Conference Report and a New Reading of 1 Thess 2.16?

My first experience of the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies was an enjoyable one. I didn't make it to all the presentations I had hoped to, but I was satisfied with the pace I set for myself. There were many excellent presentations; the two most obvious were Terrence Donaldson's Presidential Address on the topic of "Supersessionism in Early Christianity" and Amy-Jill Levine's guest lecture, "Resurrecting Late Judaism: Archaeology, Analysis, and Apologetic."

I'm not sure how my own presentation went (well, I hope). I had to run out fairly quickly after our session, since I had a plane to catch. I spent an inordinate amount of time continuing to revise my paper even at the conference, and the night before I was to present a colleague with whom I was rooming made some excellent suggestions for how to improve my introduction (thanks Ralph!). So here's the greatly improved introduction. Following it, I will highlight two issues that came up in question time. I'm very interested in your own view of the second of these issues, so please read on!

1 Thess 2.14-16 contains Paul’s most severe and sustained polemic against the Jewish people. But that Paul is capable of losing his cool—sometimes exceeding the bounds of polite discourse—will come as no surprise to those who have read his letter to the Galatians. But whereas in Galatians we know exactly what is at stake, the present invective appears to emerge out of thin air. We know that his Thessalonian converts have suffered, and that he is concerned for their welfare. But if, as I will argue, Paul lays direct responsibility for their suffering at the feet of Gentiles, not Jews, his attack against the Jews appears all the more gratuitous and mystifying. Strikingly, however, even though Paul vilifies the Jews, he begins this text with a statement to the effect that the Thessalonians, in their suffering, have become imitators of the Judean churches. So, the question I will probe here is “What social circumstances and theological convictions lie behind the negative polemic against the Jews, on the one hand, and the model Judean churches, on the other?”

Scholars explain Paul’s polemic against the Jews in primarily one of two ways. On the hand some believe that Paul must have credited the Jews of Thessalonica with an active role in instigating or carrying out the persecution of his converts. Here we could point to Rainer Riesner and Charles Wanamaker. Others argue that the polemic has little or nothing to do with the suffering of the Thessalonian converts or the Jews of Thessalonica. Markus Bockmuehl, for instance, points to verse 14 and argues that the polemic arises from the bitter situation of churches in Judea; one could also point to Paul’s conflicts with Jews in general and not necessarily in Thessalonica. I would suggest, however, that we cannot separate Paul’s invective against the Jews from the situation of his addressees, and yet nor can we say that their suffering was the result of direct persecution on the part of Jews. Instead, we must focus on the ramifications of Jewish rejection of the Pauline mission in Thessalonica. Paul sees an indirect connection between the suffering of his address and their rejection by the Jews. This contributed to the vulnerability and isolation of Paul’s converts, leaving both Paul and them in something of a social and theological predicament, which I aim to describe. Understanding the dynamics of this situation will greatly illuminate the text of 1 Thess. 2.14-16. I begin by putting a few questions to the text itself, proceed with a reconstruction of the social realities of the Thessalonian church, and, finally, allow this reading to inform the interpretation of 1 Thess. 2.14-16.

Afterward I was challenged on two issues. One gentleman was rather distressed that I made it through the whole presentation without mentioning that many have regarded this text as an interpolation. And that is true. That part was in the 8 pages I had to cut out. But I could have (and perhaps should have) included it in the introduction above, where it would have followed in the second paragraph as a third option to deal with Paul's polemic: erase it. There is of course no external evidence for this view and a key peg of the argument, that v. 16 refers to 70 CE, is in no way a necessary reading of the text.

But this leads to a second question I was asked. What if the second half of verse 16 refers to Gentiles, not Jews? Then the argument from v. 16 against the text's authenticity vanishes nearly as quickly as the text itself had under the interpolation theory. Here's the whole verse:

"[The Jews] displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved (ἵνα σωθῶσιν). Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins (εἰς τὸ ἀναπληρῶσαι αὐτῶν τὰς ἁμαρτίας πάντοτε.); but God's wrath has overtaken them (αὐτοὺς) at last." (NRSV)

The one who put this question forward made the case that "their sins" and God's wrath overtaking "them" referred not to the Jews but to the Gentiles, the nearest possible antecedent (cf. "so that they may be saved"). The logic then is that since the Jews hinder the Gentile mission the result is that the Gentiles are constantly filling up the measure of their sins and become the objects of God's wrath.

I had never thought of this before. I can't see that grammar can resolve the issue either way, for Jews or Gentiles as the antecedents of "them". What inclines me toward the reading that seems nearly universal (but not therefore true, of course) is that the text from the end of verse 14 until 16 has been about what Paul considers the transgressions of his fellow-countrymen. It even has the rhythm of a piling up of transgressions: "they did both this and that, and did this, and they do this and they do that, by doing this, and so the result is this".

What do you think?