INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. OF THE OCCASION OF THE EPISTLES BEING WRITTEN.

THE city of Thessalonica in Macedonia was originally called Therma; it first received the name of Thessalonica from Cassander. On the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans it was fixed on for the chief city of the second district of that province, and, as such, was the seat of the Roman authorities. The city now bears the name of Salonichi. As early as at the time of the Roman dominion there dwelt a numerous body of Jews at Thessalonica, as is still the case, because, being situated on a fine gulf, it carried on an extensive commerce. To this body of Jews many Gentiles of consideration, especially women, had united themselves as proselytes. (Acts xvii. 1, seq.) Now, when Paul, about the year 53, visited Thessalonica with Silas, on his second missionary journey,† he came on three successive Sabbaths into the synagogue there, and shewed from the prophecies of the Old Testament that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. The space of a few weeks sufficed to assemble the church in Thessalonica; a remarkable testimony to the Divine power which manifested itself in the labours of Paul. It is true, Schott thinks the three Sabbaths mentioned in Acts xvii. 2 related merely to his labours among the Jews, and that it is to be presumed Paul had laboured a longer time among the Gentiles. But, according to the representation of the Acts, the tumult of the Jews, which drove Paul out of Thessalonica, followed immediately on the third Sabbath; there is no mention at all of special labours of Paul merely among the Gentile inhabitants of Thessalonica. To Schott's argument that Paul worked at his craft in Thessalonica (1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 7, 8), which he did only where he meant to remain a rather long time, we reply simply by saying that Paul seems, no doubt, to have had the design of remaining a longer time than usual in Thessalonica, but was hindered from doing so by the tumult.

*See Tafel's Historia Thessalonicæ. Tubing., 1825.

See Schottii isagoge hist. critica in utramque epistolam Pauli ad Thessalonicenses. Jenæ, 1830, and Burgerhoudt de cœtus Christ. Thess. ortu fatisque, et prioris epist. consilio atque argumento. Lugd. Bat., 1825.

Finally, the manifold supplies, of which mention is made Phil. iv. 16, refer, not to the first sojourn of Paul in Thessalonica, but to the latter one, which followed on his flight from Ephesus (Acts xx. 1, seq.) Among the dwellers in Thessalonica who became believers but few Jews were found (Acts xvii. 4: Tivès ¿š avt☎v [scil. Lovdaíwv verse 1] ¿ñεíσ0ŋoav); on the other hand, however, a great number of proselytes, especially many women of rank. This success excited the envy of the Jews, who raised a mob which drove Paul away. The rioters assembled before the house of a certain Jason, with whom Paul dwelt (Acts xvii. 5); and, as they did not find Paul and Silas, dragged Jason along with some of the brethren before the magistrates. In their malice they here accused them of high treason, in that they acknowledged another sovereign than Cæsar, namely Jesus. For the rest, we perceive from this charge what the epistles themselves confirm, that Paul might in Thessalonica have represented Christ as the king of the anticipated kingdom of God. In order to moderate the rage of the Jews, Paul left the city, and went first to Beroa, then to Athens. His yearning after the Christians in Thessalonica, to whom he had only been able to devote himself so short a time, left him, however, no peace; he made, probably from Beroa, two attempts to return to that city, but in vain. (See 1 Thess. ii. 18.) There remained, therefore, nothing for him but to send thither Timothy at least from Athens (1 Thess. iii. 1, seq.) in order to collect information as to the state of things there. Paul meanwhile betook himself to Corinth, and here Timothy, who brought with him the best accounts of the young church in Thessalonica, again met with the apostle. (Acts xviii. 5; 1 Thess. iii. C.) Hereupon Paul wrote from Corinth the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, taking notice of the reports of Timothy; its composition, therefore, falls within the year 54, or thereabouts. A very short time thereafter the second epistle was also sent off. (Cf. the general Introd. to the life of Paul, vol. iii., p. 434.) The Epistles to the Thessalonians are, accordingly, the earliest among the apostolical writings which have been preserved to us. They fall some years even before the composition of the Epistle to the Galatians. This view, which is all but generally received by the critics, has been recently again victoriously defended by Schneckenburger (Klaiber's Stud. for 1834, part i. p. 137, seq.) against Wurm, who thought it necessary to set the composition of these epistles after the journey from Corinth to Jerusalem, only hinted at by Luke, to be supplied in Acts xviii. 22. (Tübingen Journal for 1833, part i.) But Wurm has on his side again refuted with striking arguments, Schrader's (vol. i., pp. 90, seq., 164, seq.) utterly inadmissible hypothesis, that the Epistles to the Thessalonians were written during the three months' stay of Paul in Greece (Acts xx. 2, seq.), and Köhler's, who places

them even as late as the latest times of Paul's life, after the Acts (pp. 68, seq., 112, seq.)

