Corpus-Paul

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

> Gerd Lüdemann has recently argued that 2 Thess was written not so much to 
> correct as
> to replace/supplant 1 Thess, understanding 2 Thess 2.2 to allude to the 
> first letter
> as a false document. He gave his view as a paper here in Cambridge last 
> year, and I
> think it is part of his book _Heretics: The Other Side of Early 
> Christianity_. I
> suspect someone has already argued this, but he is pushing the argument a 
> bit
> further than anyone else I've seen.

This is what Heinrich Julius Holtzmann argued (in order to save Pauline 
authorship)
and what Andreas Lindemann argued (against Pauline authorship).  Notably 
Holtzmann
said that 2 Thess. had an "Ersatzcharakter" (replacement character).  Bob 
Jewett
agrees with this and concluded his book by saying that only Paul was able to 
give 2
Thess. this Ersatzcharakter.  Lindemann's article was "Zum Abfassungszweck 
des zweiten
Thessalonicherbriefes," ZNW 68 (1977) 35-47.  Holtzmann's article was "Zum 
zweiten
Thessalonicherbrief," ZNW 2 (1901) 97-108.  Robert Jewett's book is The 
Thessalonian
Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (FFNT; Philadelphia: 
Fortress,
1986).

This is one way of dealing with the paradox of the literary closeness of 1 
and 2
Thessalonians together with the theological differences between the letters.  
The
problem with the position is how to explain the author of 2 Thessalonians' 
warning
against 1 Thessalonians (or a misinterpretation thereof) at the same time 
that you
have the tremendous parallels between the two.  If the writer of 2 
Thessalonians
(either Paul or some Paulinist) thought that 1 Thessalonians had been so badly
misinterpreted in and by the Thessalonian congregation, then why would he 
quote and
allude to it so much?  In other words, if the apocalyptic rhetoric of 1 
Thessalonians
caused Paul a problem in Thessaloniki (and we have no way of knowing if it 
did), it
would seem equally logical to theorize that 2 Thessalonians would cause Paul 
another
problem.

I argued that what the writer of 2 Thess. was against was the kind of realized
eschatological theology that we see in Ephesians and particularly Colossians 
which was
being propagated in a pseudopauline letter.

All best,
Frank W. Hughes
Lecturer in NT Studies
Codrington College
St. John, Barbados