target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_657229b5-0722-52ab-9b1f-32dc719620fd">49. It should go without saying that Paul used the rich imagery of the identity of Israel (beloved, chosen, etc.) to describe these Thessalonian Gentile believers; see above 12–13.
50. The Greek word adelphos (brother) appears almost twenty times in this one short letter (1:4; 2:1, 9, 14, 17; 2:14, 17; 3:2, 7; 4:1, 6, 10 [x2], 13; 5:1, 4, 12, 14, 25–27). Compare this to Galatians where adelphos appears only four times (Gal 5:11, 13; 6:1, 18, 21, 23).
51. Note how Joseph Hellerman explains that in the Roman world the sibling relationship was the strongest relationship in existence, even stronger than husband-wife or parent-child. Hellerman argues that one entailment of making this theological siblingship association would be that fellow believers would not fight for honor against each other, because siblings do not compete with each other for honor (see Hellerman 2009: 15–25).
52. Beattie 2005: 118.
53. On the motherly image of Paul in his letters, see Gaventa 2007: 3–78; specifically on 1 Thessalonians 2:7, see McNeel 2014: 123–74.
54. See Collins 2008: 18–19; cf. Burke 2003: 135.
55. See Banks 1994: 47–57.
56. See Gupta 2010: 40–42.
57. See Psalm 77.
58. See Goheen 2011: 193: “The lives of the people of Israel look backward to creation; they embody God’s original creational design for the whole of human life. Their lives look forward to the consummation: they are a sign of the goal to which God is taking redemptive history. . . . Their lives are to face outward to the nations; they are to be a contrast community, leading lives that differ from those of the peoples around them. Israel is to challenge the cultural idolatry of the surrounding nations while embracing the cultural gifts God has given it.” This is a nice vision of the fullness of what it meant for the people to be “holy” as a covenantal obligation.
59. Thompson 2011: 72; see also Harrington 2001: 197.
60. See Gupta 2010: 130–32, cf. 155–71.
61. See Krentz 2003: 344–83.
62. On the meaning of pistis in 1 Thessalonians, see above 10–13.
63. Collins 1996: 96.
64. deSilva 2001: 83.
65. Some scholars doubt that Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. Here we operate under the assumption that Paul did write 2 Thessalonians, and a discussion of authorship issues appears at the end of the introduction under the title: “Who Wrote 2 Thessalonians?” (pp. 30–37).
66. Most scholars who hold that Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians argue that the second letter must have been written not long after the first; it must have been written before Paul’s visit narrated in Acts 20; see Morris 1975: 30.
67. deSilva 2001: 543.
68. See Marshall 1984: 23; Fee 2009: 241.
69. Brown 1997: 590.
70. John Barclay points to the years 51–52, according to Tacitus, as “particularly ill omened, with prodigies such as repeated earthquakes and a famine.” This may have led the Thessalonians to believe that the Day of the Lord had dawned. But Barclay adds this caveat: “it is not necessary to rely on this precarious, though tantalizing, connection. A fevered apocalyptic imagination can interpret almost any unusual event as an eschatological moment, and divine wrath can explain many types of calamities.” See Barclay 1993: 527–28.
71. See Carter 2010: 282–99, esp. 292–93.
72. See Johnson 1999: 289; also Krentz 1991: 54.
73. Gorman 2011: 138–39.
74. Bassler 1991: 71–85; see also Swartley; Gorman 2015: 142–211.
75. Again, see especially Gorman 2015: 142–211.
76. In 1798, J. E. C. Schmidt argued that, while 2 Thessalonians was probably written by Paul, the section 2:1–12 was a later insertion into the text by a separate writer. In 1903, W. Wrede made a more comprehensive case for 2 Thessalonians being pseudonymous; for an insightful, though brief, discussion of the history of scholarship on the authorship of 2 Thessalonians, see Thiselton 2011: 11–15.
77. It is sometimes noted that 2 Thessalonians includes vocabulary unusual for Paul, but this kind of argument has largely been debunked for two reasons; firstly, each extant letter of Paul contains its own set of distinctive vocabulary based on the specific subjects of that letter in its context; second, we are simply dealing with too small of a sample of Paul’s writings to decide what kind of words count as “unpauline.” Even those who are certain that Paul did not write 2 Thessalonians admit that the study of the vocabulary of this text contributes little to the debate; see Krentz 2009: 444; Menken 1994: 32: “There is a more or less general agreement that, from the point of vocabulary, 2 Thessalonians is no less Pauline than the recognized letters.”
78. So Menken 1994: “This literary dependence is the decisive argument against Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians” (40); see also Boring 2015: 212.
79. Krentz 1992: 6.518.
80. The question is raised by Raymond Brown, 1997: 592. Other scholars who point to this phenomenon as an indicator of pseudonymous dependence include Richard 1995: 21; Esler 2001: 1213.
81. So Bailey reasons: “it is impossible
