To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG, WSW
In Response To: Chuck Jones
On: Methodology
From: Bruce

CHUCK: I have always placed much weight on the text critical principle of
preferring the more difficult reading, the thinking being that a scribe is
more likely to smooth a passage than make it more difficult.

BRUCE: Maybe *more* likely, but still not excluding the likelihood that the
*less* likely option may also occur. Housman has a wonderful refutation of
this mistake, and I will defer to him. A conveniently abridged version of
his 1921 paper is at
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/philology/front/housman/01.html. I think the
relevant part is actually on the third of those four pages, but all of it is
worth reading. I would add only that a typing error (I earlier invented the
case of "thesef") is more difficult than the reading "these" but this does
not make it preferable. It makes it wrong. Most accidental slips tend to
produce impossible readings, but their impossibility is no warrant for their
correctness. In short, no shortcut is safe, and no rule of thumb can
substitute for the use of all the fingers. And sometimes of the other hand,
or in really bad cases, of a knee or two. This stuff is not always easy;
sometimes it is recalcitrant.

CHUCK: This is the main reason I have been reluctant to buy into emending
texts in the absence of textual variants:  we become the very scribes that
we've been cautioned about!

BRUCE: There are certainly dangers, and caution is certainly needed, and any
erudition one happens to possess (via concordances or in propria persona)
comes in handy too. But I can only repeat my previous point: the evidence
*in the text* is still evidence. If you have a splinter in your right hand,
you don't check your left hand to be sure that is really *is* an
interpolation; you reach for the tweezers.

The scribes were sometimes careless; that we can remedy by trying to be
careful. One tool of the philologist is to know when you are too tired to do
the work; you keep routine chores on hand for those moments. The scribes
were sometimes piously inventive; that we can try to avoid by keeping a
decent emotional distance from the thing we are working on. (Keeping one's
literal "philological hat" on the hatstand, and donning it while doing the
work, may be useful to some in establishing and maintaining this separate
persona). And as always in the historical enterprise, if despite our best
efforts we make a mistake, others are there to point it out to us. Our
individual shortcomings are doubtless inevitable, but collectively, we may
be pretty good.

CHUCK: But I have another, much more significant issue with proposing
variant readings in the absence of manuscript evidence.  The absence of
variant manuscript evidence is evidence for the absence of variation!

BRUCE: A nice phrase. I have used s similar one myself, in arguing for the
validity of the "argumentum ex silentio." It goes like this: There are many
reasons why writers might not refer to something. But if that something in
fact did not exist in a particular period, the only evidence that fact is
capable of leaving in the texts is the *silence* of the texts.

In the end, I think it remains true that, if it is conceded (and
Rachmaninoff, off in his corner, is nodding assent) that a work may expand
or contract while still under its author's hand, then the unanimity of the
manuscripts may merely mean that none of them has varied from the author's
final version. It does not mean that the author's final version was not
preceded by the author's *prefinal* versions, full of erasures, insertions,
second thoughts, third thoughts refuting second thoughts ("stet"), and the
whole array. Have you even seen one of Beethoven's sketchbooks? Or Emily
Dickinson's? (The latter are held by the Amherst library, and I can show
them to you when you come up for Don Wyatt's talk on Thursday). There is a
whole philological education available there, just for the looking.

CHUCK: For example, a significant number of Pauline scholars believe that I
Thess. 2:15-16 is a later interpolation, despite the absence of textual
variants.  So here is what had to have happened.  One scribe inserted the
passage into one copy of I Thess.  And then all of the other copies of I
Thess. had to perish from the earth while this one copy became the single
progenitor for all manuscripts of I Thess. from that day forward.  I have a
pretty big problem with the plausibility of that scenario.

BRUCE: Again the fallacy of the scribe. The scenario would depend on how
many copies were in existence when the insertion was made. And maybe there
was only one; maybe 1Th was still in the custody of the recipient church,
and (as we have reason to believe) was read occasionally to that
congregation for edification and encouragement. If the resident reader felt
that some local strengthening was called for, then he (probably he) might
had added the lines in question, and his addition got copied into the text
when the Pauline Epistles were gathered - by what agency we seem not to
know, but we know that it happened, long before the end of the 1c - into the
Corpus Paulinum. That change, and that prior perhaps marginal improvement,
were made on the holograph, and thus on the thing from which all other
copies were made. Some junior philologist in the 4th century might
conceivably have detected a difference of tone, in the inserted lines, and
excised them out of a sense of tidiness and scruple; this would produce
manuscript variants. But the variant would still be rooted in the mind of a
4c philologist. It would, if you come to think of it, have no better
standing than the opinion of a 21c philologist, not to be sure tampering
with the physical manuscript, but publishing in some modern footnote.

Also relevant to the idea of an addition in 1Th is the idea that 2Th is a
much larger subsequent suppletion of 1Th. Relevant in turn to both these
problems is the oft mentioned possibility that 1Co has been conflated,
probably by the church originally holding them, out of two or more
originally separate Pauline letters, so as not to put that church in TOO bad
a light when their originally private possessions were made available to all
of Christendom. And this possibility in turn surely gains relevant evidence
when it is noticed that similar doubts have been expressed about other
undoubted Paulines, such as Romans. As these things are presently done,
those debates tend to blaze up as so many separate fires on the battlefield;
footnotes in so many separate commentaries. I think they also need to be
looked at as a single phenomenon, not disposed of one by one (as Schnelle,
for example, does) as "insufficiently persuasive." I always recommend the
question:  What's the big picture? The big picture here may be that the
recipient churches tended to strengthen the message of what was at that time
their only authority text, and that at the time of collection for
publication, further and perhaps frantic changes were introduced out of
consideration for the pending loss of privacy.

Nothing proves itself, but at minimum, I find this possibility viscerally
intelligible. What do I do myself, if I see somebody coming up the walk?
Answer: I use my four seconds of grace to pick up at least some of my notes
off the floor, whether they concern 1Th or any other matter, in the interest
of presenting an image of decency and civility, however counterfeit and
mendacious it may be, to my caller.

If the Corinthians had the same thought, I am 100% in sympathy with the
Corinthians. I feel their pain.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/philology/front/housman/01.html

Bruce,

   I thought I would break my replies into multiple posts to keep the
conversation more focused.

   I do not believe that a solution is more simple when it involves fewer sources
and more complex when it involves more.  A solution is more simple when it
requires fewer caveats and mental gymnastics and leaves fewer corners of the
data untucked.

   Separately, I'm struck that in the scenario you describe below many, many
sources have to have been lost to us--all of those evolutionary, accretional
versions of Mk, Mt and Lk.

   Rev. Chuck Jones
   Atlanta, Georgia


E Bruce Brooks wrote:
           I don't think we know a priori whether a given problem has a simple
solution (that is, one involving only its seeming components, in this case Mt Mk
Lk) or a complicated one. I can easily imagine complicated situations, and some
of them suggest complex solutions. I just don't want to assume any *particular*
complicated solution until I have had a longer time to see how the large
tendency of the extant evidence lies.
   SNIP

Specifically, I find that those three texts are not necessarily integral
(written by one person at one time); at least two, and quite possibly all three,
display accretional layers of composition, before they were made available to a
wider public via manuscript copies.


   .





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bruce,

   Let me try to rephrase:  if we were not struggling to understand the literary
relationship of Mt and Lk, scholars would never have dived into
independence/directionality theories.  Those theories are important or useful
only to the extent that they help us understand the literary relationship of Mt
and Lk.

   Someone wrote in the last couple of days, "if one wanted to solve Q once and
for all...."  I don't want to solve Q.  I want to solve the literary
relationship between Mt and Lk.  That's what I was trying to say.

   Rev. Chuck Jones
   Atlanta, Georgia



E Bruce Brooks wrote:
           CHUCK: 2. The question on the table is What is the literary
relationship
of Mt and Lk? It is not, Was there a third source? And the basic question
(literally--the base upon which subsequent thinking and questioning should be
built) is Were Mt and Lk produced independently of each other?

BRUCE: That is one of many questions, and for me they are simultaneously on the
table. I can't think it a priori right to focus on only one question and
withdraw attention from all the others. I think the others should at least hover
on the periphery of our consciousness, as we consider any one. I admit that this
makes for longer E-mails than the Synoptic list protocol recommends. My
apologies accordingly, alike to management and members. But I didn't invent this
situation. I am merely trying to deal responsibly with it.



   .





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG, WSW
In Response To: Chuck Jones
On: Methodology
From: Bruce

I am getting the feeling that this conversation, despite its possible
interest for the participants, is boring everybody else, or taking up
bandwidth for which they may have other uses. Just this one bit more for
today.

CHUCK: Separately, I'm struck that in the scenario you describe below many,
many sources have to have been lost to us--all of those evolutionary,
accretional versions of Mk, Mt and Lk.

BRUCE: Those are not sources, in the usual sense of texts available to a
Gospel writer. They are not even texts. They are the previous own tentative
writings of that same Gospel writer, and each vanishes into the next.

