Presenting 1 Thessalonians to the modern world

Abstract

Studies of Paul and the Pauline Writings continue to take first place in New Testament scholarship and with good reason. Paul challenges our generation as he did his own to renewed appreciation of the truth of the Gospel, provoking leading exponents of Christianity to fresh insights into what it means to be Christian and to be Church. In this work, attention is focused on Paul's first Letter to the Thessalonians for it is the first extant Christian writing. We single out three areas for our study: the background to the Letter itself, the theme of the Parousia that determines Paul's attention throughout the writing, and ethical issues in 1 Th 4, 1-12, that provide an early sample of Christian moral teachings.