tory. He was suffering at Corinth from persistent Jewish attempts to wreck the Christian propaganda, and he flashes out in these stern sentences of anger. Later on (Rom. ix.-xi.) he took a kinder and more hopeful view, though even this did not represent his final outlook on the prospects of Judaism. Consequently, it is arbitrary to suspect vv. 14 (15)-16 asa later interpolation, written after 70 Α.Ρ. (cf. the present writer’s Hist. New Testa- ment, pp. 625, 626). But the closing sen- tence of ver. 16 has all the appearance of a marginal gloss, written after the tragic days of the siege in 70 A.D. (so e.g., Spitta, Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, i. 128, 129, Schmiedel, Teichmann, die Paul. Vorstellungen von Auferstehung u. Gericht, 83, Drummond, etc.). The Jews, no doubt, had recently suffered, and were suffering, as a nation in a way which might seem to Paul, in a moment of vehement feeling, a clear proof of con- dign punishment (so e.g., Schmidt, 86- go). But neither the edict of Claudius nor the bloody feuds in Palestine quite bear out the language of this verse. And ὀργή is surely more than judicial har- dening (cf. Dante’s Paradiso, vi. 88-93) ; its eschatological significance points to a more definite interpretation. “Ver. 17-CHAPTER III. Ver. 13. apologia pro absentia sud.
Ver. 17. πρὸς κ. ὥ., aS we both ex- pected, but, as it turned out, for much longer. προσ. ov κ., “not where 1.
Paul’s
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m Win. ὃ 5, πον ὑμῶν ἰδεῖν ἐν πολλῇ ἐπιθυμίᾳ.
7, ᾱ, ο΄. on ii. 8. n = - For ε [ο ς ~ my part"; ἡμᾶς ὃ Σατανᾶς. on ab- sence of ε, 6]. 3 “- A , ς i , Blass, ἐν τῇ αὐτοῦ παρουσίᾳ; 20. ὑμεῖς γάρ ἐστε § 77, 12. ῃ ο - Μοτεχᾶβα. than once” (Phil. iv. 16). p Cf. Gal. ν. 7; Rom. xv. 22. (LXX). s Blass, ὃ 77, 11. 8, d. v 2 Cor. viii. 23, cf. 2 Cor. i. 14.
breathe; but where I love, I live’? (South- well, the Elizabethan Jesuit poet, echo- ing Augustine’s remark that the soul lives where it loves, not where it ex- ists); cf. Eurip., Jon, 251. The next paragraph, ji. 17-iii. 13, starts from a fresh imputation against the apostles’ honour. Paul, it was more than hinted by calumniators at Thessalonica, had left his converts in the lurch (cf. 18) ; with him, out of sight was out of mind; fresh scenes and new interests in the South kad supplanted them in his affec- tions, and his failure to return was inter- preted as a fickle indifference to their concerns, The reply is three-fold. (a) Paul’s continued absence had been un- avoidable (17 f.); he had often tried to get back. In proof of this anxiety (δ) he had spared Timothy from his side for a visit to them (iii. 1-5), and (ο) Timothy’s report, he adds (iii. 6 f.) had relieved a hearty concern on his part for their wel- fare; he thus lets them see how much they were to him, and still prays for a chance of re-visiting them (11). He was not to blame for the separation; and, so far from blunting his affection, it had only whetted (περισσοτέρως) his eager- ness to get back.
Ver. 18. ‘We did crave to reach you,” διότι ( = because) not being τε- quired with the English stress on did. The whole verse is parenthetical, syn- tactically.— kat... Σατανᾶς. The mysterious obstacle, which Paul traced back to the ultimate malice of Satan, may have been either (a) an illness (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 7, so Simon, die Psycho- logie des Apostels Paulus, 63, 64). (δ) local troubles, (c) the exigencies of his mission at the time being (Grotius), or (4) a move on the part of the Thessalonian poli- tarchs who may have bound over Jason and other leading Christians to keep the peace by pledging themselves to prevent Paul’s return (Ramsay’s St. Paul the Traveller, 230 f., Woodhouse, E. Bi., 5047, Findlay). Early Christian thought re-