To the contrary, the explanation of Paul's signature in 2 Thess 3:17 does not require or imply the priority of 2 Thessalonians. Most of Paul's letters in the NT are the first letters that Paul wrote to a specific congregation, but they contain no such explanation. The explanation was more likely motivated by Paul's concern that someone had forged a letter in his name and confused the Thessalonians regarding the coming of Christ (2 Thess 2:2). The pseudonymous letter prompted Paul to highlight the hallmark that identified his authentic letters.

4. The remark in 1 Thess 5:1 that the readers did not need instruction regarding the end time seems to presuppose 2 Thess 2:1—12. Yet Paul's confidence in the Thessalonians' understanding of “times and seasons” could as easily result from his emphasis on eschatology
in his oral teaching in Thessalonica as from a prior letter. In fact, 1 Thess
4:6
implies that Paul had discussed eschatological judgment during his visit.