Corpus-Paul

["Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>]

Second Installment of History of Scholarship on the
Pseudonymity of 2 Thessalonians.

After Wrede's monograph in 1903, scholarship on 2
Thessalonians and its relationship with 1 Thessalonians was
generally a reaction to Wrede.  I have already mentioned
Adolf v. Harnack and Martin Dibelius who wrote an article
and a commentary, respectively, with the view that Paul
wrote 2 Thessalonians to a different group within the
Thessalonian congregation than that to which he wrote 1
Thessalonians.

James Everett Frame's International Critical Commentary in
1912 was a substantial contribution to the debate.  It
included a detailed philological analysis and a thorough
sifting of issues and the previous secondary literature,
embodied mostly in the lenthy introduction to both
epistles.  Frame made many correlations to extrabiblical
documents and Acts.  Accepting Pauline authorship for both
epistles, Frame read 1 Thessalonians as Paul's response to
serious problems in the Thessalonian community.  " . . . a
new question had arisen, due to to the death of one or more
of the converts.  In reference to the dead in Christ, they
needed not only encouragement but instruction; as for the
rest, they required not new teaching but either
encouragement or warning."  Like other commentators, Frame
identified the ataktoi of 1 Thess. 5:14 with those acting
ataktws in 2 Thess. 3:6, which then allowed him to
understand the ataktoi of 1 Thess. as "idle brethren."
Concerning the situation that caused Paul to write 2 Thess.,
Frame wrote, "It is impossible to determine with exactness
the reasons that led to the writing of the second epistle.
The internal evidence of II [Thess.], upon which we must
rely, permits only a tentative reconstruction of the course
of events in the interval between the sending of I [Thess.]
and the composition of II [Thess.]."  Frame's reconstruction
of these events included the reception of 1 Thess. and the
increased activity of "the idlers."  Frame believed that
after 1 Thess., the congregational leaders in Thessalonika
"sent a letter to Paul by the first brother (3:11) who was
journing to Corinth.  Reflecting the discouragement of the
fainthearted, they write remonstrating with Paul for his
praise of their faith, love, and endurance, intimating that
they were not worthy of it."  Thus the differences between 1
and 2 Thess. are explained by Frame as reflecting a new
situation, yet "The new situation which it recounts is not
new in kind but a natural development of tendencies present
during the visit and evident in the first letter."

The next big event in Thessalonians scholarship was the
appearance of the lengthy commentary by Beda Rigaux, O.F.M.,
in 1956.  In the words of Wolfgang Trilling, Rigaux's
position on the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians was
"cautious and a bit vague."  Rigaux himself said, "There is
no perfect solution.  It is thus possible to choose among
numerous probabilities."  Commenting on several issues
relative to the authorship of 2 Thessalonians, Rigaux wrote,
"It is very probable that Paul, when he wrote his second
letter, has had new information from Thessalonika, between
the writing of I and II. . .  .  The psychological
possibilities of a man are not measurable, still less those
of a man like Paul . . .   ."

The year 1972 saw the publication of a major monograph by
Wolfgang Trilling, a Roman Catholic scholar from East
Germany.  In Untersuchungen zum zwiten Thessalonicherbrief
Trilling approached 2 Thessalonians from many points of
view, including form-critical, theological, and in terms of
the history of scholarship.  The history of scholarship is
well summarized and brilliantly synthesized by Trilling.  At
the end of his historical overview of previous scholarship
on 2 Thessalonians, Trilling made several
"Schlussbemerkungen."  Trilling said that the history of
research had served as a "process of clarification" in the
following ways:  (1) The search for another author than Paul
or for other addressees must be seen as a shifting of the
problematic.  (2) The understanding of a close
dependency-relationship by Paul on himself (meaning the
acceptance of Wrede's parallels from 1 to 2 Thessalonians,
but arguing for Pauline authorship of 2 Thess. nonetheless)
produces the same shifting of the problematic.  (3) The
evidence of 2 Thess. does not allow a theory of
interpolations or a partition theory of 2 Thess. to be
correct, since the stylistic and literary peculiarity of 2
Thess. includes all parts of the writing of 2 Thess., and it
can only be well explained by one author.  (4) The history
of research of over 100 years is not a maze, of which there
is no way out, but a process in which mucy knowledge was
explained and secured, much as the unserviceable was
rejected.  Thus, Trilling said, the "clear alternative" for
2 Thess. research is that the authenticity of the letter is
the absolutely crucial issue.  In Trilling's EKK commentary
on 2 Thessalonians (1980) he said of this letter:  "It
could, in fact, be looked upon as a forward development
within a Paul-tradition, which derived its legitimation from
a common root and remained in an ideal continuity with its
origin, as it is widely assumed has happened with
Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles.  As a
serious element, the element of the imitation of I
Thessalonians comes into play, an element which, as far as I
know, has not yet been hermeneutically reflected upon.  The
author has in his clever way used I Thessalonians like a
quarry and extracted a few stones -- expressing his
understanding of the church and of doctrine from a later
period."

Willi Marxsen's Introduction to the NT (ET 1968) as well as
his later commentary in the Zuercher Bibelkommentare series
(1982) argue that the pseudonymous writer of 2 Thess. was
refuting a kind of Gnosticism.  The writer of 2 Thess. put
it in apocalyptic terminology, by saying that his opponents
taught "that the day of the Lord has already come" (2 Thess.
2:2).

Well, that brings you pretty much up to the early 1980s.  I.
Howard Marshall has a pretty traditional treatment of 2
Thessalonians in his attempt to refute Trilling.  Robert
Jewett has a pretty nontraditional treatment in The
Thessalonian Correspondence (Fortress 1986) in that, like
Frame and like W. Howard Burkeen ("The Parousia of Christ in
the Thessalonian Correspondence," Ph.D. diss, Aberdeen,
1979), he sees Paul writing 2 Thess. to combat
misunderstandings of 1 Thessalonians.  I prefer this view to
the view that the problems associated with the
eschatological and other differences between the two letters
are not really problems, which is the view of the
commentaries by F. F. Bruce (WBC 1982) and I. Howard
Marshall (NCB 1983).

About 10 minutes ago my copy of Dictionary of Biblical
Interpretation, John H. Hayes, general editor (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1999) arrived, and my article on
"Thessalonians, First and Second Letters to the" is found in
volume 2, pp. 568-72.  Tolle, lege!