1 Thessalonians 4:15

κυρίου. On the tendency of the N.T. writers to reserve κύριος, with its O.T. predicates of divine authority, for Jesus, cf. Kattenbusch, op. cit., ii. 522. Paul's use of the term goes back to Christ's own claim to κύριος in the higher sense of Mark 12:35 f. λέγομεν. Contrast the οἴδατε of 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and the language of 1 Thessalonians 4:1. Evidently Paul had not had time or occasion to speak of such a contingency, when he was with them. ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου may mean either (a) a quotation (like Acts 20:35) from the sayings of Jesus, or (b) a prophetic revelation vouchsafed to Paul himself, or to Silvanus (cf. Acts 15:32). In the former case (so, among modern editors, Schott, Ewald, Drummond, Wohl.), an ἄγραφον is cited (Calvin, Koch, Weizsäcker, Resch, Paulinismus, 238 f.; Ropes, die Sprüche Jesu, 153 f.; M. Goguel; van der Vies, 15 17; O. Holtzmann, Life of Jesus, 10; von Soden) but it is evidently given in a free form, and the precise words cannot (even in 1 Thessalonians 4:16) be disentangled. Besides we should expect τινι to be added. Unless, therefore, we are to think of a primitive collection (Lake, Amer. Journ. Theol., 1906, 108 f.) or of some oral tradition, (b) is preferable. The contents of Matthew 24:31 (part of the small apocalypse) are too dissimilar to favour the conjecture (Pelt, Zimmer, Weiss) that Paul was thinking of this saying as current perhaps in oral tradition, and the O.T. analogy of λόγος Κυρίου (= God's prophetic word), together with the internal probabilities of the case (Paul does not remind them of it, as elsewhere in the epistle) make it on the whole more likely that Paul is repeating words heard in a vision (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9; so Chryst., Theod., etc., followed by Alford, de Wette, Ellicott, Dods, Lünemann, Godet, Paret: Paulus und Jesus, 53 f., Simon: die Psychologie des Ap. Paulus, 100, Findlay, Lightfoot, Milligan, Lueken). Cf. the discussion in Knowling's Witness of the Epistles, 408 f., and Feine's Jesus Christus u. Paulus, 178, 179. Later in the century a similar difficulty vexed the pious Jew who wrote Fourth Esdras (5:41, 42: I said, But lo, O Lord, thou hast made the promise to those who shall be in the end: and what shall they do that have been before us …? And He said to me, I will liken my judgment to a ring; as there is no slackness of those who are last, so shall there be no swiftness of those who are first). His theory is that the previous generations of Israel will be as well off as their posterity in the latter days. Further on (13:14 f.) he raises and answers the question whether it was better to die before the last days or to live until they came (the phrase, those that are left, “qui relicti sunt,” 7:28 = Paul's οἱ περιλειπόμενοι). His solution (which Steck, in Jahrb. für prot. Theol., 1883, 509 524, oddly regards as the λόγος κ. of 1 Thessalonians 4:15; see Schmidt's refutation, pp. 107 110) is the opposite of Paul's: those who are left are more blessed than those who have died. If this difficulty was felt in Jewish circles during the first half of the century, it may have affected those of the Thessalonian Christians who had been formerly connected with the synagogue, but the likelihood is that Paul's language is coloured by his own Jewish training (cf. Charles on Asc. Isa., iv. 15). The misunderstanding of the Thessalonians, which had led to their sorrow and perplexity, was evidently due to the fact that, for some reason or another, Paul had not mentioned the possibility of any Christians dying before the second advent (so sure was he that all would soon survive it), coupled with the fact that Greeks found it hard to grasp what exactly resurrection meant (cf. Acts 17:32) for Christians.