Let me illustrate. If I put my SBL draft for next April on the kitchen table
and take my scissors and tape and remove some paragraphs to other positions,
and add in a few sentences with my pen, and then stick the whole thing in
the copier and file the copier output in my dedicated SBL April 08 notebook,
I am not losing a source. I am swallowing Draft 5 into Draft 6. At the end
of the process, which takes place entirely within the walls of my kitchen,
and involves no scribes in Ephesus or distribution centers in Antioch, Draft
5 does not exist any longer (except that a memory of some discarded
paragraph may re-intrude itself as I later compose Draft 7). There exists
only Draft 6. It is the algebraic sum, so to speak, of Drafts 1 through 5
inclusive. It is in turn liable to vanish into Draft 7, sometime next week.
But at any given moment, *only one exists,* more or less as the sum of the
preceding ones, but not identical to any of them.

Where now is the body you had when you were 5 years old? It is somewhere
inside your present body, and if you didn't get enough protein then, your
present body is not going to be as tall as it might have been, but it is not
identical with your present body, which also results from other input. There
is nothing heavily metaphysical here, just separate stages in a continuous
process, and only one stage of the process is extant and observable (shall
we say, snapshottable) at a given time.

Don't we all work more or less in the kitchen table way I have described?
And if we do, or even if only some of us do, why is it not a thinkable model
for how Matthew and Luke might have worked? And in the case of a simple
accretional text, where things are not moved around (as I think Luke did
with his previous Mark-based draft) but simply extended, there is even less
reason to regard the previous stage as a separate text. There is only one
text, which somehow keeps getting longer.

The things I have been talking about are personal texts, house texts,
kitchen table texts, closely held texts. They are not out there in Amazon
and the local bookstore; they do not subsist in a general literary medium; I
have the only one there is. And that one is itself a member of a series of
drafts, only one of which exists at any one time. Only the last of them (my
copy as orally delivered on April next, and even in the interstices of that
I am liable to pencil improvements as I speak) exists to be final copied for
wider distribution.

I know about that final copying process because only last night I was trying
to make out the marginalia of my SBL Nov 08 paper, so as to produce the
final authoritative copy, should anyone ask to see it, or should any editor
request it for his next issue. THAT version is the authorial final one. The
previous stuff is just earlier stages of the nautilus, on the way to the
final product.

[And I wish I could write more clearly while I am speaking, but I guess I
can't. The paleography of the self is the most embarrassing kind of
paleography. What WAS I thinking at that point? Nov 08 is now a long time
ago. It reduces to conjectural emendation of one's own manuscript. Which I
guess is where we came in].

Best wishes,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

[I see around the edges of this draft on my screen that there is more from
Chuck on the subject. Exciting times. But in the interest of the wider
membership, I am going to give the topic a rest until the morrow, or later.
/ EBB]

Bruce,

   Lk's extreme reworking of Mk's Rejection at Nazareth story is instructive for
us as we think about the birth narratives.  Mk's story is 6 verses long; Lk's is
15.  In that amount of material, here are the verbal parallels:

   Mk - He came to his home town
   Lk – he came to Nazareth
   Mk - on the Sabbath
   Lk – on the Sabbath
   Mk - in the synagogue
   Lk – to the synagogue
   Mk - were astounded
   Lk  - were amazed
   Mk - the son of Mary
   Lk - Joseph’s son
   Mk - they took offence at him
   Lk - all were filled with rage
   Mk - ‘Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town’
   Lk - ‘no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town’

   And, the basic story outline is the same:  Jesus is rejected by neighbors in
the synagogue in Nazareth.  If Lk had Jesus being rejected by camel drivers
while preaching in a leather shop in Jericho--then we would have a situation
analogous to Mt and Lk's handling of the birth of Jesus.

   And finally, nobody ever talks about the resurrection narratives.  Both Mt and
Lk add them to Mk.  There is no overlap in their accounts--just as with J's
birth--but this doesn't seem to get discussed.  I'm not sure why.

   Chuck

E Bruce Brooks wrote:

CHUCK: 3. On this question, evidence that Mt and Lk were both ignorant of some
of the content of the other has been primary to me. In particular, in the
material that precedes and follows the scope of the gospel of Mk, Mt and Lk have
no overlap in their material. Not a single parallel passage prior to the baptism
or after the burial. I've read material and participated in discussions that try
to carve up and swallow this elephant-in-the-living-room one bite at a time--but
they simply are not persuasive to me.

BRUCE: It has been shown, and to me convincingly shown, that the framework of
the Birth and Infancy narratives is the same, it is just that very different
laundry has been hung out to dry on the respective frameworks. In this area, we
are far from a situation that can imaginably be dealt with along text-critical
lines, that is, one is not a failed copy of the other. I think that Chuck may be
reacting to this fact, and if so, I am certainly with him that far. But that
does not mean that one was not *inspired by* the other, or that one is not a
*contentious attempt to improve on* the other.

   On the contrary, I suggest that both these latter possibilities are true.
Chuck has previously mentioned the drastic (and I would add, both internally and
externally inconcinnitous) rewriting and repositioning of Mark's Nazareth
episode in Luke. This sort of thing happens all the time in literary (as against
scribal) interactions, and that case is sufficient to
establish this general possibility as also relevant to Luke's stance as a
writer.

I think we need to get used to the idea that Luke is not a copyist; he is an
apologetic composer, and a literary rival to the *previous* apologetic
composers. He as much as says this, as I read him, in his much-discussed
Prologue. I am inclined to take him as he says. Everything in his final product
seems to bear him out, on this reading of his self-introduction.


   .





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Bruce,

   All I mean by "double tradition" is the material that appears in both Mt and
Lk.  I understand "triple tradition" to mean material that appears in Mk, Mt and
Lk.  It doesn't not seem to me that anything else is implied by the terms.

   Rev. Chuck Jones
   Atlanta, Georiga


E Bruce Brooks wrote:
           CHUCK: 5. Per item 2. above, note that this set of evidence has
nothing to do with a third (or fourth or fortieth) source. It does not even
involve
the double tradition. The discussion of sources for the double tradition is
crucial--but in its proper context.

BRUCE: I am afraid that pretty much everything is crucial, or at least
sufficiently relevant that it shouldn't be ignored forever. Meaning, it
should be brought into play before we decide things on narrower evidence.

I allow myself one quibble before concluding: Isn't the term "double
tradition" now obsolete and indeed misleading? It implies two channels back to
Jesus, only one step less assuredly authentic than where the three texts more or
less agree ("triple tradition").


   .





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Dennis Dean Carpenter wrote:

> ..... we find many allusions to Hebrew writings in Luke/Acts. With your
> logic, would these allusions also not be "rather obscure" to Gentiles? The
> author has Jesus begin his journey by quoting Isaiah 61. Are you saying that
> the Gentile audience would have been more familiar with this than Isaiah 34,
> in which I noted the raven as fitting into the gist of the block of material
> it is found?

Dennis,

It is perfectly possible for a one-word allusion to be obscure while an
explicit multi-line quotation is meaningful. In any case with this explicit
quotation Luke's point is clear even to a reader who has never before
encountered this particular passage in Isaiah 61.

To answer your questions more directly, I would be amazed if a typical
Gentile audience in Luke's time would have been familiar with Isaiah 34, and
moderately surprised if they were familiar with Isaiah 61 (it was surely
Luke's quotation in Lk 4:18-19 which led to these OT verses becoming
well-known outside Judaism).

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm

"...To answer your questions more directly, I would be amazed if a typical
Gentile audience in Luke's time would have been familiar with Isaiah 34, and
moderately surprised if they were familiar with Isaiah 61 (it was surely
Luke's quotation in Lk 4:18-19 which led to these OT verses becoming
well-known outside Judaism)
Ron Price"


I wasn't aware that the only Lukan allusion to the Hebrew scriptures was Isaiah
61. There is really no evidence that a Lukan audience wouldn't have been
familiar with Mark and its approximately 160 allusions to the scriptures, or
Matthew and its allusions. If, as many now see, Luke/Acts were second century
compositions, it puts these two writings preluding the Apologist Church Fathers
who certainly drew from the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, is there not a
continuous line from Mark through the second century where these were used in
Christian writings? Another thought might be that we see in the opening by Luke
a writing that, like the opening Josephus had in "The Antiquities of the Jews,"
implies that the writing was written for a literate audience:

Josephus: "Those who undertake to write histories do not, I perceive, take that
gtrouble on one and the same account but for many reasons, and those such as are
very different from one another...
Luke: "Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events
that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed onto us by those who
from the beginning were eyewitnesses...."

I would think that a literate reader of Luke (would there be any other?), would
also be familiar with the passages, especially in the prophets, that applied to
the Jewish Jesus. Is there a reason not to come to this conclusion? (I am aware
of the studies reporting on the literacy rates, but that is not at issue if the
writing was for the literate, as for instance "Antiquities" was.

Dennis Dean Carpenter
Dahlonega, Ga.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bruce,

   I'm beginning to bore myself, so I can sympathize with other list members. 
There are two things I want to comment on briefly, though:

   First, after graduate school and my subsequent meager efforts at being
published, I can certainly resonate with your reconstruction of the gospellers
writing multiple drafts before releasing their works.  But:  (1) I do not
believe the ancients had the luxury of doing this as vellum and papyrus were
quite expensive, and (2) these early drafts are completely irrelevant to our
discussion.  Whatever AMt released upon the world is Mt.  It doesn't matter if
he stayed up all night one night whipping it together or agnonized over it for a
year.  Mt, the final product, *is* what AMt did with his sources.

