When we approach the Bible, many of us bring with us all sorts of things. We bring what we learned as kids, what we learned in church (if we attended), what we’ve picked up from culture. We bring with us the stories we’ve heard and the things we know (and the things we think we know). And when we read certain books in the Bible, we bring with us what we know from other books of the Bible. It’s natural that we do this, but many of us do it without being aware that we’re doing it and then we unintentionally read things into the text that might not be there. It doesn’t help that some theologians and scholars also do this; cross referencing what is mentioned in one book with something mentioned in another without interrogating whether those two things are (or should be) connected. 

What happens if we approach a text (in this case a book of the Bible) attempting to not bring any of the other stuff with us? It might be impossible to totally leave behind all of the things we carry with us, but let’s at least try to pay attention to what we’re bringing to the conversation. 

Today we’re starting a deep dive into 1 Thessalonians. Many scholars believe this is the earliest written text that went on to be included in the Christian Scripture canon. So in this letter, we see the earliest Christian theology and tradition. 

This is before the Gospels, before anyone has written down a story of Jesus. We have this snapshot in time, of a tradition forming. A mostly still oral tradition shared by people who had known and walked with Jesus was spreading through various cities and towns. 

Except Paul didn’t know and walk with Jesus while he was alive. (Just a note here, already we’re bringing in information from other sources. See how hard it is to not do this?)

We have this half conversation, about a basically unknown community, naming people we can only know by other Newer Testament texts that came later (and whose origins we are unsure of), beginning to articulate some really new theology that would have been a big break both from the pagan culture surrounding this town and from the Jewish theology and culture that some of these folks might have come out of. 

What is this exercise about? 

This isn’t necessarily about trying to reclaim some kind of “pure” Christianity that hasn’t been corrupted yet (because honestly that doesn’t really exist. From what we can tell, even from the very beginning, there were different interpretations of what the life and death of Jesus meant and what those who followed him were being called to do). Instead this gives us a glimpse into a community and a theology in process. A real time working out of what things meant. 

As we move through this letter, we’ll see places where Paul seems to correct things he said earlier, or needs to shift his thinking and teaching because of what has happened that maybe he didn’t expect. We’ll also see how this text has been used (and misused) by people trying to make it say things it doesn’t really say (but that serve the motivations and the anxieties of those who use it). 

This series won’t be a commentary, and it’ll be a little different than a sermon. Think a cross between a sermon and an essay; a wrestling out loud with this text bringing in other scholars and thinkers to help us understand this letter and see what it might still have to say to us today. 

Let’s dive into Part one of our series on 1 Thessalonians. 

Most scholars believe this letter was written by Paul around 50 CE (just for comparison, scholars think the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the Gospels, was written around 55). So a little less than 20 years after Jesus’s life and death (but also, almost 20 years since the time of Jesus’s life and death). On the one hand, compared to the long scope of history, 20 years is nothing! But, as we can see from our own time, 20 years is plenty of time for things to be forgotten and for people to attempt to rewrite history.

This text begins (from the Common English Bible):

From Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.

To the Thessalonians’ church that is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace and peace to all of you.

This text is a letter. It’s written to a specific community of people in a specific place. Thesselonica was a city, under the control of Rome, that was located on a bustling trade route. It’s written to a group of Jesus followers. According to Gordon Fee the way Paul addresses this community “indicates that this usage of the Greek word ekklēsia was by now (ca. CE 48) an already established practice among the early followers of Christ.” 

How did that happen? How did this word become commonly used? Looking at this text we don’t know. We just know that it is. 

This introduction also raises some other questions: Who are Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy? 

Now here’s where we find ourselves already on shaky ground. In order to answer that question, the only real place to turn is to other texts in the Bible. But remember, those texts are written after this one! So immediately I start to wonder: were those texts, especially ones that are more narrative in form (like Acts) written independently? Or were they written to try to make all of these other texts coherent and into a narrative? 

The book of Acts gives us one of the only narratives of the early Christian movement in the years directly after Jesus’s death. We get snippets from the other letters in the Christian canon about Paul’s life, but those are tantalizingly brief. Most people combine those snippets with the fuller narrative in Acts in order to paint a picture of who Paul was and what he believed. It’s also how we get any sense of an idea of who some of Paul’s companions (like Silvanus and Timothy) are. 

But here’s the issue: Paul didn’t write the book of Acts. And there were some pretty major disagreements in the early Christian church and some of those disagreements centered around Paul and the things he was teaching. And it might have been that the writer of Acts was trying to say some things about Paul by the way they structured their narrative (plus what they included and what they left out). Not to mention that Acts was written anywhere from 10 years to even 75 years after this letter!! (There is WIDE scholarly disagreement about when Acts was written and a lot of it hinges around HOW people are using Acts to explain other texts, like these letters!) 

I give us this detour because we’re only a couple of lines into the book of 1 Thessalonians and already we’ve raised a lot of issues and many of them come back to how we understand the interplay between the various texts within the Christian canon. If we look ONLY at 1 Thessalonians, all we know at this point is this letter was written to a church in Thessalonica by three people named Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. 

The other interesting thing about this opening is the pairing of “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. What is the purpose of this pairing? How does it differ from the theology of the groups around the church in Thessolonica? What does it tell us about the theology of the developing Christian community? 

To really get into that we have to understand a bit more about who Paul is. We’ll dive into him and his story (and what it can teach us) in part two!

Do you have questions about this project or the book of 1 Thessalonians? I’d love to hear them (and try to answer them) as we go!