Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>]

Frank, Thanks for the response. While I would love to discuss Galatians,
and appreciate the offer, I am still puzzled by the logic here, which
actually does have something to do with the data available to us from
Galatians. I am familiar, of course, with the chronologies of Paul by
Jewett, Luedemann and other wonderful scholars (some friends), but I am
struck by the model of the early Paul and the logic of the sequential place
of 1 Thess. that is operating in the consensus view. When I read the posts
the other day, and now again, the argument just seems to me to involve a
non-sequitur. I think my problem is that I do not share the model of the
early Paul upon which this is constructed, which is informed by the
autobiographical material in Galatians, so I am not convinced of the
sequential dating of 1 Thess. that follows. For example:

You wrote:
[snip] In other words 1 Thess. seems to come from a time before Paul had
reason to (1) defend his apostolic ministry, (2) deal with a "Judaizer"
crisis, (3) deal with any other manifestations of Jewish vs. Gentile
Christian conflict.  In other words, Paul doesn't use any of the rhetorical
apparatus of defense of his apostolic ministry (not even mentioning his
title as apostle in the epistolary prescript of 1 Thessalonians!) because
he doesn't think he needs to do so.  I am greatly influenced by the
conventional interpretation of 1 Thess. 1:9-10, i.e., that Paul was writing
to a Gentile congregation.  However, 1 Thess. also has other
characteristics that point, I believe strongly, to a date relatively early
in Paul's career. [snip]

I am not disputing the aspects of your post that remain internal to the
document, such as the question of the future posed by Paul's concern to
clarify what they should expect. This tells us something about the
community in Thessalonika; and Paul. You have a point with the appeal to
the possibility of evidence of naivete, although I think this could be
argued differently (though this is not the data that provokes my line of
question here). But I am less certain that this tells us something about
Paul relative to his other letters. The material repeated above seems to me
problematic, as well as the logic of the rhetorical classification: if
epideictic (I have no problem with this, but) this would not indicate it is
prior to need for forensic in other situations of his life (for what its
worth, I do not think even Galatians is forensic). Since Paul went to
Thessalonika after quite a few years of working in very Jewish environments
in areas closer to Judea, and had already presumably had the Jerusalem and
Antioch experiences, even if not yet written Galatians where these
experiences are recounted, how can the three propositions stand? (While
Galatians may tell us something about a "later" crisis, the examples Paul
brings into the argument are about earlier times and crises, presumably
before he even went to Thessalonika, much less wrote to there).

He has already had to do all three: defend his apostolic ministry, deal
with a crisis of gentiles and Jewish identity expectations (I don't buy the
common "Judaizer" scenario, but imagine the "normative" Jewish communal
concerns about gentiles expecting full membership without becoming full
members in the "presumably normal" way of proselyte conversion to be at
issue in Galatians), and deal with other manifstations of Jewish vs.
gentile conflict both inside and outside of this coalition of believers in
Christ. However early 1 Thess. may be relative to Paul's other letters, it
just strikes me as strange to imagine that it is all that early in Paul's
career. If we were dealing with a letter to Damascus, where Paul
visited/worked early in his career, OK; but 1 Thessalonians? And it seems
to me that the early Paul was immediately faced with the kind of identity
issues that pose the polemics you suggest only arise later. As a Jewish
person zealous enough to persecute this movement, but one who now believes
he is to bring gentiles into this Jewish coalition, how could he not
concern himself very quickly with questions of how to "justify" and
explain/defend this belief in Jew and gentile as equal, and thus create a
community identity and code of behavior without conversion of the gentiles
to proselytes, simply by the faith in/of Christ? That this kind of concern
is not so evident in 1 Thess. is interesting, and may suggest that there
are no Jewish people and thus identity concerns in the community addressed,
but it does not seem to demonstrate that it is earlier than other letters
on this basis, since it must be later than these experiences and concerns
arise in Paul's life and work elsewhere.

John Hurd wrote:
... 1 Thess. 4:13-18 is Paul's first teaching to the Thessalonians on the
subject of how to think of Christians who have died before the Parousia.
The epistolary formula, "we do not want you not to know, brethren,
concerning . . ."
means that this is new information (cf. 2 Cor. 1:8), that is, the death
of Christians is a new problem unforeseen by Paul at the time that he
founded his earliest congregations.

This does seem to indicate that those Paul addressed had not been informed
of this view. It may even indicate that it is both a new idea for Paul and
a new problem unforeseen by Paul, but these do not necessarily follow. More
important for my line of questions on sequence, it does not necessarily
indicate that this is an early congregation. It is perhaps a new problem, a
new way to (mis)construe the meaning of what he had taught when present, or
what someone else taught since he left, or a new recognition of the
dissonance between what they believe he taught and how things now appear
after the passing of some tim., Or it might even indicate that Paul had
taught this so many times he took it for granted that they knew it, an
older forgetful Paul (perhaps?), or one of his disciples dealing with a
later development (?), etc., ad infinitum. But my question is simply, how
can we know that this particular data tells us something relative to the
problems addressed in letters to other communities in a way that provides
high probability for relative dating?

Mark Nanos