   Separately, the reason interpolations like the one in I Thess. are
hypothesized is that the content of the passages doesn't make sense for that
author at that place and time.  The I Thess verses, it is said, betray later
knowledge of the fate of the Jewish people.  By definition, this change would
have been made after some period of time, not when one copy existed.

   I've enjoyed the conversation very much.

   Rev. Chuck Jones
   Atlanta, Georgia


E Bruce Brooks wrote:
           I am getting the feeling that this conversation, despite its possible
interest for the participants, is boring everybody else, or taking up
bandwidth for which they may have other uses. Just this one bit more for
today.

CHUCK: Separately, I'm struck that in the scenario you describe below many,
many sources have to have been lost to us--all of those evolutionary,
accretional versions of Mk, Mt and Lk.

BRUCE: Those are not sources, in the usual sense of texts available to a
Gospel writer. They are not even texts. They are the previous own tentative
writings of that same Gospel writer, and each vanishes into the next.



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I had written:

> "... I would be amazed if a typical
> Gentile audience in Luke's time would have been familiar with Isaiah 34, and
> moderately surprised if they were familiar with Isaiah 61 (it was surely
> Luke's quotation in Lk 4:18-19 which led to these OT verses becoming
> well-known outside Judaism)

Dennis Carpenter replied:

> I wasn't aware that the only Lukan allusion to the Hebrew scriptures was
> Isaiah 61.

Nor was I. Where did you get that from? By "these OT verses" I was clearly
referring to Is 61:1-2, quoted by Luke, to which you had drawn my attention.

> There is really no evidence that a Lukan audience wouldn't have
> been familiar with Mark and its approximately 160 allusions to the scriptures,
> or Matthew and its allusions.

Perhaps we're getting nearer to the crux. As it happens I agree that Mark
and Matthew would have been widely known in Christian circles by the time
Luke was 'published'. Each major church would probably have acquired at
least one copy of each of the earlier gospels. Thus the typical Gentile
Lukan audience would have been to some extent familiar with the scriptural
references in Mark and Matthew. But not necessarily with the significance of
any subtle allusions they may have made. Anyway, they didn't mention ravens.

> I would think that a literate reader of Luke (would there be any other?),

Strictly, no. But I referred to Luke's "audience". Surely extracts from Luke
would have been read in church, and the audience in those days would have
been mainly illiterate.

> I am aware of the studies reporting on the literacy rates, but that is not at
> issue if the writing was for the literate, as for instance "Antiquities" was.

You appear to be assuming that most literate people in the Greek world would
have been familiar with the Jewish scriptures. This seems to me somewhat
doubtful.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Jones" <chuckjonez@...>
To: "E Bruce Brooks" <brooks@...>; "Synoptic-L elist"
<Synoptic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 8:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] Evidence of Independence


> Bruce,
>
>  I'm beginning to bore myself, so I can sympathize with other list
> members.  There are two things I want to comment on briefly, though:
>
>  First, after graduate school and my subsequent meager efforts at being
> published, I can certainly resonate with your reconstruction of the
> gospellers writing multiple drafts before releasing their works.  But:
> (1) I do not believe the ancients had the luxury of doing this as vellum
> and papyrus were quite expensive,

I would suspect tthat drafts were done on plain leather before being applied
to finished parchment.  Paul is from this time period and as a writer he
asks in 2 Timothy 4:13 that the recipient bring him his cloak...KAI TA
BIBLIA MALISTA TAS MEMBRANAS..." and also the scrolls and above all the
parchments."


Jack Kilmon

To: Synoptic
In Response To: Jack Kilmon
On: Writing Materials
From: Bruce

Jack had said: I would suspect that drafts were done on plain leather before
being applied to finished parchment.  Paul is from this time period and as a
writer he asks in 2 Timothy 4:13 that the recipient bring him his
cloak...KAI TA BIBLIA MALISTA TAS MEMBRANAS..." and also the scrolls and
above all the
parchments."

I somehow can't think it likely that "drafts" in our sense (preliminary
written versions) were common in antiquity, and in support, it has often
been argued that Paul's letters read as though dictated, and not as
previously written. But I *can* readily imagine a use for two kinds of
writing materials. In the case cited, leather (as in the Isaiah scroll) for
the home or personal copy, and ruggeder (if more expensive) parchment for
the copy to be dispatched to destination. Presumably the mail service was
even rougher on missives then than it is now.

Of course there is always the question of the date of 2 Timothy, but the
passage is surely generally relevant to the situation we are considering.

As late as the American Civil War, military communications were done by
scribes, and in duplicate. The scribe would handwrite one copy to be
delivered to destination, and then handwrite another copy for the files of
the general doing the dictation. Sometimes both have been preserved (here is
a nice case for the text critics to study), and they vary ever so slightly,
not only in how many words to a line, but in some details of the words
themselves. Example: Grant's surrender terms at Fort Donelson.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG, WSW
In Response To: Chuck Jones
On: Additions to Texts
From: Bruce

CHUCK [24 Mar 08]: For example, a significant number of Pauline scholars
believe that I Thess. 2:15-16 is a later interpolation, despite the absence
of textual variants.  So here is what had to have happened.  One scribe
inserted the passage into one copy of I Thess.  And then all of the other
copies of I Thess. had to perish from the earth while this one copy became
the single progenitor for all manuscripts of I Thess. from that day forward.
I have a pretty big problem with the plausibility of that scenario.

CHUCK [separately, 25 Mar 08]: Separately, the reason interpolations like
the one in I Thess. are hypothesized is that the content of the passages
doesn't make sense for that author at that place and time.  The I Thess
verses, it is said, betray later knowledge of the fate of the Jewish people.
By definition, this change would have been made after some period of time,
not when one copy existed.

BRUCE: You insist on the scribal error scenario, which you yourself say does
not work. The only place to put the interpolation is at the head of the
copying process. What that situation takes is a new idea, and I still
recommend the one I earlier offered.

We can take up 1Th as such separately, if we like. Suppose, for now, that we
agree that 1Th 2:15-16 is an interpolation, and our reason for thinking so
is that it contains an anachronism: something that shows knowledge of a
situation that could only have obtained after the death of the putative
author.

But "later than the author" need not mean "later than the period when only
the house copy of the text existed." That is a non sequitur. Let me suggest
a scenario to illustrate. I don't insist that it is correct, but its
possibility will serve to refute the above assertion.

The Church at Thessalonica was the recipient of the original letter. It was
also the *custodian* of the letter following its receipt. We know from
remarks by Paul that it was expected that these letters would be kept and
read, so this is not a very wild assumption. That letter was in effect the
Scripture of that church; an authoritative writing from the person who had
actually founded that church; their personal channel to doctrinal
correctness. Paul then dies, in or around 42, but the authority of the
document remains. Nay, increases, because there is no chance of hearing any
further from Paul himself. Subsequently, a situation arises for which the
church feels a need of authoritative guidance. The leaders agree among
themselves on what the guideline should be. They then add a couple of lines
to the house scripture to give their decision more weight, and also to give
the document itself an appearance of greater adequacy. The document
continues to be read in the church, and it meets the new demand that
circumstances have placed on it. All most natural and most satisfactory.
Still, however, entirely contained within that group of church members. We
have a single physical text, but now it contains a pious and well-meaning
interpolation, written into the original margin.

Then the guy from the Corpus Paulinum shows up at the door, and says, You
folks got any Paul manuscripts? Give them to us, and we will send you a copy
of the Collected Edition, much more full and authoritative than any one or
two things you may have. Of course they agree. And with the document goes
the two lines which at some earlier point they added to the margin of it,
and back at Corpus Paulinum headquarters, the manuscript is copied, and in
the process those two lines are copied from the margin into the text, and
there they still are, in all subsequent manuscripts and printed Bibles.

Of course we would like some more exact dates here. When, for a start, do we
first have clear evidence of the existence of a Corpus Paulinum, in the
sense of a widely known collection of Paul's letters? I would suggest that
the reference in 2Pt 3:15b-16 ("all his letters") is definite, and
establishes a terminus ante quem.

[But what date shall we assign to 2Pt? And are we entirely sure that 2Pt
3:15b-16 is not itself an interpolation?]

One terminus post quem for the Corpus Paulinum would be Acts, since last I
heard, Acts was definitely composed WITHOUT knowledge of the Corpus
Paulinum, or its most directly relevant parts.

But I am getting off on the date of the Corpus Paulinum, which is probably
illegal on this list. So for that matter is 1Th. But as an illustration of
methodology, 1Th may be permissible, and my comment on methodology is the
one above. 1Th may be an accretional text, and 2:15-16 may be one of the
accretions, in which case the lack of manuscript variants, some of them
having and others lacking 1Th 2:15-16, is not difficult to explain. No?

No. It's exactly what we would expect.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Bruce supplies one scenario by which "full-replacement" in all existing
copies of a document may happen. In his scenario the total population
size of the documents in question is 1, when the change takes place, and
thus full replacement is instantaneous. This works of course. But I'd
add that there are other very reasonable paths to full replacement. We
have to consider that documents over 3 centuries would cross-pollinate
quite bit. A visitor from one church at another church might notice a
difference in the text and say, "Hey, yours is different than ours!"
After this they might agree to "compare notes". If the alteration
supported the growing orthodoxy then the alteration will be judged
"better". For a period of time the church might retain both copies, but
when it comes time to re-copy, guess which one they use? And if
resources are not plentiful and they need to reuse parchment, guess
which one they destroy? In this way a change that supports Orthodoxy
could easily achieve full replacement in a population between the end of
the first century, when it was produced, and the 4th century, where we
have our first surviving full copies.



