1 and 2 Thessalonians

Zondervan, Clinton E. Arnold

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780310492870
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

Concentrate on the biblical author's message as it unfolds.

Designed to assist the pastor and Bible teacher in conveying the significance of God's Word, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series treats the literary context and structure of every passage of the New Testament book in the original Greek.

With a unique layout designed to help you comprehend the form and flow of each passage, the ZECNT unpacks:

• The key message.
• The author's original translation.
• An exegetical outline.
• Verse-by-verse commentary.
• Theology in application.

While primarily designed for those with a basic knowledge of biblical Greek, all who strive to understand and teach the New Testament will benefit from the depth, format, and scholarship of these volumes.

Introduction to 1 and 2 Thessalonians

The letters to the Thessalonians were elements of an innovative solution to a grave predicament. The apostles had been thrown out of town and were banned from returning. They had removed themselves to a distance of 190 miles (300 km) as the crow flies. Now, how could they keep in touch with their newly planted church? In the case of these letters, there were exceptional circumstances: the church was only a few months old; it was undergoing fierce harassment; persecution had cut off their lines of communication to the apostles; Satan himself was conspiring to keep the apostles and the church apart. The Thessalonian church urgently needed a word of encouragement from its founders.

In the middle of this crisis, Paul and Silas fixed on a fresh stratagem: they commissioned the junior member of the missionary team to serve as their traveling representative. While in hindsight this method seems characteristically Pauline (see Acts 19:22), it may not have been an obvious choice when he first tried it. After all, Timothy himself was new to the ministry. Nevertheless, he put himself at risk, traveling north and slipping into Thessalonica, not once, but three times (a subsequent visit after the church was planted and then to deliver the two letters). While there, he would have acted by the light of “What would Paul and Silas do?” His commission also involved listening and observing. He needed to return safely to Paul and Silas to tell them the questions that the church was asking. The crucial first round trip resulted in the writing and sending of 1 Thessalonians.

Paul and Silas were hugely relieved when Timothy returned from that first deputation to tell them that there was still a Thessalonian church. The church had not only survived hell’s onslaught but was positively thriving: “just now Timothy has come to us from you and has announced the good news” (1 Thess 3:6). First Thessalonians is an outpouring of their relief and gratitude to God for his protection of their Thessalonian “children.”

On his second and third trips to Thessalonica, Timothy arrived with a small scroll in his baggage.1 The two Thessalonian letters are short notes and can be read one after the other in less than an hour. The first letter especially sparkles with life: reading it aloud in the Greek lets the hearer capture the alliteration and other devices that Paul included—for example, the repetitive use of π in 1 Thess 1:2. Paul also favored triads, groups of three words to express a theme in a striking manner (so 1:5—“not simply as words … but also with miracles and in the operation of the Holy Spirit, and in the great sense of certainty”). They were read to all the local brothers and sisters (5:27). Within a few years, the letters were copied and collected for the edification of all Christians, people far separated in space and time from the original recipients. Thus, these early examples of long-distance apostolic communication came to form part of the canon.

Letters, carried and interpreted by Paul’s associates, were the medium by which any Pauline church could hear from its apostle within weeks of having posed questions to him, even if he were in another region. Only in the last century and a half has the speed of interchurch communication surpassed what Paul attained when he sent 1 Thessalonians.

The Church

The City of Thessalonica

Thessalonica, a city at the crossroads. From AD 44 on, Thessalonica served as the provincial capital of Macedonia. Like many of Paul’s urban centers, it was a well-populated city that was built on a crossroads. It was a stopping point along the Via Egnatia, the Roman road that ran from Byzantium (Istanbul) westward, eventually terminating at the embarking point for travel by sea to Italy and Rome. Thessalonica lay ninety miles (144 km) west along the Via from Philippi. It also straddled north-south trade routes. Thessalonica was, and still is, a natural port. The southwest view from the city across the bay is stunning; there is Mount Olympus, home of the pantheon headed by Zeus.

As a “free city,” Thessalonica had a fair amount of local autonomy that the city’s leaders were anxious to retain; this may explain why the local officials seemed particularly nervous about political disturbances. The city was a prominent center for the worship of the Roman emperors.

Thessalonian Jews. Jews had imperial permission to acquire land and erect synagogues, conduct regular worship, and raise funds to send to Jerusalem. Despite their legal status, many of their neighbors disliked Jews as a people (see comments on 1 Thess 2:14–16). For example, Roman historian Tacitus “criticizes Jewish proselytism, misanthropy, separatism, and their refusal to worship the emperor.”2

Acts 17:1–2 indicates that the Thessalonian Jews, unlike their counterparts in Philippi, possessed their own synagogue building.3 Jews met on the Sabbath to recite creedal statements, pray, hear the Scriptures read, hear some sort of exposition and exhortation, and perhaps sing. If Gentiles wished to hear the Bible taught, they might have had to stand apart from the Jewish worshipers. Perhaps they would hear a message similar to this:

Let us, therefore, fix deeply in ourselves this first commandment as the most sacred of all commandments, to think that there is but one God, the most highest, and to honour him alone; and let not the polytheistical doctrine ever even touch the ears of any man who is accustomed to seek for the truth, with purity and sincerity of heart.4

Thessalonian pagans. Most Westerners are familiar with the labors of Hercules or other classical myths and legends. Nevertheless, one cannot understand a religion simply by reading its formative stories. Greek religion was a system of rituals directed to heaven. Ritual was vital in popular thinking. Worshipers had to perform visible actions, since the gods could not read minds and could only understand people’s motives through what they did.

