The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians Online Commentary (6)

English: The map of First Epistle to the Thessalonians Polski: Mapa miejsc związanych z 1 Listem do Tesaloniczan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The study of 1 Thessalonians offered here is in the form of a traditional commentary, although secondary scholarship is engaged more intermittently than would be the case in a commentary published in a regular print series. This is the sixth entry in the online commentary on 1 Thessalonians. In the first entry I began by looking at introductory matters, comprised of comments on the nature of a Greco-Roman letter and the background of Paul’s activity in Thessalonica, which we know primarily from Acts of the Apostles and partially from Paul’s letters. In the second entry, I gave a basic overview of the content found in the whole letter and then discussed the very short salutation. In the third entry, I discussed the Thanksgiving for the letter. In the fourth post, I started to discuss the Body of the Letter, particularly the parental affection Paul, Silvanus and Timothy have for the church in Thessalonica, which was continued in the fifth post in the series. The sixth entry in the online commentary continues to examine the love Paul, Silvanus and Timothy have for the community, which is expressed to some degree as anxiety for the Thessalonian Christians they had to leave behind when they were forced to leave the city. Please do follow the links above to see my definition of a Greco-Roman letter, how I have divided this letter in particular and to catch up on the previous entries in general.

4. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians:

c) Body of the Letter: Affection and Anxiety: “We could bear it no longer” (3:1-13): 

1 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, 3 so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions. Indeed, you yourselves know that this is what we are destined for. 4 In fact, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution; so it turned out, as you know. 5 For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith; I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain. 6 But Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us—just as we long to see you. 7 For this reason, brothers and sisters, during all our distress and persecution we have been encouraged about you through your faith. 8 For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord. 9 How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? 10 Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. 11 Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. 12 And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. 13 And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (NRSV)

If, for Paul, Timothy and Silvanus, the Thessalonian Christians are “our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming” (2:19) and “our glory and joy” (2:20), their spiritual children, how do they deal with separation from their children? In chapter three, we find them working out the emotional and spiritual implications of being torn from their family members, especially difficult since they are separated from their spiritual children, who need the guidance of their spiritual parents. We can speak of Paul, Silvanus and Timothy experiencing anxiety, since they describe the separation as creating unbearable feelings of loss. In 3:1-3, they write, “when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; and we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions.” Timothy was sent not only to strengthen the faith of the church, but to make certain that they could maintain their faith in light of persecution. Indeed, later in this chapter, Paul alone writes, rare in this letter to this point, saying, “For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith; I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor had been in vain” (3:5).

The anxiety is centered on whether the spiritual children of Paul, who asserts himself in 3:5 as the main parental figure, Silvanus and Timothy, will remain faithful to the Christian teaching and life in the midst of persecution. As much as they stress that “you yourselves know that this {persecution} is what we are destined for” (3:3), and “when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution; so it turned out, as you know” (3:4), they are not convinced that these newly minted Christians can withstand the pressure. And they have good reason for concern: persecution is always easier to speak of in the abstract, to prepare for theoretically than to face it in the flesh. It is not that Paul, Silvanus and Timothy have not experienced persecution – they have – it is that they have grown and developed maturity in the faith. The Thessalonians have not had this opportunity to advance in the faith. As Paul himself says, placing the battles in the spiritual and apocalyptic realm, “I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you” (3:5).

The second half of this chapter, however, shows a turn in the emotional state of Paul and Silvanus, since “Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us—just as we long to see you” (3:6). One of the joys of Paul’s letters is the human reality they evoke of actual events, encounters, successes and problems that ordinary people in the ancient world experienced. These are not missives from the academy or the bureaucracy; these letters are examples of on the ground practical, pastoral theology, whose laboratory is the world and its joys and tribulations.

It is the pastors, the parents, who now speak of their encouragement in their own “distress and persecution” (3:7). My sense is that they did not want to mention their own travails until they had found out from Timothy, as they do in the course of the actual writing of this letter, that the Thessalonians were okay.  When they do find out that the Thessalonians have remained faithful, they take a figurative breath and return to the themes at the end of chapter two: “For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord” (3:8). Paul, Silvanus and Timothy have as their goal the spiritual well-being of their children. The chapter comes to an end with a glorious prayer, which makes manifest how much their own joy is dependent upon the growth of their children. “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith” (3:10). Anyone who has a child, physical or spiritual, will understand the sentiment, a basic desire to see one’s children thrive and the need to be present with them whenever they face danger, spiritual, emotional or physical, to guide and guard them. They need to see their children!