Dave Gentile

Riverside, IL









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
From: Bruce

I have it privately that at least one Synoptic member finds that I have
"created an extraordinarily low probability scenario; low enough that, for
me, it is not credible." Well, you can't win them all, at least not with
every.

But a little more detail, whether on-list of off, from that person or
another, would be more help to me in discovering at what point I have failed
to present a thinkable possibility.

GIVEN: (1) 1Th 2:15-16 seem anachronistic for the living Paul; we suspect a
later interpolation. (2) No known manuscript omits these passages. (3) Let's
also recognize the high probability that the original 1Th was a letter
addressed to the church in Thessalonica and was retained by that church
until Point P, the moment (date presently unknown, but certainly there was
such a date) when it began to be copied for a wider public.

TO FIND: The least incredible scenario.

AVAILABLE SCENARIOS

A. Home Text Interpolation (Myself). During the period of its custody in
Thessalonica, someone made a marginal addition of 2:15-16. Then we reach
Point P and the text began to be copied, and naturally all copies included
that marginal addition, yielding the manuscript situation we have.

B Later Interpolation Plus Lateral Contamination (Dave Gentile). The
original 1Th holograph as received from Paul was kept intact in
Thessalonica, and began to be copied in that form. Point P has been passed,
and the text does not contain 2:15-16. One early scribe *added* 2:15-16, and
all later copies of 1Th, in whatever text stream, east or west, adopted that
addition (lateral corruption), also yielding the manuscript situation we
have.

If we reject both of these, we are left with

C. No Interpolation. 1Th 2:15-16 is not after all an anachronism. If we
adopt this scenario, we are then required to explain how Paul could after
all have referred, in his lifetime, to a situation that at first glance
seemed to have arisen only later. What did he have in mind? What event
catastrophic for "the Jews" ("God's wrath has come upon them at last") does
this passage after all refer to? I can easily see it being written in 72,
but not in 42. Is there a solution? If not, and unless somebody can
contribute a D, then I think we are reduced to choosing between A and B.

[I repeat that I prefer to take the 1Th problem as a whole rather than in
bits, but the conversation was about this particular bit, and I accept that
for purposes of present discussion].

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
From: Dave Gentile
On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
Via: Bruce

[This message came to me personally. At the request of the sender, I am
forwarding it, as originally intended, to Synoptic. It refers to my
suggested A [Home Interpolation], B [Scribal Interpolation], and C [No
Interpolation] scenarios for 1Th 2:15-16. / Bruce]

I'd also add that the odds of scenario B probably fall rapidly as time goes
on. The more copies exist, and the more established and unchanging the
orthodoxy becomes, the more difficult full replacement becomes. Thus our
best guess, to minimize our probable error, would place interpolations like
this rather early, say early 2nd century.

Although there is an argument for not placing it TOO early. In the very
first stages, there would still be easy access to the original document, at
least for some. But then, we can note the obvious fact that none of the
originals survive, so at some point that ceases to be an issue. Also it is
not much of an issue for those with large geographic separation. The change
might occur early, proliferate in one area removed from the original source,
and only later return to back-contaminate the original location.

Here I'm reminded of a recent study on cat evolution. Modern house pets are
related to a middle-eastern desert cat. Modern Cheetahs are found only in
Africa, both have their original roots in an old-world cat-ancestor as well,
but both spent a period of their evolutionary history exclusively in the
Americas. So there were back-and-forth migrations. Things don't necessarily
progress in a nice neat straight line.

Dave Gentile
Riverside, IL

I understand the effort  to regard this statement as a later interpolation. It
appears to be the only outright anti-judaic text in Paul, as he cites here a
pagan derogatory remark on the Judean people that in his days was doing the
rounds.
1. Paul was not averse to use strong language for his diatribes. 'Let them cut
it off ' he wrote of those who insisted on circumcisions.
2. Paul used here the term ioudaioi, I think, in a generalizing political sense,
somewhat like a statement "the Germans bombed Rotterdam".  With an abbreviation
like that  the German people as such are not condemned
3. Writing to his ecclesia with a mixed membership, he was referring to bloody
political events in his motherland and blamed its leadership. Gentile members in
Thessalonica would not have known the ins and outs of the situation in
Jerusalem.
4. 1 Thess was written shortly after these events in 41 CE when Herod Agrippa I
initiated a bloody  persecution of the Christian ecclesia. Het decapitated
publicly John Zebedee(!) and imprisoned Simon Peter with the intent of executing
him on the day of Pesach. Such measures should not be underrated.
5. I am not making an excuse for Paul's discriminatory remark. Its
Wirkungsgeschichte  shows it later wreaked untold damage. However, one must read
the text in its context.
6. Regarding a text to be a later interpolation out of embarasment, is a
questionable procedure.

Would this perhaps solve the problem?

cordially

Karel Hanhart


  ----- Original Message -----
   From: E Bruce Brooks
   To: Synoptic
   Cc: GPG
   Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 7:18 PM
   Subject: [Synoptic-L] 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios


   To: Synoptic
   Cc: GPG
   On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
   From: Bruce

   I have it privately that at least one Synoptic member finds that I have
   "created an extraordinarily low probability scenario; low enough that, for
   me, it is not credible." Well, you can't win them all, at least not with
   every.

   But a little more detail, whether on-list of off, from that person or
   another, would be more help to me in discovering at what point I have failed
   to present a thinkable possibility.

   GIVEN: (1) 1Th 2:15-16 seem anachronistic for the living Paul; we suspect a
   later interpolation. (2) No known manuscript omits these passages. (3) Let's
   also recognize the high probability that the original 1Th was a letter
   addressed to the church in Thessalonica and was retained by that church
   until Point P, the moment (date presently unknown, but certainly there was
   such a date) when it began to be copied for a wider public.

   TO FIND: The least incredible scenario.

   AVAILABLE SCENARIOS

   A. Home Text Interpolation (Myself). During the period of its custody in
   Thessalonica, someone made a marginal addition of 2:15-16. Then we reach
   Point P and the text began to be copied, and naturally all copies included
   that marginal addition, yielding the manuscript situation we have.

   B Later Interpolation Plus Lateral Contamination (Dave Gentile). The
   original 1Th holograph as received from Paul was kept intact in
   Thessalonica, and began to be copied in that form. Point P has been passed,
   and the text does not contain 2:15-16. One early scribe *added* 2:15-16, and
   all later copies of 1Th, in whatever text stream, east or west, adopted that
   addition (lateral corruption), also yielding the manuscript situation we
   have.

   If we reject both of these, we are left with

   C. No Interpolation. 1Th 2:15-16 is not after all an anachronism. If we
   adopt this scenario, we are then required to explain how Paul could after
   all have referred, in his lifetime, to a situation that at first glance
   seemed to have arisen only later. What did he have in mind? What event
   catastrophic for "the Jews" ("God's wrath has come upon them at last") does
   this passage after all refer to? I can easily see it being written in 72,
   but not in 42. Is there a solution? If not, and unless somebody can
   contribute a D, then I think we are reduced to choosing between A and B.

   [I repeat that I prefer to take the 1Th problem as a whole rather than in
   bits, but the conversation was about this particular bit, and I accept that
   for purposes of present discussion].

   Bruce

   E Bruce Brooks
   Warring States Project
   University of Massachusetts at Amherst
   http://www.umass.edu/wsp





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 3/28/2008 5:17:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
K.Hanhart@... writes:

. 1  Thess was written shortly after these events in 41 CE when Herod Agrippa
I  initiated a bloody  persecution of the Christian ecclesia. Het
decapitated publicly John Zebedee(!) and imprisoned Simon Peter with the  intent
of
executing him on the day of Pesach. Such measures should not be  underrated
I believe you mean JAMES not John, since tradition has it John was the last
of the apostles to die.

Also, Herod planned to kill Peter after the Pesach -- such activity would
not have been allowed or accepted during a High Holy Day, even from Herod.



Rev. Charles Schwartz
Parochial Vicar
Saint Joan of Arc
Marlton, NJ




**************Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL
Home.
(http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15&ncid=aolhom00030\
000000001)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

----- Original Message -----
From: <fathchuck@...>
To: <synoptic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios


>
>
> In a message dated 3/28/2008 5:17:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> K.Hanhart@... writes:
>
> . 1  Thess was written shortly after these events in 41 CE when Herod
> Agrippa
> I  initiated a bloody  persecution of the Christian ecclesia. Het
> decapitated publicly John Zebedee(!) and imprisoned Simon Peter with the
> intent of
> executing him on the day of Pesach. Such measures should not be
> underrated
> I believe you mean JAMES not John, since tradition has it John was the
> last
> of the apostles to die.
>
> Also, Herod planned to kill Peter after the Pesach -- such activity would
> not have been allowed or accepted during a High Holy Day, even from Herod.
>
>
>
> Rev. Charles Schwartz
> Parochial Vicar
> Saint Joan of Arc
> Marlton, NJ


When Ananus saw his opportunity to do away with James, according to Josephus
he brought James and his companions before the Sanhedrin tobe stoned.  We
know that his companions, the "pillars" included John Zebedee. Josephus
states: .... so he (Ananus) assembled the Sanhedrin of Judges and brought
before them the brother of Jesus, so-called Christ, whose name was James,
AND SOME OTHERS, [some of his companions] and when he had formed an
accusation against THEM as breakers of the law,  he delivered THEM to be
stoned...."  A Papias quote by Philip of Side claims that John was martyred
as was his brother.  I think it is very likely that one of the companions
stoned with James was John.  I don't think John of Ephesus was John Zebedee.

