1–2 Thessalonians. Nijay K. Gupta

did write 2 Thessalonians, and a discussion of authorship issues appears at the end of the introduction under the title: “Who Wrote 2 Thessalonians?” (pp. 30–37).

66. Most scholars who hold that Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians argue that the second letter must have been written not long after the first; it must have been written before Paul’s visit narrated in Acts 20; see Morris 1975: 30.

67. deSilva 2001: 543.

68. See Marshall 1984: 23; Fee 2009: 241.

69. Brown 1997: 590.

70. John Barclay points to the years 51–52, according to Tacitus, as “particularly ill omened, with prodigies such as repeated earthquakes and a famine.” This may have led the Thessalonians to believe that the Day of the Lord had dawned. But Barclay adds this caveat: “it is not necessary to rely on this precarious, though tantalizing, connection. A fevered apocalyptic imagination can interpret almost any unusual event as an eschatological moment, and divine wrath can explain many types of calamities.” See Barclay 1993: 527–28.

71. See Carter 2010: 282–99, esp. 292–93.

72. See Johnson 1999: 289; also Krentz 1991: 54.

73. Gorman 2011: 138–39.

74. Bassler 1991: 71–85; see also Swartley; Gorman 2015: 142–211.

75. Again, see especially Gorman 2015: 142–211.

76. In 1798, J. E. C. Schmidt argued that, while 2 Thessalonians was probably written by Paul, the section 2:1–12 was a later insertion into the text by a separate writer. In 1903, W. Wrede made a more comprehensive case for 2 Thessalonians being pseudonymous; for an insightful, though brief, discussion of the history of scholarship on the authorship of 2 Thessalonians, see Thiselton 2011: 11–15.

77. It is sometimes noted that 2 Thessalonians includes vocabulary unusual for Paul, but this kind of argument has largely been debunked for two reasons; firstly, each extant letter of Paul contains its own set of distinctive vocabulary based on the specific subjects of that letter in its context; second, we are simply dealing with too small of a sample of Paul’s writings to decide what kind of words count as “unpauline.” Even those who are certain that Paul did not write 2 Thessalonians admit that the study of the vocabulary of this text contributes little to the debate; see Krentz 2009: 444; Menken 1994: 32: “There is a more or less general agreement that, from the point of vocabulary, 2 Thessalonians is no less Pauline than the recognized letters.”

78. So Menken 1994: “This literary dependence is the decisive argument against Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians” (40); see also Boring 2015: 212.

79. Krentz 1992: 6.518.

80. The question is raised by Raymond Brown, 1997: 592. Other scholars who point to this phenomenon as an indicator of pseudonymous dependence include Richard 1995: 21; Esler 2001: 1213.

81. So Bailey reasons: “it is impossible to conceive of a man as creative as Paul drawing upon his own previous letter in such an unimaginative way” (1978–1979: 136); as cited in Still 1999: 51.

82. See Boring 2015: 215–17.

83. See Richard 1995: 22.

84. See Brown 1997: 493.

85. See Kreinecker 2013: 197–220.

86. See Brown 1997: 594.

87. See Furnish 2007: 132; Bridges 2008: 195.

88. Krentz 2009: 469; cf. Collins 1988: 223. Some scholars also think we see an undermining of 1 Thessalonians itself by the so-called pseudonymous author of 2 Thessalonians when he refers to a false letter “as though from us”—some surmise that in this case 2 Thessalonians was possibly written to reject 1 Thessalonians.

89. Bridges 2008: 196.

90. Roose, though, explains that “German scholars almost unanimously view 2 Thessalonians as a pseudepigraph”; see 2006: 109n6.

91. Morris 1975: 23.

92. Marshall 1984: 30–31. G. Beale goes one step further by suggesting that Paul drew heavily from 1 Thessalonians as a conscious strategy: “Could this not be the case especially if he were trying to get them to recall the content of the first letter?” See Beale 2003: 31.

93. Fee 2009: 239.

94. See Marshall 1984: 32.