Paul, Silvanus and Timothy end the chapter with what some scholars have suggested might initially have been intended as the end of the letter itself. This might be possible, and we will consider it in the context of the transition to chapter 4 next entry. For the time being, we ought to note that the end of the prayer, which entrusts them to the care of God, is the thankful outpouring of happy parents, now at ease. “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (3:11-13).

Just like parents, however, a couple of new themes are introduced in these final verses. Now that they know their children are fine, the parents want to focus on their maturity and behavior. It is in this context that we ought to see the twofold use of holy in these verses, namely, “strengthen your hearts in holiness” and “with all his saints” (3:13). The words holy, holiness, sanctification, and saints in Greek all have the same root, hagios and cognates, and Paul and his co-workers are going to return to this theme in the rest of the letter. Related to this is the call to be “blameless” (amemptos), which is closely related to holiness and appears in a number of Paul’s letters.

Next entry, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy encourage the Thessalonians with respect to their behavior.

John W. Martens

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @Biblejunkies

Feel free to“Like” Biblejunkies on Facebook.

Thisentry is cross-posted at America Magazine The Good Word

Related articles

• The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians Online Commentary (1)
• The Letter of Jude Online Commentary (10)

The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians Online Commentary (5)

English: The map of First Epistle to the Thessalonians Polski: Mapa miejsc związanych z 1 Listem do Tesaloniczan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The study of 1 Thessalonians offered here is in the form of a traditional commentary, although secondary scholarship is engaged more intermittently than would be the case in a commentary published in a regular print series. This is the fourth entry in the online commentary on 1 Thessalonians. In the first entry I began by looking at introductory matters, which are comprised of comments on the nature of a Greco-Roman letter and the background of Paul’s activity in Thessalonica, that we know primarily from Acts of the Apostles and partially from Paul’s letters. In the second entry, I gave a basic overview of the content found in the whole letter and then discussed the very short salutation. In the third entry, I discussed the Thanksgiving for the letter. In this, the fourth post, I will begin to discuss the Body of the Letter. Please do follow the links above to see my definition of a Greco-Roman letter, how I have divided this letter in particular and to catch up on the previous entries in general.

4. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians:

c) Body of the Letter: Paul’s Affection for the Community continued (2:13-20): 

13 We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers. 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God's wrath has overtaken them at last. 17 As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. 18 For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. 19 For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 20 Yes, you are our glory and joy! (NRSV)

Paul, Silvanus and Timothy described themselves in vv.11-12 as fathers to the Thessalonians, which means the Thessalonians are no longer infants in the faith, as ancient fathers did little child care of babies. The word used to designate them in 2:11, tekna, also indicates children of any age group. In 2:13, then, they define what this indicates in spiritual terms, and “constantly give thanks to God for this”[1] - a sort of second Thanksgiving within the body of the letter - “that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word, which is also at work in you believers.” These Christian children have heard the word, accepted it as God’s word, and allowed it to work in them, which makes them “believers.”

A clear sign of the Gospel working in them is that they have become “imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews” (2:14). I will return to 2:14-16 as a whole shortly, but want to note immediately that “imitators” (mimêtai) occurs in 1:6 (see entry 3) and is there, too, connected to persecution as the mode of imitation. The note of persecution here indicates a localized persecution of the Thessalonians carried out by members of their city (“from your own compatriots;” hypo tôn idion symphyletôn). In this case, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy do not use themselves as models of imitation, as in 1:6, but the Judean churches which also suffered persecution.   

Some scholars have seen in this whole passage, 2:14-16, an interpolation, or non-Pauline insertion into the letter, due to the negative portrayal of the Jews. According to 2:15-16, the Jews

killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God's wrath has overtaken them at last.

It is a harsh text, but I see no evidence of interpolation. The use of “imitators” binds this passage thematically to the Thanksgiving (1:6) and the fact that Paul and his co-workers had to leave Thessalonica due to persecution (Acts 17:1-14) gives us context for an angry denunciation. It is true that Acts presents the persecution in Thessalonica as emerging mainly from the Jewish community while 1 Thessalonians pins the blame on “your own compatriots,” but Acts 17:5 has the trouble emerging from some members of the Jewish community “with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces.” It is always difficult to know how hard to lean on the historical data in Acts, especially with respect to Paul’s own letters, but I trust Paul’s information here and suggest that 17:5 gives us the basic make-up of the mob, namely local “ruffians” (andras tinas ponêrous, “some evil men”) who were riled up by a few Jewish members of the city.

So, the comparison is between the Thessalonians experiencing persecution from local mobs and the churches in Judea experiencing trouble from local mobs. Is this too harsh for Paul, who we know from Romans 9:1-5 loved his people? The context of Thessalonian persecution, and Paul and his co-workers’ subsequent absence from the Thessalonians, raised their ire and allowed a comparison to previous persecution of Christians in Judea, of which Paul himself, frankly, had been a part.  The inability to continue to minister to their “children,” and the fact that opposition to the early Christian message was always read in an apocalyptic context, would have made the mob’s actions ripe for comparison to other acts of persecution.

And Paul did see Jewish opposition to the Christian message especially as a sign of eschatological disobedience. Paul’s task was to bring as many Gentiles to salvation as possible and anything that hindered that task would naturally be seen by him as a sign of the end and of their disobedience to God’s will. As a result, when Paul and the others write, “they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God's wrath has overtaken them at last,” the notion of “filling up one’s sins” is a Jewish apocalyptic concept found, for instance in Daniel 8:23 (“when the transgressions have reached their full measure”) at which time God will act decisively. While Daniel 8 might discuss a Gentile ruler, the theme still stands and Daniel 9 speaks to the heart of 2:16 – “God's wrath has overtaken them at last” – especially 9:13, “just as it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us. We did not entreat the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and reflecting on his fidelity.”

It is true that we do not know the nature of “God’s wrath” of which Paul, Silvanus and Timothy speak, some scholars have suggested Claudius exiling the Jews from Rome in 49 CE, but the whole trope is not particularly anti-Jewish for Paul and his friends who consider themselves still Jews; it is simply a part of Jewish apocalyptic theological teaching. There are dangers, naturally, in reading these verses out of context: they apply to a 1^st century setting in which the authors are all self-consciously Jews who follow Jesus, but it is our task to read them well and consider them in the milieu of the 1^st century and of the letter itself. People who hold apocalyptic beliefs and who are persecuted will often see their persecutors as participants in a cosmic play and that in itself is not unusual for Jews or Christians in the 1^st century.

Following this short aside, Paul and his co-workers return to the basic theme of chapter 2, which is the spiritual parent-child relationship. The NRSV translation has Paul and the others say “for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face” (2:17). The word for “we were made orphans” is the verb aporphanizô and one can see the word “orphan” in it. The word can mean to be bereaved of parents, though it has the more general sense of “taken away from” or “separated from.” Since Paul, Silvanus and Timothy are the parents in this scenario, however, they are not made orphans, the Thessalonians are made orphans. To my mind, the best rendering of the verb here is “we were taken away from our children,” or “we were separated from you, our children.” We have no specific word for this in English, but the verb here means that Paul and friends  are parents bereft of their children and longing to see them again. The Thessalonians are orphaned in their absence.

The end of the chapter is a passionate appeal for the Thessalonians to know that they wanted to come back to Thessalonica, and here Paul makes his first personal claim – “certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again” (2:18). Why did they not? Again there is a note of apocalyptic thought in the reason: “Satan blocked our way.” Since the ministry has cosmic implications, so too do the forces arrayed against it. It is essential for them to overcome these spiritual obstacles, manifested as mobs and persecution, because for Paul, Timothy and Silvanus, the converts to the faith are “our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming” (2:19). Note that the hope of Paul and his co-workers is also apocalyptic! Having been given a task to bring people into the faith, the ministers find their vocation fulfilled in their converts remaining faithful to the message. Simply put, “you are our glory and joy!” (2:20).