Jack Kilmon

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Jack Kilmon
On: Martyrdom of John Zebedee
From: Bruce

To me, at any rate, John of Zebedee is one of the loose ends in the whole 1c
picture. Jack had cited the following evidence, and added his opinion:

JACK: . . . A Papias quote by Philip of Side claims that John was martyred
as was his brother.  I think it is very likely that one of the companions
stoned with James was John.  I don't think John of Ephesus was John Zebedee.

BRUCE: There seems to be multiple attestation of this lost bit of Papias. As
to its significance, I am very much inclined to agree with Jack's
conclusion. An even earlier witness is the Gospel of Mark (Mk 10:39,
retained with directionally intelligible variations in Mt 20:23, though not
in Lk): "And Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink you will drink, and
with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized." This reads
like a prediction that AMk and his audience knew had been fulfilled. If so,
then this passage must be later in date than the event reported by Josephus,
which is nice to know. A fixed point in a fog.

It is just possible that Papias was inferring his information about the two
Zebedee from this very Mk passage (or its Matthean parallel), and not
reporting an independent information source. Even if so, I think that the Mk
passage (whether or not reflected in other Synoptics) will bear the weight
alone. The only unfulfilled prediction in Mk, as far as I remember, is the
Kingdom itself, and I cannot but think that the other, fulfilled predictions
are there to add credibility to that one: to reinforce belief.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Karel Hanhart
On: Originality of 1Th 2:15-16
From: Bruce

Karel is with those who adopt Scenario C of the ones I originally offered as
more or less covering the possible ground. Scenario C is the possibility
that 1Th 2:15-16 is a remark of Paul, here assumed to be otherwise the
author of 1Th, and that there is no anachronism involved.

KAREL: 1 Thess was written shortly after these events in 41 CE when Herod
Agrippa I initiated a bloody  persecution of the Christian ecclesia.

BRUCE: This important event might be referred to as a disaster falling *on
the Christians.* I find it difficult to see it as envisioned in the words
"as then did from the Jews, [15] who killed both the Lord Jesus and the
Prophets, . . . But God's wrath has come *upon them [ie, the Jews]* at
last."

I thus can't see that it solves the problem; I would rather say that it
underlines the problem.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

----- Original Message -----
   From:  Karel Hanhart
   To: Synoptic ; E Bruce Brooks
   Cc: GPG
   Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 10:17 PM
   Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios


   I understand the effort  to regard this statement as a later interpolation. It
appears to be the only outright anti-judaic text in Paul, as he cites here a
pagan derogatory remark on the Judean people that in his days was doing the
rounds.
   1. Paul was not averse to use strong language for his diatribes. 'Let them cut
it off ' he wrote of those who insisted on circumcisions.
   2. Paul used here the term ioudaioi, I think, in a generalizing political
sense, somewhat like a statement "the Germans bombed Rotterdam".  With an
abbreviation like that  the German people as such are not condemned
   3. Writing to his ecclesia with a mixed membership, he was referring to bloody
political events in his motherland and blamed its leadership. Gentile members in
Thessalonica would not have known the ins and outs of the situation in
Jerusalem.
   4. 1 Thess was written shortly after these events in 41 CE when Herod Agrippa
I initiated a bloody  persecution of the Christian ecclesia. Het decapitated
publicly John Zebedee(!) and imprisoned Simon Peter with the intent of executing
him on the day of Pesach. Such measures should not be underrated.
   5. I am not making an excuse for Paul's discriminatory remark. Its
Wirkungsgeschichte  shows it later wreaked untold damage. However, one must read
the text in its context.
   6. Regarding a text to be a later interpolation out of embarasment, is a
questionable procedure.

   Would this perhaps solve the problem?

   cordially

   Karel Hanhart


    ----- Original Message -----
     From: E Bruce Brooks
     To: Synoptic
     Cc: GPG
     Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 7:18 PM
     Subject: [Synoptic-L] 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios


     To: Synoptic
     Cc: GPG
     On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
     From: Bruce

     I have it privately that at least one Synoptic member finds that I have
     "created an extraordinarily low probability scenario; low enough that, for
     me, it is not credible." Well, you can't win them all, at least not with
     every.

     But a little more detail, whether on-list of off, from that person or
     another, would be more help to me in discovering at what point I have failed
     to present a thinkable possibility.

     GIVEN: (1) 1Th 2:15-16 seem anachronistic for the living Paul; we suspect a
     later interpolation. (2) No known manuscript omits these passages. (3) Let's
     also recognize the high probability that the original 1Th was a letter
     addressed to the church in Thessalonica and was retained by that church
     until Point P, the moment (date presently unknown, but certainly there was
     such a date) when it began to be copied for a wider public.

     TO FIND: The least incredible scenario.

     AVAILABLE SCENARIOS

     A. Home Text Interpolation (Myself). During the period of its custody in
     Thessalonica, someone made a marginal addition of 2:15-16. Then we reach
     Point P and the text began to be copied, and naturally all copies included
     that marginal addition, yielding the manuscript situation we have.

     B Later Interpolation Plus Lateral Contamination (Dave Gentile). The
     original 1Th holograph as received from Paul was kept intact in
     Thessalonica, and began to be copied in that form. Point P has been passed,
     and the text does not contain 2:15-16. One early scribe *added* 2:15-16, and
     all later copies of 1Th, in whatever text stream, east or west, adopted that
     addition (lateral corruption), also yielding the manuscript situation we
     have.

     If we reject both of these, we are left with

     C. No Interpolation. 1Th 2:15-16 is not after all an anachronism. If we
     adopt this scenario, we are then required to explain how Paul could after
     all have referred, in his lifetime, to a situation that at first glance
     seemed to have arisen only later. What did he have in mind? What event
     catastrophic for "the Jews" ("God's wrath has come upon them at last") does
     this passage after all refer to? I can easily see it being written in 72,
     but not in 42. Is there a solution? If not, and unless somebody can
     contribute a D, then I think we are reduced to choosing between A and B.

     [I repeat that I prefer to take the 1Th problem as a whole rather than in
     bits, but the conversation was about this particular bit, and I accept that
     for purposes of present discussion].

     Bruce

     E Bruce Brooks
     Warring States Project
     University of Massachusetts at Amherst
     http://www.umass.edu/wsp





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Karel Hanhart
On: Paul in 1Th 2:15-16
From: Bruce

Karel seems to have reposted his earlier message intact, attaching my
response, also intact. I guess the latter will still suffice me, as a
response to his proposal. But I noticed, this time around, this line in his
proposal:

KAREL: . . . Paul, as he cites here a pagan derogatory remark on the Judean
people that in his days was doing the rounds.

BRUCE: What evidence is there, including its internal character, that this
was a "pagan derogatory remark? It seems to me that we have here, not a
generally derogatory or anti-Jewish remark, whether pagan or Christian, but
a specific statement that the Jews have now received appropriate punishment
for their previous crimes against Jesus and his followers.

There has been more than one proposal to recognize interpolations or
partitions in 1Th. As to the specific passage 2:15-16, I notice that if we
remove those lines (which are grammatically a sort of appositive supplement
to the noun "Jews"), we get the following:

"2:13. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the
word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men,
but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you
believers. [14]. For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God
in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from
your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. [17] But since we are bereft
of you, brethren, for a short time, in person not in heart . . ."

In short, a parallel is made between Gentile persecutions of Gentile
churches and Jewish persecution of Jewish Christian churches in Judea. There
is symmetry, and there is no particular accusation of one group more than of
the other.

The passage 2:15-16 takes off from the noun "Jews" (a usage which to some
eyes might already suggest Acts more than the Paulines) to point to an
appropriate retribution that the Jews collectively have sustained, seemingly
in the recent past. Substantively, it is historical and not general.
Rhetorically, it is a sort of inessential update to 2:13-14. In tone, and in
the accusation that the Jews murdered Jesus, 2:15-16 seems to me to differ
little from the speeches of Peter to the Jews at the beginning of Acts,
though I am not at this moment suggesting an influence from one to the
other.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

Bruce: What evidence is there, including its internal character, that this
was a "pagan derogatory remark? It seems to me that we have here, not a
generally derogatory or anti-Jewish remark, whether pagan or Christian,

Karel: The pagan remark is by Tacitus. If you insist I will look it up. Prof.
Van der Horst of the U of Utrecht, expert on Hellenistic literature, has traced
the remark originally launched in Egyptian circles extensively.

