1 Thessalonians 2:14

A and a few minn. write the Attic ταὐτὰ for τα αυτα.

G reads απο twice, D* in the first instance, instead of υπο.

14. The effective power of the readers’ faith in God’s word was shown in that which it enabled them to suffer (cf. Colossians 1:11):—

ὑμεῖς γὰρ μιμηταὶ ἐγενήθητε, ἀδελφοί, τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ κ.τ.λ. These “believers” had “become imitators” of the Apostles and their Lord through “receiving the word in much affliction with joy” (1 Thessalonians 1:6); they were thus identified with the original believers: for you became imitators, brothers, of the churches of God that are in Judœa in Christ Jesus. Silvanus belonged to the Jerusalem Church, of which he would be often thinking and speaking: this allusion may, possibly, be due to him (see Introd. to § 4 above). “The churches … in Judæa”—in the plural, as in Galatians 1:22, “the churches of Judæa that are in Christ”: the Palestinian Christian communities, as we gather from the notices of the Acts, formed a unity under the direct oversight in the first instance of the Apostles. They are identified with the Thessalonian Christians (1 Thessalonians 1:1; see note) as “churches of God … in Christ Jesus”; this adjunct differentiates them from the Synagogue. A “church of God” is a sacred and august fellowship: cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:4; 1 Corinthians 1:1; Galatians 1:13. For the double ἐν, of local and spiritual sphere, both depending on τῶν οὐσῶν, cf. Philippians 1:1; Philippians 1:13; Colossians 1:2, &c. In this connexion “Christ” or “Christ Jesus”—not “Jesus Christ”—is appropriate, pointing to the living Head of the Church; 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (where the reading, however, is doubtful) supplies the only other example in these Epistles of the familiar Pauline combination “Christ Jesus.”

ὅτι τὰ αὐτὰ ἐπάθετε καὶ ὑμεῖς ὑπό κ.τ.λ., in that you also suffered the same things from your fellow-countrymen. Ὅτι defines μιμηταί (cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:5), showing in what specifically the resemblance lay,—it was a συμπάσχειν: cf. Philippians 1:29 f., τὸν αὐτὸν�; 2 Corinthians 1:6 f.; 2 Timothy 2:3; 1 Peter 5:9, &c. συμφυλέτης (cf., for the from of compound, συμπολίτης, Ephesians 2:19), contribulis (Vulg.), fellow-tribes-man, replaces the older φυλέτης (Plato, Legg. 955 d; Aristophanes, Acharn. 568); signifying properly a member of the same φυλή, sept or clan, it grew wider in use; hap. leg. for N.T. Greek. Πάσχειν ὑπό is the regular construction (so in Matthew 17:12; Mark 5:26), ἀπό in Matthew 16:21. Τῶν ἰδίων, antithetical to αὐτοί of the next clause.

καθὼς καὶ αὐτοὶ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰουδαίων. The doubled καί in comparisons is an emphasizing idiom characteristic of St Paul: cf. Romans 1:13; Colossians 3:13. Αὐτοί refers, by a constructio ad sensum, to the men of “the churches of God which are in Judæa.” From Acts 17:5 ff. it appears that the native Thessalonian mob were the actual persecutors, and used a violence similar to that directed against the Judæan Christians at the time of Stephen (Acts 6-8); but the Jews prompted the attack. Hence it is against their own συμφυλέται, not those of the readers, that the anger of the Apostles is directed. This is the earliest example, and the only instance in St Paul, of the designation “the Jews” applied in the sense made familiar afterwards by the Gospel of St John, as opposed to Christians—“the disciples,” “the believers,” &c.; in Galatians 2:13-15; Revelation 3:9, it has no such connotation. Τῶν Ἰουδαίων is qualified by the following participial clauses, showing how the nation is fixed in its hostility to God’s purpose in the Gospel; 1 Thessalonians 2:15 f. justify the use of the phrase “the Jews” in its anti-Gentile and anti-Christian sense.