Next entry, we continue with the passionate desire of Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to be with the Thessalonians again.

John W. Martens

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @Biblejunkies

Feel free to“Like” Biblejunkies on Facebook.

This entry is cross-posted at America Magazine The Good Word

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[1] The adverb adialeiptôs which means ”constantly,” “unceasingly,” or “continually” also appears in 1:2 (see entry 3 in the commentary) and there too it is connected to their prayers for the Church.

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Satan and the Egyptian Bes

There is an interesting article on BBC, 'How Egyptian god Bes gave the Christian Devil his looks.' There, Alastair Sooke tells about Bes' physical traits and traces them, via Pan, to the Christian Satan.

Bes, it seems, was not an Egyptian state-sanctioned deity, but he was very popular, associated with drinking and singing, sex and birth. "Although to modern eyes he may appear frightening," Sooke writes, "he was actually decent. Friend to beer-swilling carousers and expectant mothers alike, he warded off noxious spirits like a gargoyle on a medieval church."

Phoenicians and Romans would eventually come to accept Bes, and his amulets became commonplace. It is through this contact that many of Bes' characteristics would influence the depictions of satyrs.

This, in turn, influenced depictions of the Devil:

There are obvious similarities between Satan and his sylvan forebear, the raucous Greek goat-god Pan, with his beard, hairy haunches and cloven feet.  Like Bes, Pan was associated with prodigious sex. "The Church did to Pan what Stalin did to Trotsky," the art critic Robert Hughes writes in Heaven and Hell in Western Art. "The attributes of Pan were given, in art, to the Christian Satan." 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Sooke writes that Bes was sometime portrayed with a forked tail or serpents emerging from his body, such as we see in the baptistry in Florence. 

  

The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians Online Commentary (4)

English: The map of First Epistle to the Thessalonians Polski: Mapa miejsc związanych z 1 Listem do Tesaloniczan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The study of 1 Thessalonians offered here is in the form of a traditional commentary, although secondary scholarship is engaged more intermittently than would be the case in a commentary published in a regular print series. This is the fourth entry in the online commentary on 1 Thessalonians. In the first entry I began by looking at introductory matters, which are comprised of comments on the nature of a Greco-Roman letter and the background of Paul’s activity in Thessalonica, that we know primarily from Acts of the Apostles and partially from Paul’s letters. In the second entry, I gave a basic overview of the content found in the whole letter and then discussed the very short salutation. In the third entry, I discussed the Thanksgiving for the letter. In this, the fourth post, I will begin to discuss the Body of the Letter. Please do follow the links above to see my definition of a Greco-Roman letter, how I have divided this letter in particular and to catch up on the previous entries in general.

4. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians:

c) Body of the Letter: Paul’s Affection for the Community (2:1-12): 

1 You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, 2 but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. 3 For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; 6 nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, 7 though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. 8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. 9 You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. 11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.(NRSV)

The body of an ancient letter, just as a letter today, could take on numerous forms, depending on the issues which were to be discussed. It is, therefore, impossible to generalize about the form of the body of one of Paul’s letters, beyond the fact that one will find teaching on theological themes and various sorts of ethical exhortation. The body of 1 Thessalonians begins with an outpouring of Paul’s affection for the Church in Thessalonica and a focus on the relationships between Paul, Silvanus and Timothy and the people of the Church. Embedded in this warm relationship, though, is Paul’s defense of their behavior while in Thessalonica. Why does Paul feel it necessary to defend himself and his co-workers?

 As we know from Acts of the Apostles 17:1-0, and as will be confirmed later in this section of the body and elsewhere in the letter (2:14-20; 3:1-10), Paul and his companions had to leave Thessalonica quickly due to localized persecution. Paul stresses, though, that their coming to the city was “not in vain” (2:1) and though they had “already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi,” they still “had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition” (2:2). The word which is translated as “opposition” here is agôn, from which we derive the word “agony.” Its original meaning, however, relates to athletic contests, in the first order literally and in the second order figuratively as a great struggle or battle. Paul uses the word figuratively, of course, and it is these events, these battles and struggles, which are the background for Paul’s defense of their behavior in the city and in leaving Thessalonica.

