direction of shifting the centre of gravity from fears about the dead to extravagant ideas entertained by the living. Hence, for one thing, the general similarity of structure and atmosphere in both epistles, and, upon the other hand, the sharper emphasis in the second upon Paul’s authority.
Both features have raised widespread suspicion and elicited a variety of reconstructions of the epistle’s date and object (cf. His- torical New Testament, 142-146). The common ground of all such theories is the postulate that 2 Thess. is the work of a later Paulinist, during the age of Nero or of Trajan, who has employed 1 Thess. in order to produce a restatement of early Christian eschatology, under the aegis of the apostle, or to claim Paul’s sanction for an onslaught upon Gnostic views. This is a fair hypothesis, which at first sight seems to account adequately for several of the variations and resem- blances between the two writings. When it is worked out in detail, however, it becomes rather less convincing. Some chastening facts emerge. Why, e.g., should such a writer fix on 1 Thess., and labori- ously work on it? Then (i.) one serious preliminary obstacle is that while pseudonymous epistles addressed ostensibly to individuals (e.g., the pastorals) or to Christendom in general (e.g., 2 Peter) are intelligible enough, the issue of such an epistle, addressed to a definite church which had already a genuine letter of the apostle, involves very serious difficulties. These are not eased by the light- hearted explanation (so Schmiedel and Wrede?) that the epistle was really meant not for Thessalonica at all, but for some other community ! This is to buttress one hypothesis by another. Furthermore (ii.) the style and vocabulary offer no decisive proof of a post-Pauline origin. Of the ἅπαξ εὑρημένα, which are comparatively few, one or two, like ἀποστασία (ii. 3), δίκη (= punishment, 1. 9, cf. Sap. xviii. 11, etc. Jude 7), ἐνδοξάζομαι (1. 10, 12), ἐγκαυχᾶσθαι (1. 4 Pss.), τίνω (1. 9), περιεργάζομαι (iii. 2, cf, Sir. iii, 29), σέβασμα (ii. 4, cf. Sap. xiv. 20), and σημειοῦσθαι (1, 14), may be fairly ascribed to the influence of the LXX? upon
1 In pp. 38 f. of his able pamphlet on Die Echtheit des zweiten Th. (1903). Wrede knocks on the head (pp. 96 f.) the earlier theories (best represented by Schmiedel) which dated the epistle in the seventh decade of the first century, but he does not succeed better than Holtzmann or Hollmann in presenting any very satisfactory theory of its origin ο. too a.D. His essay is carefully reviewed by Wernle (Gétt. Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1905, 347 f.), who adheres to the Pauline authorship, as does Clemen (Paulus, i., pp. 115-122). Kldépper’s article in defence of the epistle against the older attacks (Theol. Studien u. Skizzen aus Ostpreussen, 1889, Viii., pp. 73-140) is almost as difficult to read as it is to refute.
2 The absence of any explicit quotation from the LXX only throws into relief the extent to which, especially in i. 5 f., O.T. language and ideas have been woven into the tissue of the epistle (Acts xvii. 2, 3, ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν).