This last paragraph should tell you your eisegesis is off the rails. You are comparing things that shouldn't be compared. In Romans Paul is saying nothing more than what the prophets spoke: the Jews have been ba-a-ad and God has punished them, but nevertheless he will stay true to his promise to them, at least to the remnant. 1 Thes 2 is a whole other ballgame. It's a plain rejection of the Jews as a whole, as though the writer isn't a Jew.All true. Two different audiences, two different points. The commonality between the passages though is that God has acted against the Jews due to their unbelief. In 1 Th 2, Jews don't want Gentiles to be spoken to so they won't be saved, so an unnamed wrath has come upon them:The tone of the passages is quite different as is the placement of the narrator's position. Paul puts himself with the Israelites in Romans which makes the general comment explanatory, while the speaker in 1 Thes excludes himself making it a condemnation of all Jews. The purpose of the passage in 1 Thes is a straight attack on the Jews, while Romans is an excuse for them, an elucidation of how the Gentiles fit into Paul's theology and a brief sermon on God's goodness.
1 Th 2: "Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
In Romans, Paul states that God's severity towards the Jews' unbelief has resulted in the 'natural branches' (the Jews) being broken off:
Rom 11:[19] Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in.
[20] Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:
[21] For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.
[22] Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
In Romans, Paul isn't attacking Jews so much as warning the Gentiles to not make the same mistakes as the Jews and so face God's severity. But Paul is clear in Romans that the Jews have faced God's severity by being broken off the tree of salvation, which seems to me to be a reasonable candidate for God's wrath in 1 Th 2.
Your basic interpretation of "the anger has come upon them to the end" is anti-biblical. The promise.... Worse though I think: you are working too hard to ignore the anachronism that the anger Paul refers to - not just a reheat of what the prophets said, but something tangible in a worldly sense -, has already happened.
And doesn't the following raise your hackles?
| "you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews" |
WTF is the writer talking about that the Jews could have done to the Thessalonians and how is it related to what their compatriots did? Did Jewish proselytes harry Paul's little enclave in Thessalonika?
The three issues I've referred to give me the understanding that the passage in 1 Thes 2:14-16 was unlikely to have been Pauline in authorship.
Statistics: Posted by spin — Wed Dec 25, 2024 8:59 am