Bruce: There has been more than one proposal to recognize interpolations or
partitions in 1Th. As to the specific passage 2:15-16,

Karel: Agreed: some have made this proposal. There are, I think, two reasons why
an exegete should go to the extreme of excising a text as an interpolation
without manuscript backing. (a) The passage radically disagrees with its
immediate context and should be regarded as a very early interpolation for
whatever reason. (b) The exegete himself doesn't like the statement
As long as we may find a reasonable explanation of the verse, we whould shy away
from the interpolation  route.

Bruce:
In short, a parallel is made between Gentile persecutions of Gentile
churches and Jewish persecution of Jewish Christian churches in Judea.

Karel:
The theory that Thessalonica was a Gentile church was launched since Biblical
criticism began in Germany. However, that Paul preached only to Gentile
communities has long been questioned. The core membership of the ecclesia in
Thessalonica, like Corinth consisted of Christians Judeans with a large number
of  baptized Gentiles.

Bruce:
a specific statement that the Jews have now received appropriate punishment
for their previous crimes against Jesus and his followers.

Karel:
Are you not repeating here the pre- holocaust broad charge of "the Jews" being
Christ killers and that with Paul's backing?  I know you are aware that since
then the passage has been re-assessed.

cordially

Karel Hanhart
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: E Bruce Brooks
   To: Synoptic
   Cc: GPG
   Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 7:41 AM
   Subject: Re: [Synoptic-L] 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios


   To: Synoptic
   Cc: GPG
   In Response To: Karel Hanhart
   On: Paul in 1Th 2:15-16
   From: Bruce

   Karel seems to have reposted his earlier message intact, attaching my
   response, also intact. I guess the latter will still suffice me, as a
   response to his proposal. But I noticed, this time around, this line in his
   proposal:

   KAREL: . . . Paul, as he cites here a pagan derogatory remark on the Judean
   people that in his days was doing the rounds.

   BRUCE: What evidence is there, including its internal character, that this
   was a "pagan derogatory remark? It seems to me that we have here, not a
   generally derogatory or anti-Jewish remark, whether pagan or Christian, but
   a specific statement that the Jews have now received appropriate punishment
   for their previous crimes against Jesus and his followers.

   There has been more than one proposal to recognize interpolations or
   partitions in 1Th. As to the specific passage 2:15-16, I notice that if we
   remove those lines (which are grammatically a sort of appositive supplement
   to the noun "Jews"), we get the following:

   "2:13. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the
   word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men,
   but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you
   believers. [14]. For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God
   in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from
   your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. [17] But since we are bereft
   of you, brethren, for a short time, in person not in heart . . ."

   In short, a parallel is made between Gentile persecutions of Gentile
   churches and Jewish persecution of Jewish Christian churches in Judea. There
   is symmetry, and there is no particular accusation of one group more than of
   the other.

   The passage 2:15-16 takes off from the noun "Jews" (a usage which to some
   eyes might already suggest Acts more than the Paulines) to point to an
   appropriate retribution that the Jews collectively have sustained, seemingly
   in the recent past. Substantively, it is historical and not general.
   Rhetorically, it is a sort of inessential update to 2:13-14. In tone, and in
   the accusation that the Jews murdered Jesus, 2:15-16 seems to me to differ
   little from the speeches of Peter to the Jews at the beginning of Acts,
   though I am not at this moment suggesting an influence from one to the
   other.

   Bruce

   E Bruce Brooks
   Warring States Project
   University of Massachusetts at Amherst
   http://www.umass.edu/wsp





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: Karel Hanhart
On: 1th 2:15-16 Scenarios
From: Bruce

[Through the common error of hitting REPLY instead of REPLY ALL, Karel's
remarks at first came to me alone. He has now reposted them to Synoptic
proper, and I do the same with my original responses. / Bruce]

Karel: The pagan remark is by Tacitus. If you insist I will look it up.
Prof. Van der Horst of the U of Utrecht, expert on Hellenistic literature,
has traced the remark originally launched in Egyptian circles extensively.

Bruce: I find the Jews mentioned in Tacitus (Annals) only at 12:54. That
passage describes some Jewish disturbances, but blames them on misgovernment
by Felix. Tacitus agrees with the capital punishment of Jews who in the
course of those disturbances killed Roman soldiers, but there is no general
disapprobation of Jews. If you or Prof van der Horst have other information
that my search has not revealed, please share it. Otherwise, I can only
conclude that the remark in question has no counterpart in Tacitus, and no
plausible source in anything which Tacitus records. This does not prove that
Paul either did or did not say it; it only suggests that it was not a
generally current saying which the writer of 1Th 2:15-16 adopted.

Karel: Agreed: some have made this proposal [about interpolations or
partitions in 1Th]. There are, I think, two reasons why an exegete should go
to the extreme of excising a text as an interpolation without manuscript
backing. (a) The passage radically disagrees with its immediate context and
should be regarded as a very early interpolation for whatever reason. (b)
The exegete himself doesn't like the statement. As long as we may find a
reasonable explanation of the verse, we would shy away from the
interpolation  route.

Bruce: This is merely a doctrine that interpolation explanations should not
be invoked except in "extreme" cases. That is, it privileges exegetical
ingenuity over the tendency of the evidence, if the latter should suggest an
interpolation. Methodologically, I don't believe in any privileges
whatsoever. I suggest, as others before me have suggested, that 1Th 2:15-16
is indeed difficult in context, in the way that is commonly seen with
interpolations. As for "without manuscript backing," this ignores the
possibility (which I have recently been at pains to establish as a
possibility) that a text may have a history previous to its going public and
being copied for a wider audience. Please see again my Synoptic replies to
Chuck Jones.

1Th 2:15-16 seems to refer to a particular event that can be interpreted as
God's judgement on the Jews, and indeed as punishment for their execution of
Jesus and others. It seems to be unique in all the Pauline writings, not to
mention the Deuteropauline writings, and this, in addition to its seemingly
anachronistic character, is the trait that suggests an interpolation.

Karel: The theory that Thessalonica was a Gentile church was launched since
Biblical criticism began in Germany. However, that Paul preached only to
Gentile communities has long been questioned. The core membership of the
ecclesia in Thessalonica, like Corinth consisted of Christians Judeans with
a large number of  baptized Gentiles.

Bruce: The more Jews you find in the Thessalonian church, the more
incongruous does Paul's supposed remark in 1Th 2:15-16 become. This seems to
argue against your own position, and in favor of an interpolation.

Karel: Are you not repeating here the pre- holocaust broad charge of "the
Jews" being Christ killers and that with Paul's backing?

Bruce: No. I don't regard the Holocaust, or any other event occurring later
than the 1st century, as relevant to the question of what is going on in
1Th. The relevant question is: Was the charge that the Jews killed the
Christ current in the 1st century? Answer: Yes; as you surely know, that
charge is made several times in Acts, not to mention the various Synoptics.
I forbear to quote you passages; you will already know them by heart. The
Synoptic literature thus abounds in this kind of indictment of the Jews. The
question is: Is it logical to find it also expressed in Paul's writings?

Given the apparent tenor of all Paul's other undoubtedly genuine writings,
my answer would be, No. Then we need to find why this Synoptic accusation
figures, and figures incongruously, in the otherwise genuine Pauline letter
1Th. The interpolation theory is one way of reconciling the facts with each
other. I can't think of a second, equally effective way.

Best wishes,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Supplementary Response To: Karel Hanhart
On: 1Th 2:15-16
From: Bruce

Nothing like the older commentaries when you really want to find something
out. J B Lightfoot (1828-1889, a classmate of B F Westcott) in his
posthumously published commentaries on Thessalonians seem to give the
passage(s) which Karel had in mind. I first quote and later comment.

"PASIN ANQRWPOIS ENANTIWN [2:14b, 'contrary to all men']. This expression at
once recalls the language of Tacitus (Hist v.5) speaking of the Jews
'adversus omnes alios hostile odium.' Nor is this a mere resemblance of
expression, although the two phrases are not coextensive. The spirit in
which Tacitus so describes them may be inferred from the account given by
Juvenal (xiv.103, 104) of this unfriendly race, which denied even the
commonest offices of hospitality to strangers - 'non monstrare vias eadem
nisi sacra tenenti, Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.' [follow some
Greek quotations]. To Paul on the other hand views their hostility to
mankind as exemplified in their opposing the extension of the Gospel to the
Gentiles (see next note)."

And in the next note, Lightfoot remarks

"KWLUONTWN] 'in that they hinder us.' This clause is most naturally taken as
explanatory of PASIN ANQRWPOIS ENANTIWN, otherwise it would have been TWN
KWLUONTWN or KAI KWLUONTWN. This was the ground of opposition of the Jews to
St Paul as recorded in the Acts, elsewhere (xiii.48 sq) and at Thessalonica
itself (xvii.5 ZHLWSANTES DE OI IOUDAIOI K.T.L.)."