Yet, the broader context for the defense of the Christian ministers is a social reality found in the Roman Empire in general. In 2:3, Paul argues that “our appeal (paraklêsis) does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery.” The word paraklêsis here could mean “request, exhortation, encouragement, consolation,” as well as “appeal,” so it is best to keep this range of meanings in mind when considering this verse, but also the fact that paraklêsis could refer to the Christian message itself. Their appeal, or message, did not depend upon “deceit or impure motives or trickery.” Had someone accused them of deceit or trickery? The context for this defense is not just the behavior of Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, though, but the fact that at this period of history there were rhetorical teachers and speakers known together as the Second Sophistic, who would attend cities in order to praise them with glowing oratory and rhetoric, for a fee, only to leave the city shortly after. ^[1] Paul’s claim is either a response to an actual charge, or a potential charge, that they have behaved no better than Sophists in coming to a city, winning over an audience and then abandoning them to leave for another city and opportunity.

 

Paul, Silvanus and Timothy write that their activity in Thessalonica was not intended to “please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts” (2:4). That is, they reject the premise that their preaching was rhetoric intended to flatter humans, but instead it was a task “approved by God” who “entrusted” them “with the message of the gospel” (2:4). More than that, they offer evidence that ought to separate them from Sophists since they “never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ” (2:5-7a). All of the things which mark itinerant speakers as Sophists do not define their ministry. They argue, in fact, that as apostles they could have demanded support from the Church, but that they never did, something that will define Paul’s ministry elsewhere too (1 Corinthians 9).

It is at this point that the ministers of the Gospel turn to describe positively and with genuine emotion how they did in fact behave among the Thessalonians. The language Paul turns to is familial, what scholars today often call “fictive kinship” language, but I would argue that the spiritual family described by Paul, Silvanus and Timothy is not considered by them as “fictive” simply not according to physical ties of kinship. Paul believes that the family of God is the family that transcends all others, making all of us brothers and sisters in Christ. At the same time, those with authority in the community, such as Paul and other apostles and ministers, have roles of guidance which are parental. This is why, earlier in the letter, they could ask the Thessalonians to imitate them, as a child would imitate a father or mother.

In 2:7b, the first image they offer is that they “were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.”[2] The nurse here, trophos, is a wet nurse, whose task of course is to breastfeed the infants in her care. Since many children in ancient Rome were breastfed by women who were not their mothers, either slave women or hired women, the claim that Paul, Silvanus and Timothy nursed them like their own children gives us a sense of the emotional ties and the love they feel for the Thessalonians. It also gives us a sense of the genuine depth of familial relationships experienced by the earliest Christians. These first Thessalonians Christians were babies in the faith, so they had to be mothered by Paul and his co-workers. The love they feel for the Church has lead them to share not just the Gospel, but “also our own selves, because you have become very dear (agapêtoi) to us” (2:8).

This call to remember the maternal relationship among them leads them also to call on the Thessalonians to “remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (2:9), as noted also earlier in 2:5-7a. Their defense continues by stating that they were “pure, upright, and blameless” amongst the Thessalonian believers (2:10). It is at this point that they define themselves as “a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory” (2:11-12). In presenting themselves as fathers to the Thessalonians, they not only call upon the authority of the ancient father to his household, but the responsibility for their care and upbringing. Mothers tended to care for children up until about seven years of age and then fathers would step in to guide the education and development of the children, specifically the boys. What this means for this image also, however, and what is often overlooked, is that this indicates that even in the short time Paul, Silvanus and Timothy were in Thessalonica there was genuine spiritual development among the Thessalonians. They were children now, urged on by their fathers, not babies being fed milk by their loving mothers.

Next entry, we continue to study the body of the letter.

John W. Martens

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @Biblejunkies

Feel free to“Like” Biblejunkies on Facebook.

Thisentry is cross-posted at America Magazine The Good Word

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[1] Bruce W. Winter, Philo and Paul Among the Sophists. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002.

[2] Some manuscripts have nêpioi, “infants,” here instead of êpioi, “gentle,” that is, “we were like infants among you.” I prefer “gentle” here as I think this best explains the next clause, but it is possible that amid all this imagery of childhood, they have placed  a word which describes their innocence and lack of guile.

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