Religion existed on two levels, the civic and the domestic. To be a good citizen meant to pay respect to the patron deities. This included participation in feasts, sacrifices, celebrations, games, and other public events. Every occasion had its religious turn, from banquets to games to business transactions.

Domestic religion involved women more than did the public; it was their temple, although the male head of the family was the titular priest. There were household shrines to Hestia, goddess of the hearth. Banquets were dedicated to the gods. Births, marriages, rites of passage, and funerals all included their religious element. Fortune-telling and astrology were important facets of life; so were pilgrimages to oracle shrines (such as the famous one at Delphi): people sought answers to questions of love, success at business, and health.

Jews in Thessalonica were taught to live in accordance with the Mosaic law; meanwhile, the Gentiles lived according to an entirely different set of mores. The gods of Mount Olympus were said to live as lusty mortals would, if mortals had magical powers. More sophisticated Macedonians would have regarded the sexual adventures of the gods as metaphors, designed to teach some philosophical truth or another.

Thessalonica had all the vices of any bustling trade city. Theatrical works slid more and more toward the violent and sexually crude. Arrivals by sea or land would demand drink, gambling, and sex, and part of the economy of the city was keeping its visitors satisfied. Young men in particular were expected to have an active sex life, with slaves, prostitutes, or lovers. Engaging in too much sex was thought to be a sign of self-indulgence and economic wantonness, but not an offense against God or the gods. Bisexuality was more common in Macedonia and Achaia than in other parts of the empire, especially because of the shortage of marriageable women.5 Friendships between men even might be cemented by a sexual relationship. Forcible homosexual intercourse was shameful only for the “female” in the relationship. Women for their part were expected to keep themselves faithful to their husbands, in great part so that they were guaranteed to bear only legitimate children. Not all women kept themselves faithful. Men were expected to keep their wives from any embarrassing fallout from their activities; fathering illegitimate children was one sure way to shame the wife.6

Some have suggested that the Thessalonians in particular had depraved sex lives, based on infiltration of the so-called Cabiri cult into local culture.7 This was a mystery cult based on the myth of how two brothers kill a third brother. The nature of their practices is obscure, in part because of the difficulty in excavating the ancient city. Some have suggested that there was a gross sex cult in Thessalonica that emphasized the male organ; this suggests a possible background for Paul’s use of σκεῦος (lit.,“vessel”) with the meaning of male genitals in 1 Thess 4:4. Nevertheless, Koester gives a wise summing up when he says that while the Cabiri cult was present, we have little idea what it was like and no clue as to whether Paul was writing against it in 1 Thess 4.8 At this time it seems best not to appeal to the Cabiri cult in favor of any particular exegesis.

The Second Missionary Journey

What we call Paul’s second missionary journey began around the year AD 49, some time after the Jerusalem Council had affirmed that Gentiles were full Christians and not obligated to follow the Mosaic covenant (Acts 15:1–29). The team launched out from Antioch (15:40) and, at the beginning, consisted only of Paul and Silas; along the way they added young Timothy (16:1–3). The journey began as an inspection tour of the churches that Paul and Barnabas had planted in Galatia. Although the team apparently had designs to go on to evangelize western Asia Minor (16:6–8), they were summoned by God to preach in Macedonia (16:9–10). They began with the city of Philippi, where they planted a church but also receive a vicious whipping from the Roman authorities (16:11–40).9 From there they followed the Via Egnatia westward to Thessalonica.

The walk to Thessalonica would have taken about four days if Paul and Silas were able to maintain a normal pace after their beating in Philippi. Paul, Silas, and Timothy are the only three ever mentioned in connection with the work in that city; the three also seem to have labored together in the subsequent ministry in Corinth (2 Cor 1:19).

For those fortunate enough to have seen Paul on his first Sabbath there, they heard a word of exhortation from a man who, with his companion, had obviously been physically abused in a brutal fashion. The gossip was that they had been shamed: accused of being instigators, publicly stripped of their clothes, beaten with rods, and the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• A Note about Translation Outlines in this eBook
• Series Introduction
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction to 1 and 2 Thessalonians
• Select Bibliography
• Commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians
• Theology of 1 and 2 Thessalonians
• Scripture Index
• Other Ancient References
• Subject Index
• Author Index