On the main point, namely, what event the 1Th writer is here referring to,
JBL, after a long page on the aorist, finally gets down to it. He says
(p35-36):

"What was this divine judgement, which the Apostle speaks of as having
already fallen on the Jews? We might be tempted to think that he foretold
the final overthrow of the nation and the destruction of their city and
temple. But this is an inadequate explanation. There is no sign of any kind
that the inspiration of the Apostle here assumes a directly predictive
character. There is no prophetic colouring in the passage. On the contrary,
he spoke of some stern reality which was already working before his eyes:
and even to one not gifted with an Apostle's prophetic insight, yet endowed
with average moral sensibilities, there was enough in the actual condition
of this nation to lead him to regard them as suffering under a blow of
divine retribution. There were the actual physical evils, under which they
were groaning. There was the disorganization of their internal polity. There
was their utter disregard of all moral distinctions, to which their own
historian Josephus draws attention. There was above all their infatuated
opposition to the Gospel, than which no more decisive proof of judicial
blindness, or it might be of conscious and headlong precipitation into ruin,
could be conceived by the Christian mind. The maxim 'Quem deus vult perdere,
prius dementat' is not a Christian maxim; but it has a Christian
counterpart, in that those who 'like not to retain God in their knowledge,
God gives over to a reprobate mind' (Rom. i.28). God's wrath then was no
longer suspended; it had already fallen on the once hallowed, but now
accursed, race. We may suppose moreover that the prophecies of our Lord
relating to the destruction of Jerusalem were floating before St Paul's
mind - prophecies dim and vague indeed and, we may fairly assume, not fully
understood even by St Paul - but sufficiently portentous to arouse fearful
anticipations. They would give a new meaning and importance to the actual
evils of which he was an eyewitness. The end was not yet, but the beginning
of the end was come."

COMMENT

None of this will do. It gives reasons for disapproval of the Jews (in
blocking the spread of the Gospel), but it does not give ground for
identifying a punishment which is not forthcoming, not vaguely intimated in
the situation of the times, but is known to the writer *and the audience* of
1Th 2:15-16 to have already occurred.

This is the crux on which noninterpolation theories founder. The only event
that the massively erudite Lightfoot can think of as corresponding to 2:16b
is the destruction of the Temple and indeed the disruption of Jewish polity,
such as up to then it had been. AD 70. Paul did not live to see that event.
He never functions as a prophet, and the writer of 2:16b is not (as
Lightfoot himself begins by conceding) *attempting* to function as a
prophet. He is pointing to an event *that has actually occurred.* The
passage does not "work" save on that reading of it.

T W Manson (1950) also runs aground at this point. "This is a difficult
sentence." It is indeed, and it will not serve to say, as Manson proceeds to
do, that "the Wrath of God . . . is already at work upon the Jews, their
doom is sealed."

No future event will satisfy the grammar. No present event within the life
of the Historic Paul can be discovered. Falling back on a future event
presently foreshadowed merely acknowledges that explanations along these
lines do not cover the territory. Something more, or more precisely
something other, seems to be required.

Respectfully summarized,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
From: David Hindley
On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
Forwarded by: Bruce

[Here is another message that came to me only, but was meant by its sender
to go to the list. The sender has no copy (having sent it from the web
interface), and has asked me to repost it for him. My reply follows
separately. / Bruce]

Assuming a date of writing around 42 CE, didn't Gaius (Caligula) only
recently (winter 39CE-April 41 CE) make his attempt to erect his statue (er,
I mean a statue of - eh - "Zeus") in the temple in Jerusalem, by force "if
necessary"? Perhaps, if "Jews" is taken to mean "Judeans", that might be
interpreted, somehow, as "getting what they (Judeans) deserve."

On the other hand, it is easier to understand this as an anachronism
referring to the defeat of Jewish rebels in the war of 66-70+ CE. The
collection of Pauline letters and their eventual publication as a definitive
corpus is likely a more complex affair than is often assumed. If the letters
were collected over time and copied and
passed around, as most folks assume, we should expect quite a bit more
diversity of book order in the mss than we do find. Keep to mind David
Trobisch's proposal for a "canonical edition" of the Pauline corpus. I don't
like the choice of phrase ("canonical" is I believe a technical term, not a
faith statement, if I understand him correctly). I think he is taking up an
idea first proposed by Johann Salomo Semler, who Schweitzer says was "the
first to point out that we do not possess the Pauline Epistles in their
original form, but only in the form in which they were read in the churches.
The canonical Epistle is therefore not, as a matter of a priori
certainty, identical with the historical letter." (_Paul & His Interpreters_
pg 6). Then this passage can be understood as an introjection of the
publisher/editor.

But as illustrative as it is, isn't this thread beginning to deviate from
the purpose of this list?

Dave Hindley
Warren, OH USA

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Response To: David Hindley
On: 1Th 2:15-16 Scenarios
From: Bruce

With Dave H's comments now fairly before Synoptic, I venture to respond.

DAVE H: Assuming a date of writing around 42 CE, didn't Gaius (Caligula)
only recently (winter 39CE-April 41 CE) make his attempt to erect his statue
(er, I mean a statue of - eh - "Zeus") in the temple in Jerusalem, by force
"if necessary"? Perhaps, if "Jews" is taken to mean "Judeans", that might be
interpreted, somehow, as "getting what they (Judeans) deserve."

BRUCE: Trouble with that is that it is prospective. And "prospective" is
exactly how it is treated in Mk 13, which seems to me to be an imminency
document of that period. A threatened event of which advance warning had
been given, so that the faithful had time to formulate a reaction to it.

The other trouble with the Caligula profanation it is that it never
happened. The 1Th 2:16b writer, to the contrary, is clearly referring (and I
can now cite the saner part of Lightfoot's comment in support) not to some
prophetically envisaged event, but to one that he and his audience know has
already taken place, and are interpreting as deserved revenge.

DAVE H: On the other hand, it is easier to understand this as an anachronism
referring to the defeat of Jewish rebels in the war of 66-70+ CE.

BRUCE: Much.

DAVE H: The collection of Pauline letters and their eventual publication as
a definitive corpus is likely a more complex affair than is often assumed.
If the letters were collected over time and copied and passed around, as
most folks assume, we should expect quite a bit more diversity of book order
in the mss than we do find. Keep to mind David Trobisch's proposal for a
"canonical edition" of the Pauline corpus. I don't like the choice of phrase
("canonical" is I believe a technical term, not a faith statement, if I
understand him correctly). I think he is taking up an idea first proposed by
Johann Salomo Semler, who Schweitzer says was "the first to point out that
we do not possess the Pauline Epistles in their original form, but only in
the form in which they were read in the churches. The canonical Epistle is
therefore not, as a matter of a priori certainty, identical with the
historical letter." (_Paul & His Interpreters_ pg 6). Then this passage can
be understood as an introjection of the publisher/editor.

BRUCE: I don't think we need to get into details of how the Corpus Paulinum
was assembled, or what lesser process it may have been preceded by. Whatever
public process we envision, it seems likely to incur manuscript variation,
and manuscript variation is not found in this passage. If it was added by
the collector of the, or some, Pauline letters, necessarily after 70, and
long enough after it that the obvious anachronism might have become
functionally muted, then we still have a scenario which would explain the
lack of manuscript variants.

Let me end by noting that the theory (1) that the collector of this and
perhaps other Pauline letters made this upgrade, is functionally equivalent
to the theory (2) that the continuing possessors of 1Th at Thessalonica made
it. On present evidence, either action must follow 70, and most desirably
(pending that ever possible papyrus find) should precede the public copying
of the letter.

DAVE H: But as illustrative as it is, isn't this thread beginning to deviate
from the purpose of this list?

BRUCE: I rely on allegorical interpretation. This 1Th discussion, as I see
it, is merely a parable, a statement in other terms, of how one might go
about judging a possible interpolation in, say, Luke or another licit text.
A participative methodological sermonette. If at some point the list
proprietors feel that the allegory is wearing too thin for their comfort,
they will presumably so inform us.

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG
In Belated Response To: Chuck Jones
On: The 1Th 2:15-16 Interpolation Possibility
From: Bruce

One more thing on my screen to tidy up, before the weekend gets entirely
away from me. It concerns a methodologically general and thus presumably
licit matter: the point at which an interpolation is added to a text. A
reminder of the issue here discussed: I have held that not all
interpolations are made by evil scribes in later ages; they may also be made
(as self-interpolations) by authors, or by legitimate text proprietors,
simply to improve the text in their eyes, before it goes public and is
copied for a wider readership.

CHUCK:  Separately, the reason interpolations like the one in I Thess. are
hypothesized is that the content of the passages doesn't make sense for that
author at that place and time.  The I Thess verses, it is said, betray later
knowledge of the fate of the Jewish people.  By definition, this change
would have been made after some period of time, not when one copy existed.

BRUCE: Non sequitur. I don't find any alternative to the idea that 1Th 2:16b
shows a knowledge of what can only be the Temple destruction of 70.
Therefore, an interpolation is indicated, and it must have been made after
Paul's death, unless someone has a whole new theory of Paul's death. But it
does not follow that "after some period of time" necessarily takes us into
the zone where "more than one copy existed." Manuscript variation, scribal
interference, is not the only available model.

Here is a sample of the other model. I have recently been editing some of my
and Taeko's papers for publication in the year 2008. Some of them go back to
1995, before our book The Original Analects had come out. While preserving
the general historical stance of those papers, we have thought it right and
helpful to include occasional references to our subsequent work; otherwise
one is functioning like a museum curator. Hence several footnotes along the
lines of "see now also [name of later publication]." All some future editor,
say someone at Brill gathering the best Sinological work of the past several
years, has to do is to move those notes into the text, and strike the adverb
"now," and our self-interpolations (still visible as such, given their
marginal position) become *integrated* interpolations, and the document for
the first time becomes genuinely anachronistic.

