false messiah will come from you, and his ca:eer will be short-lived at the hands of our Christ.” [othe Christian the prophecy brought an assurance that, while the coldest and darkest hour must precede the dawn, the dawn was sure to come, and to come soon. Thus in both epistles, but particularly in the second, the reader can see the torch of apocalyptic enthusiasm, streaming out with smoke as well as with red flame, which many early Christians employed to light up their path amid the dark providences of the age. Paul is pro- phesying—none the less vividly that he does so ἐκ μέρους.
Attempts have also been made, from various sides, to solve the literary problem of the writing by finding in it (a) either a Pauline nucleus which has been worked over, (b) or a Pauline letter which has either suffered interpolation or (c) incorporated some earlier apocalyptic fragment, possibly of Jewish origin. (a) According to Paul Schmidt (Der erste Thess. nebst einem Excurs iiber den zwetten gleichn. Brief, 1885, pp. 111 f.), a Paulinist in 69 Α.Ρ. edited and expanded a genuine letter = i. 1-4, ii. 1-2a, ii. 13-iii, 18. But, apart from other reasons, the passages assigned to Paul are not free from the very feature which Schmidt considers fatal to the others, vz., similarity to 1 Thess. And the similarities between if. 3-12 and the apo- calypse of John are very slight. The activity assigned to the editor is too restricted; besides, ii. 3-12. is so cardinal a feature of the epistle, that the latter stands or falls with it—so much so that it would be easier, with Hausrath, to view the whole writing as a scaf- folding which rose round the original Pauline nucleus of ii. 1-12. Finally, the literary criteria do not bear out the distinction postu- lated by both theories. (b) The strongly retributive cast, the liturgical swing, and the O.T. colouring, of i. 6-10 have suggested the possibility of interpolation in this passage (McGiffert, E. Bz., 5054, Findlay, p. lvii.), either as a whole or in part. This is at any rate more credible than the older idea that ii. 1-12 embodies a Montanist interpolation (J. E. C. Schmidt, Bibliothek fiir Kritik u. Exegese der N.T., 1801, 385 f.) or ii. 1-9 a piece of Jewish Christian apocalyptic (Michelsen, Theol., Tijdschrift, 1876, 213 f.). Finally (ο) the large amount of common ground between the Jewish and the primitive Christian conceptions of eschatology is enough (see on ii. 5) to invali- date Spitta’s lonely theory (Offenbarung des $oh., 497 f., and Zur Gesch. und Litt. des Urchristentums, i. 139 f.) of a Caligula-apo- calypse, due in part to Timotheus,! in ii. 2-12, or the idea of Pierson
1Cf. Prof. G. G. Findlay’s refutation in Exfos.® ii. 255 f., and Bornemann’s paragraphs (pp. 492, 529 {.).