θη
= “those who have fallen asleep”’ (Μου, i. 162).
r Cf. Heb.
I5. τοῦτο yao 4
s LXX of r Kings xx. 35, ‘‘ Domini nomine et quasi eo loguente” u ‘by no means” (cf. 1 Cor. vili. 13).
v Sap. vi. 13, etc.
that Paul is repeating words heard in a vision (cf. 2 Cor. xii. 9; so Chryst., Theod., etc., followed by Alford, de Wette, Ellicott, Dods, Limemann, Go- det, Paret: Paulus und Fesus, 53 ἴ., Simon: die Psychologie des Ap. Paulus, τοο, Findlay, Lightfoot, Milligan, Lue- ken). Cf. the discussion in Knowling’s Witness of the Epistles, 408 f., and Feine’s Fesus Christus u. Paulus, 178,179. Later in the century a similar difficulty vexed the pious Jew who wrote Fourth Esdras (v. 41, 42: I said, But lo, O Lord, thou hast made the promise to those who shall be in the end: and what shall they do that have been before us ...? And He said to me, I will liken my judgment to a ving ; as there is no slackness of those who are last, so shall there be no swiftness of those who are first), His theory is that the previous generations of Israel will be as well off as their posterity in the latter days. Further on (xiii. 14 f.) he raises and answers the question whether it was better to die before the last days or to live until they came (the phrase, those that are left, ‘‘ qui relicti sunt,” vil. 28 = Paul’s ot περιλειπόμενοι. His solution (which Steck, in Yakrb. fur prot. Theol., 1883, 509-524, oddly regards as the λόγος κ. of 1 Thess. iv. 15; see Schmidt’s refutation, pp. 107-110) is the opposite of Paul's: those who are left are more blessed than those who have died. If this difficulty was felt in Jewish circles during the first half of the century, it may have- affected those of the Thessa- lonian Christians who had been formerly connected with the synagogue, but the likelihood is that Paul’s language is coloured by his own Jewish training (cf. Charles on Asc. Isa., iv. 15). The mis- understanding of the Thessalonians, which had led to their sorrow and per- plexity, was evidently due to the fact that, for some reason or another, Paul had not mentioned the possibility of any Christians dying before the second ad- vent (so sure was he that all would soon survive it), coupled with the fact that Greeks found it hard to grasp what ex- actly resurrection meant (cf. Acts xvii. 32) for Christians,