I generally suspect and disrecommend modern parallels; our literary culture
is too different. But I nevertheless submit this one as a verifiable case of
the kind of thing I think is perfectly possible to have happened with any
authority text possessed by a 1c Christian group, whether it was received
from an Apostle or composed by the group's own leader. One tries to keep
these things reasonably fresh, current, and responsive to present need and
interest. Just so, I venture for the last time to suggest, might the
resident preacher of the Thessalonians have dealt with the genuine Pauline
holograph in his care.

Respectfully submitted,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

To: Synoptic
Cc: GPG; WSW
On: Literary Integrity as a Methodological Topos
From: Bruce

PRINCIPLE

Just suppose, for a moment, that we *really* wanted to figure out some text
problem, how would we proceed? As I tried to suggest at the beginning of
this thread (which had its root, as I recall, in certain perfectly OK
Synoptical directionality determinations), it is good to examine details,
but it is questionable to examine one detail and then stop. The perils of
doing so are beautifully illustrated in the recent UBS reinstating (see the
Metzger commentary, ad loc) of what had earlier been accepted as a group of
"Western Non" interpolations in Luke. Judged one by one, with their
magnificent manuscript support, these liturgically consequential passages
only too readily infiltrate their way singly into the text. It is when they
are considered as a group that they arouse due suspicion. That is the
general methodological principle.

We should then consider groups, and not merely specimens, if we hope to get
the answers right, to any text question, including the Synoptic, which comes
under our notice.

PARABLE

As an allegorical parable, I will briefly consider one way in which one
might rationally proceed in the recently discussed case of 1 Thessalonians.
For a start, 1Th can hardly be validly considered apart from the case of
2Th. If, for example, we are disposed to envision Paul as the author of 1Th
(as everybody so far has done), we need at some point,before venturing very
far in that direction, to assure ourselves by evaluating de novo its
credentials as a Pauline product.

One issue that comes up repeatedly in Pauline Epistle discussions is the
question of whether we are dealing with one text or with a conflation of
several texts. These questions are disturbing to many, and thus arises a
theory which might be summarized in this way: There are evil people who
delight to unsettle the faithful by calling into question the canonical
texts. They operate with special outrageousness on the Pauline Epistles.

LITERARY INTEGRITY

Does such a gang of Pauline Vandals exist? If so, they have certainly gone
about their work of sowing doubt as to literary integrity in a very strange
way. Consider, with the help of Udo Schnelle (History and Theology of the
New Testament Writings; 1994; tr 1998), the following composite picture of
his comments sv "Literary Integrity:"

     Generally Accepted as Pauline:
1 Thessalonians: Disputed
1 Corinthians: Disputed
2 Corinthians: Disputed
Galatians: Undisputed; interpolation suggested
Romans: Disputed
Philippians: Disputed
Philemon: Undisputed

     Widely Doubted as Pauline:
Colossians: Undisputed
Ephesians: Undisputed
2 Thessalonians: Undisputed
1 Timothy: Undisputed
2 Timothy: Undisputed
Titus: Undisputed

     Not Internally Claimed as Pauline:
Hebrews: Epistolary Conclusion Suspected

PATTERN

Does anyone see a pattern here? I do. It is that (1) every generally
accepted Pauline letter *to a church* (the individual letter to Philemon is
obviously in a different category), save one, namely the very early
Galatians, is suspected by careful modern readers of being conflated or
otherwise doctored, and (2) every generally doubted Pauline letter *to a
church* (Hebrews is in a somewhat different category, since no church
community is implied) is NOT so suspected.

I think this will to some degree support my previous "house text" scenario,
where the proprietors of genuine letters received from Paul have conflated
them and/or interpolated them for reasons of their own, reasons which,
whatever their nature, seem on the whole not to apply to what are called the
Deuteropaulines: texts which according to this data set are more likely to
be one-time literary productions than authority texts protected, and
sometimes fed, over a perhaps considerable time, in the bosom of a recipient
community.

It is further notable, though not visible in the above list, that every
supposed Epistle which is seen to be closely modeled on ANOTHER Epistle is
itself in the Deutero class (Ephesians on Colossians; 2 Thess on 1 Thess).
Whether these authors took as their models a real or a dubious Pauline
letter, they seem to have used that letter as a template for what a Pauline
epistle ought to look like. Their productions were intended not merely to
instruct the churches of their day, but to pass as *Pauline* instructions
for those churches.

IMPORT

What does this do for our subsequent closer scrutiny of 1Th?

For one thing, it tends to orient us in a landscape of textual probability,
where the house text scenario (or something functionally equivalent to it)
looms as likely to be relevant to 1Th, at the same time as it tends to
support the idea of Pauline authorship of 1Th.

If on the one hand we do not have wiggle room in reattributing 1Th, and the
above investigation tends to confirm previous majority opinion in denying us
that room, and if on the other hand we have available the "house text" or
"closely held text" scenario, as from the above investigation seems to be
the case, then passages suspect as interpolations in 1Th which at the same
time do not show up in manuscript variants and are thus likely to be
prepublic actions, have a strongly indicated solution.

I have previously indicated what I think that solution is, and will not here
repeat myself. I only note that the above considerations tend to point,
independently, in the same direction.

ALSO

We can additionally use 2Th as a check on when a given segment of 1Th
entered that document. 2Th, as noted above, is closely modeled on 1Th.
Schnelle admirably gives us a map of this:

         Prescript
1Th 1:1        /        2Th 1:1-2
         1st Thanksgiving
1Th 1:2-3            2Th 1:3
1Th 1:6-7            2Th 1:4
1Th 1, 2, 3, 4      2Th 1:11 (extracting from 1Th)
         2nd Thanksgiving
1Th 2:13            2Th 2:13
         Transition to Parenesis
1Th 3:11, 13      2Th 2:16, 17
         Requests and Admonitions
1Th 4:1             2Th 3:1
1Th 4:1             2Th 3:6
1Th 4:10-12     2Th 3:10-12
         The Disorderly in the Congregation
1Th 5:14          2Th 3:6, 7, 11
         Conclusion
1Th 5:23          2Th 3:16
1Th 5:28          2Th 3:18

This list of close parallels does not yield a 2Th counterpart to the
disputed 1Th 2:15-16. It might however be worth scrutinizing 2Th 2:14-15,
lying between passages which DO have 1Th counterparts, the former of which
borders directly on our doubtful 1Th passage. Nothing in 2Th remotely
suggests the agitation and hostility present in 1Th 2:15-16. They content
themselves with serene assurances about "good hope through grace."

This directly proves nothing, though for a start it perhaps usefully *fails*
to prove that for the author of the spurious 2Th, the passage in question
already existed in his model text of 1Th, at least not in a directly
corresponding position.

BUT

. . .  we need not stop there. There are also NONcorresponding positions in
1Th. We might thus comb through 2Th (hey, it's not that long) for *any* sign
of a disaster justly befallen the Jews, whether in a position corresponding
to that of 1Th 2:15-16 or elsewhere. Other reports are welcome, but I don't
myself find any such suggestions.

What I do find is that in 2Th 1:4 there is a mention of the troubles
besetting the church at Thessalonica: "Therefore we ourselves boast of you
in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith *in all your
persecutions and in the afflictions which you are enduring.*"

In the Schnelle parallel 1Th 1:6-7 (see chart above), the faith of the
Thessalonians is praised, but their persecutions do not appear. I suspect
that we may have here a transferred and generalized mention of the topic
taken up in the prototype text at 1Th 2:14 ("For you suffered the same
things from your countrymen"). How about the fate of those who oppose the
Gospel, the subject of the problematic 1Th 2:16b? Again, I think we find a
transfer of it, and indeed a transformation of it, in the immediately
following passage, 2Th 1:5-9:

"This is evidence of the righteous judgement of God, that you may be made
worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering - [6] since indeed
God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, [7] and to
grant rest with us to you who are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus is revealed
from Heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, [8] inflicting vengeance
upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the Gospel of
our Lord Jesus. [9] They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction
and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his
might."

CONCLUSION

On this understanding, the mapping of 2Th on 1Th, allowing a certain amount
of transmuting of worldly punishment into much more permanent and terrible
heavenly punishment, is a good deal more intimate than Schnelle's chart,
however initially useful, would suggest. Might not just this change,
replacing a worn-out and now past earthly event, whose news value and thus
persuasion potential had faded, with a safely future, and more impressively
complete, sort of punishment, have been one possible item on the agenda of
the inventor of 2Th? Might it not, in his eyes, have rejuvenated the
slightly stale invective of 1Th?

ENVOI

Paul in 1Th, and somebody else much more strenuously in 2Th, expects the
faithful to labor. If your teenaged son is reprehensibly idle so far this
weekend, set him to work out a better 1/2Th chart than that of Schnelle, and
share it with the rest of us on Monday.

For that matter, if your teenaged daughter is mooning around the house with
no very strong purpose in view, assign her and up to four of her friends to
research the question, never yet asked in the history of metaSynoptic
inquiry, "Why not Galatians?"

Respectfully suggested,

Bruce

E Bruce Brooks
Warring States Project
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/wsp

Copyright © 2008 by E Bruce Brooks