Corpus-Paul

["Justin K. Hardin" <jkh26 AT cam.ac.uk>]

Title: Influencers homegrown

Dear Mark and Richard,

Richard's recent question to Mark is below:

> If the
> influencers are homegrown Galatians, why do we not see a similar situation
> develop in Thessalonica, for example?

Mark replies:
I cannot know. It does seem (from the rhetoric of that letter) that the
groups of Thessalonica might not be meeting within Jewish communities, so

this issue might not arise.

________

Mark's suggestion is certainly possible.  Another possibility is that the Thessalonian situation was different precisely because they were willing to follow Paul's example of suffering.  NB Paul's commendation of them at the outset of the letter in 1Thess 1.6-7 'And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word with much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia...' when contrasted with Paul's appeal in 4.12 'Become as I...' (for the meaning, see Goddard and Cummins, JSNT 1993).  I think this fact could help us to understand more clearly the situtation in Galatia as well as Paul's heated response. (He was angry, pace L. Thurén's essay in Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture [1999], but I agree that he was not out-of-control mad (e.g. traditional interps. of 5.12).  The parent/teenager analogy Mark put forward hits it right on the, well, the 'mark').  But having made this suggestion, I do not mean to steer us away from the topic at hand--Galatians!

Justin

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Justin K. Hardin
University of Cambridge
jkh26 AT cam.ac.uk