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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Dating 1 Thessalonians
  • Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 08:48:21 -0500

Title: Re: [corpus-paul] Re: Dating 1 Thessalonians
on 4/18/02 9:07 PM, Craig de Vos at csdevos AT trinity.unimelb.edu.au wrote:

At 8:19 AM -0500 on 18/4/02, Mark Nanos wrote:
2. Would not lack of Tanak references compared to other letters argue for
later (if any sequence is implied at all), since Paul would begin from that
which he was familiar (for himself and his audiences), and later be creating
and learning new ways to express himself as a part of a subgroup developing
its own symbolic world, authorities, language, etc.?

Hi Mark,
Surely that line of argument only works if the Christian community at Thessalonica was of a dominantly Hebrew/Judean origin. However, the evidence we have from the letter itself (leaving aside the Lukan construction of Paul's ministry in Thessalonica), is that it was a Gentile community. See, in particular, 1 Thess 1:9 [in fact, in my Church and Community Conflicts, I argued that the Thessalonian community was not only entirely Gentile in origin, but also comprised of native Thessalonians -- see pp. 144-47]. As such, it would be foolish for Paul to cite the Hebrew scriptures (and this letter has the fewest number of references and allusions among the genuine paulines) regardless of when the letter was written. Surely, the lack of these references says more about the community Paul was addressing than the time at which he wrote.


Hi Craig,
Nice to hear from you. I have no problem in principle with your suggestions for the community make-up in Thessalonika. I like the approach you developed in your published dissertation, and have not myself done sufficient work on that letter to propose an alternative. I am not really trying to propose any scenario, just responding to the query posed regarding my reservations about the prevailing dating. Since it was a dating issue, I commented in that direction (the parenthetical comments reveal my own reservations).

Accepting the framework of the questions raised by advocates of early dating, to which I responded, I would like to raise two (three) issues that arise from your post (which I do not think clearly supports either early or late dating for the letter). In my view:

1. Regardless of the make-up of that community, one still needs to deal with the author's likely tendencies when offering proofs; yes? To what authority for proofs would Paul likely turn (if Paul "was of a dominantly Hebrew/Judean origin")?

2. a. Whether all or mostly non-Jewish members of Paul's groups, a. this does not mean that the nature of the group was not somewhat Jewish; and b. this does not mean that the Tanak was not considered authoritative for themselves (consider the make-up of Christian Churches, yet the role of Jewish scripture/precedent).

What do you think about these elements?

Regards,
Mark

--
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
313 NE Landings Dr.
Lee's Summit, MO 64064
USA
nanosmd AT comcast.net



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