The Authenticity of the Second Letter to the Thessalonians

William Wrede

Apr 2017 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this ebook

Scholars continue to debate whether Second Thessalonians was written by Paul or by pseudonym. The position that the letter is a late imitation is largely based on the comparison of the parallel expressions of two epistles to the Thessalonians. There are more words and phrases that are shared between these two letters than there are in any other two New Testament letters. William Wrede's study is the ultimate source of scholarly perception of these parallels. Not only does Wrede locate some exact parallels, he also finds definite words, verses, and related passages that precisely mirror and reflect their counterparts in First Thessalonians. Scholars who conclude that Second Thessalonians is pseudonymous owe much of that conclusion to Wrede's work.

Wrede's order of the Greek parallels has been reproduced with his original annotations in this translation.

About the author

Robert Rhea is a graduate of Davidson College, Union Theological Seminary, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and studied at the University of Marburg with Georg Werner Kuemmel, at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich with Werner Vordtriede, and at the Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultaet of the University of Vienna. At Union Theological Seminary he wrote a thesis entitled The Johannine Son of Man (1990).