The Pulpit Commentary — Galatians — Section 26

"Paul and Silvanus and Timothem. 0 , We Spall, however, ,be better prepared (or entering into the spirit of what St. Paul writes in 1. Thess. ii. 6, 6 when we he.ve t.aken note of certain particulars in the _account which St. Luke gives us in the Acts (xvii.) of the.t very sojourn at Thessalonica which . the apo~tle,is there speaking of, , -" It appears from St. Luke's narrative that, e.lthough St. Paul cert:µnly throughout that great second missionary expedition -OCCUpied the position of chief and director am:on<> his fellow-travellers, being in fact named alone as e.geut, both, as 1i1,lready.mentioned: at its commencement and at its close .(Acts ,xviii. 7-22) when Silas is no longer men~ tioned-very conceivably, during St. Paul's eighteen months' sojourn e.t Corinth ·silae had gone elsewhere-yet in respect to that earlier part of the time which was e~nt in Macedonia. and Achaia, and which we are now concerned with, Silas appears· ver.y prominent in the story, both as sharing in the ill treatment .which St: Paul underwent at Philippi (Acts xvi.19-4:0), and also as being closely at his sii;le at Thessalonica,'both in evangelistic labours as indicated by the wording of the statement, "consorted with Paul and Silas," in Acts xvii. 4:, and in exposure to the danger of suffering further pera aecution (ibid., vers. 5-10). 1 However it me.y have been elsewhere, here in Macedonia, so closely were Paul aud Silas associated with each other, both in doing and in sufferfog,,that the .ll'hessaloniau converts ,must inevitably have entertained sentiments towards thern ofequal or almost equal reverence and love, regarding both the one and the other .of them as alike·their t.en.der, faithful, self-denying foster-fathers in the faith,.e.nd. feeling assured that both: would have been alike well-pleased to impart to them, not the gospel of God only:; but also their own souls, so dear had they been to those two fathers of theirs in the gospel l There is no jnst gronnd for supposing the.t Luke regarded' the stay at Thessaloni~' e.i\ bounded by that period of three·~eekB during·which the "apostles" sought to win the .Jews to the faith. The narrative may be construed as taking at the commencement of ver. 5 a fresh departure, prior to whioh there is no difficnlty in our supposing even· a con• ■idera.bleinterva.l to have elapsed since the last of those three se.bbaths which it has spoken of. In comparing the history with the Epistles, we cannot but be struok by the foot that the history me.kes WI mention of e.ny Gentiles being converted. at Thessalonica except such •a~ were a.lree.dy connected with the synagogue as ,u{Joµ.•1101 dEM.71/lu, whilst· the First ·Epistle describes those whom it addresses as having, in consequenee of the " entering in " of the writer and his companions," turned unto God from id,;,Is" (1 These; i.,9).. But the comparison brings out another fe.ct, which ene.bles us to explain the former. The First Epistle makes-the. reader feel that the writer and his companions bad been a much longer time in intercourse "With the Thesse.loriie.n converts than the history tells us of, and this impre8Sioµ is con•. finned by the circnmstance mentioned in the Epistle to the Philippians (iv. 17), that, while St. Pe.ul we.s at Thesse.lonica, the Philippians had on two severe.I occasions "sent unto his need," the two towns being about one hundred miles apart. St. Luke's narrative, fron;i. 110me canee or other, takes np only two detached portions of the whole sojourn-the first portion relating to the very partial nooepte.nce of the gospel by the synagogue at its co~·~ mencement; the other, which in its substance links itself on to the former, to its abrupt temrine.tion throngh the hostile practices of those Jews who did· not ·believe. As this fierce ontbnrst of Jewish hostility was dictated by anti-Hellenio bigotry (1 Thess. ii. 15·, ·l6X (l!ld is best accounted for by the two "aposUes" having devoted themselves •so mainly 'e.nd· so successfully to the uncircnmcision, we thus gain further corroboro.tivo evidence out of St. Luke's own narrative for a prolonged intenal .devoted to the evangellzation of the 'Gentiles in Thessalonica. The narrative of the history is incomplete, as it often proves to be; but it is not antaqoniBtic to the Epletle.  DISSE,RTA'rION I. ixxix