Resuming the thought of 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 as well as of 1 Thessalonians 3:10-13. _Cf._ a pre-Christian letter in Oxyrh. Papyri, iv. 294 (13 ἐρωτῶ σε οὖν ἵνα μὴ, 6 f. ἐρωτῶ σε καὶ παρακαλῶ σε). The ἵνα, repeated often for the sake of clearness, is sub-final (so II., 2 Thessalonians 3:12) = infi... [ Continue Reading ]
Almost a parenthesis, as Bahnsen points out in his study of 1 12 (_Zeitschrift f. wiss. Theol._, 1904, 332 358). The injunctions (παραγγελίαι in semimilitary sense, as 1 Timothy 1:18) relate to chastity (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8) and charity, (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10), with a postscript against exciteme... [ Continue Reading ]
ἁγιασμός (in apposition to τοῦτο, θέλημα without the article being the predicate) = the moral issue of a life related to the Ἅγιος (_cf._ 1 Thessalonians 4:8), viewed here in its special and negative aspect of freedom from sexual impurity. The gospel of Jesus, unlike some pagan cults, _e.g._, that o... [ Continue Reading ]
Paul demands chastity from men; it is not simply a feminine virtue. Contemporary ethics, in the Roman and Greek world, was often disposed to condone marital unfaithfulness on the part of husbands, and to view prenuptial unchastity as ἀδιάφορον or at least as a comparatively venial offence, particula... [ Continue Reading ]
Compare the saying of rabbi Simon ben Zoma (on Deuteronomy 23:25): “Look not on thy neighbour's vineyard. If thou hast looked, enter not; if thou hast entered, regard not the fruits; if thou hast regarded them, touch them not; if thou hast touched them, eat them not. But if thou hast eaten, then tho... [ Continue Reading ]
Elsewhere (1 Thessalonians 1:5-6) ἅγιον simply denotes the divine quality of πνεῦμα as operating in the chosen ἅγιοι of God, but here the context lends it a specific value. Impurity is a violation of the relationship established by the holy God between Himself and Christians at baptism, when the hol... [ Continue Reading ]
περὶ φιλαδελφίας. One might have expected that adultery, especially when viewed as selfish greed (_cf._ 1 Thessalonians 4:6), would have come under φ., but the latter bears mainly here on charity and liberality, a Christian impulse or instinct which seems to have come more naturally to the Thessalon... [ Continue Reading ]
φιλοτ. ἡσυχάζειν (oxymoron). The prospect of the second advent (1 Thessalonians 4:13 f., 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10) seems to have made some local enthusiasts feel that it was superfluous for them to go on working, if the world was to be broken up immediately. This feverish symptom occupies Paul more in... [ Continue Reading ]
δὲ, after οὐ θέλομεν as a single expression. Affection for the living has another side, _viz._, unselfish solicitude for the dead. Since Paul left, some of the Thessalonian Christians had died, and the survivors were distressed by the fear that these would have to occupy a position secondary to thos... [ Continue Reading ]
περὶ τῶν κοιμωμένων.... [ Continue Reading ]
Unlike some of the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:17-18), the Thessalonians did not doubt the fact of Christ's resurrection (εἰ of course implies no uncertainty). Paul assumes their faith in it and argues from it. Their vivid and naïve belief in Christ's advent within their own lifetime was the very... [ Continue Reading ]
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 Thes... [ Continue Reading ]
κελεύσματι = the loud summons which was to muster the saints (so in Philo, _De praem. et poen._, 19: καθάπερ οὖν ἀνθρώπους ἐν ἐσχατιαῖς ἀπῳκισμένους ῥᾳδίως ἑνὶ κελεύσματι συναγάγοι ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ περάτων εἰς ὅ τι ἂν θελήσῃ χωρίον), forms, as its lack of any genitive shows, one conception with the φ. α.... [ Continue Reading ]
ἐν νεφέλαις, the ordinary method of sudden rapture or ascension to heaven (Acts 1:9; Acts 1:11; Revelation 11:12; Slav. En. iii. 1, 2). ἁρπαγησόμεθα. So in Sap. 1 Thessalonians 4:11, the righteous man, εὐάρεστος τῷ θεῷ (1 Thessalonians 4:1) γενόμενος ἠγαπήθη (1 Thessalonians 1:4), is caught up (ἡρπά... [ Continue Reading ]
ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τούτοις. Paul had an intelligible word upon the future, unlike the Hellenic mysteries which usually made religion a matter of feeling rather than of definite teaching (Hardie's _Lect. on Classical Subjects_, pp. 53 f.). A pagan letter of consolation has been preserved from the second... [ Continue Reading ]