Now the first Epistle to the Thessalonians contains, like that to the Ephesians, entirely general encouragements to the life in faith and in love. Only in the fourth chapter (iv. 13, seq.) mention is made of a particular point which affords an insight into the special condition of the church in Thessalonica, and at the same time was the occasion of the composition of the second epistle. For, as we have already observed above, Paul seems in Thessalonica to have especially preached Christ, as King of the kingdom of God, and the hope of the setting up of that kingdom on earth. This the Christians there had eagerly caught up, but not without misapprehensions and mistakes, as being inexperienced in that difficult field. Their view was directed more to externals, more to the outward glory of that kingdom, than to the moral conditions of participation in it, and to its spiritual nature. Because of this outward relation to such hopes, it also happened that (as Timothy, we may suppose, had reported) the Christians were in anxiety whether their dear departed ones would not lose the kingdom of God, and those only come to the enjoyment of it who should be alive at the second coming of the Lord. Now Paul relieves them on that point by the assurance that the dead would rise first, and the living be, along with them, lifted into the air to meet the Lord. The time, however, of his advent, did not admit of being fixed, as the Lord would come like a thief in the night. They should, therefore, continually expect him, and be found watching as children of the light. However, these instructions by no means relieved the Christians in Thessalonica. On the contrary, symptoms developed themselves there which afforded reason to fear that the church would become a prey to enthusiasm. Probably Paul was indebted for the knowledge of these errors to an epistle of the Christians in Thessalonica to him. He therefore replied immediately in a second epistle, in order to bring back those in error as soon as possible into the right way. For it is apparent from 2 Thess. ii. 2 that the believers in Thessalonica were thrown into great agitation, and that, too, not merely by pretended revelations and prophecies, but also by a fictitious epistle under the name of Paul, from which they thought they might gather that the coming of Christ was quite near. They had, in consequence of those announcements, given up their handicrafts and callings (2 Thess. iii. 11), and went about in a state of religious bustle but real idleness, a proceeding of which, according to the first epistle (1 Thess. iv. 11), signs had shewn themselves even earlier among the Christians of Thessalonica. With regard to that error, as if Christ's coming were certainly immediately impending (whereas, in the first epistle, v. 1, seq., it was only asserted

the Lord might come at any time), Paul now details the necessary conditions, without which that coming would not take place. It is particularly the appearance of Antichrist which must precede the coming of Christ; but this is still kept back by something. Before, therefore, this is removed the Lord comes not. This explanation (2 Thess. ii. 3, seq.) is extremely important, because it is the only connected communication of Paul's on the end of the world. We therefore obtain by means of it a necessary complement to the doctrinal system of Paul. But, if we compare these elucidations as to the end of all things with the intimations on that subject in the later epistles, all in these latter that can be referred to the second coming of Christ and the kingdom of God is thrown strikingly into the background. Paul seems in later times not only to give up the hope of living to see Christ's second coming himself (compare Phil. i. 23 with 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17), but also to have dwelt less in his teachings on the near proximity of the outward kingdom of God, and to have presented in stronger relief its spiritual aspects. We need not hesitate to assume that the experience of what misapprehensions that doctrine, preached with special prominence, had occasioned in Thessalonica, brought Paul to this modification of his form of teaching. His dogmatical conviction remained unaltered; he merely modified his manner of propounding it according to the necessities of his mostly Gentile auditors, who, after such experience, justly seemed to him but ill adapted to receive that doctrine pure and unclouded. Without concealing it in later times, he yet always presented it only in its subordinate relations to the previously settled spiritual foundation of the new birth, in which form no further abuse of it was to be apprehended.

§ 2. OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSA

LONIANS.

The first Epistle to the Thessalonians belongs to the few in the New Testament which have had the fortune neither in ancient nor in modern times to be attacked with regard to their authenticity. Even the most ancient of the Fathers use it as an authentic apostolical production, and the carping criticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has also been forced hitherto to recognize its collective contents as genuine. It has not fared quite so well with the second of these epistles; for, though it was clearly in ancient times recognized equally with the first, yet modern critics have thought they remarked in it suspicious elements. No one has yet ventured however, decidedly to deny Paul's authorship of the second epistle on account of those points. In fact, too, such weighty