The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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Irish1975
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

Post by Irish1975 »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:31 am
The problem is not that you see the similarity, and want to make the comparison, but that you don't acknowledge the differences: [A] NT vs. apocrypha, [B] apocalyptic discourse vs. liturgical text, [C] epistle vs. poem, [D] Greco-Roman vs. Greco-Syriac, [E] specific denotation of the Most High vs. general denotation of "the god," etc.
I have added letters to your paragraph in order to facilitate my response. I have dealt with A, albeit briefly (you may freely disagree with how I dealt with it; but I did acknowledge, and attempt to account for, the difference). I have also dealt with D and E, since my use of Eliav's observations actually depends upon these distinctions (especially upon the latter). I have not dealt with B directly, but indirectly my position should be clear enough from the parallels I adduced that nothing prevents apocalyptic texts from containing real references to the temple in Jerusalem and making predictions about its defilement or its destruction or whatnot. I have not dealt, to the best of my memory, with C in any manner whatsoever; is there some relevant observation about epistles and poems that you wish to bring to bear?
Nothing too fancy. Just that, in a poem like Ode 6, the temple image is essential for the sense of the whole thing to work. By contrast, the man of lawlessness could have been depicted in the more generic style of Didache 16, without a reference to seating himself in the temple of God, and the total effect would basically be the same. Sometimes an author will spontaneously grab an image or idea from a dream, or some half-remembered subconscious association. That kind of process seems to me to make no sense regarding Ode 6, but seems plausible for for 2 Thss 2.
Once I began really delving into the various Christian apocalyptic texts and noticing all of the parallels between them, however, I was struck with how often I had to deal with 2 Thessalonians 2. Talking about the world deceiver in Didache 16 brings me face to face with Belial in the Dead Sea scrolls, the Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation, and the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2. Talking about the desecrating effect of the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24 = Mark 13 forces me to consider the desecration of "the temple of the God" in 2 Thessalonians 2. Talking about the influence of the prophet Daniel on Christian apocalyptic scenarios drags in 2 Thessalonians 2, as you yourself have pointed out.
What do you make of the lack of reference to Jesus' (or anyone's) resurrection?
After a while it became clear to me that I could no longer dismiss the temple in 2 Thessalonians 2.3-4 as meaning something different than the temple in Jerusalem. And the offhand nature of the reference, as if the temple is standing there waiting for the man of sin to take his seat in it, honestly sounds to me like it has not yet been destroyed as of the penning of the epistle.
Wild Hypothesis: this apocalyptic prediction was left on the cutting room floor from the pre-70 era. Someone decided to paste it into a Pauline epistle, the purpose of which was perhaps just to get people back to living normal lives. Hence, the discourse against idlers.
I apologize if anything I have said in this thread has rubbed you the wrong way on that score.
Not a problem. It has been an enjoyable debate.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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What do you make of the lack of reference to Jesus' (or anyone's) resurrection?

This wasn't addressed to me, but after taking another look at 2 Thess. 2, doesn't 2:1:2 presuppose resurrection?

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or letter presuming to be from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has already come.
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Irish1975
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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John2 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 4:07 pm
What do you make of the lack of reference to Jesus' (or anyone's) resurrection?
This wasn't addressed to me, but after taking another look at 2 Thess. 2, doesn't 2:1:2 presuppose resurrection?
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or letter presuming to be from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has already come.
Well I don't see it anywhere. As I wrote earlier, the most natural place to mention the saving death and resurrection of JC would have been at 2:13-14:
But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth [εἰς σωτηρίαν ἐν ἁγιασμῷ πνεύματος καὶ πίστει ἀληθείας]. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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Irish1975 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 6:48 pm
John2 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 4:07 pm
What do you make of the lack of reference to Jesus' (or anyone's) resurrection?
This wasn't addressed to me, but after taking another look at 2 Thess. 2, doesn't 2:1:2 presuppose resurrection?
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or letter presuming to be from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has already come.
Well I don't see it anywhere. As I wrote earlier, the most natural place to mention the saving death and resurrection of JC would have been at 2:13-14:
But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth [εἰς σωτηρίαν ἐν ἁγιασμῷ πνεύματος καὶ πίστει ἀληθείας]. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him" seems to require resurrection to me. Without resurrection, how did Jesus get to heaven, and what does it mean to be "gathered together to him," and what does "the Day of the Lord" mean? To me it all seems similar to what Paul says in 1 Thess. 4:14-17 (including the references to "firstfruits" and the "glory of our Lord Jesus Christ"" that believers will "share"):
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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Irish1975 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 2:44 pmWhat do you make of the lack of reference to Jesus' (or anyone's) resurrection?
First, not every summary of eschatological events hit upon every single point of the overall schema. Mark 13 lacks any explicit reference to the resurrection of the dead, too, but the resurrection appears elsewhere in the gospel. Likewise, the description of the end times in Psalms of Solomon 17 has much to say about the Messiah purging the land of the wicked and exalting the righteous, but nothing explicit to say about the resurrection of the dead; and yet 3.11-12 has already made clear that this process was to include a resurrection. 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 is all about the concern of the living on behalf of the dead; of course it is going to talk explicitly about resurrection. 2 Thessalonians 2.1-12, on the other hand, concerns only the living.

Second, I judge John2 to be completely correct: the regathering of Israel generally included the resurrection of the dead in Jewish thought. It was a matter of theodicy: it would be unjust for those who had died in the struggle not to share in the rewards once God had set things right and inaugurated the age to come. The resurrection was probably merely a metaphor precisely for this restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 37.1-14 (notice the explicit portrayal of the regathering in 37.21-22), but later generations (as early as Daniel, at least) began to take the resurrection quite literally, and the dead were to be brought back to life so that they could also be regathered with the living and share of the age to come.

There are so many indications that this is so that I would not be sure even where to begin; nor am I going to debate this particular point at this time, since it would take a lot of time to cover all the relevant ground, and my time is already growing short. Suffice it to say that I agree with the following assessment:

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pages 331-332:

Why did the belief in resurrection arise, and how did it fit in with the broader Jewish worldview and belief-system which we have sketched in the preceding chapters? Again and again we have seen that this belief is bound up with the struggle to maintain obedience to Israel’s ancestral laws in the face of persecution. Resurrection is the divine reward for martyrs; it is what will happen after the great tribulation. But it is not simply a special reward for those who have undergone special sufferings. Rather, the eschatological expectation of most Jews of this period was for a renewal, not an abandonment, of the present space-time order as a whole, and themselves within it. Since this was based on the justice and mercy of the creator god, the god of Israel, it was inconceivable that those who had died in the struggle to bring the new world into being should be left out of the blessing when it eventually broke upon the nation and thence on the world.

The old metaphor of corpses coming to life had, ever since Ezekiel at least, been one of the most vivid ways of denoting the return form exile and connoting the renewal of the covenant and of all creation. Within the context of persecution and struggle for Torah in the Syrian and Roman periods, this metaphor itself acquired a new life. If Israel’s god would ‘raise’ his people (metaphorically) by bringing them back from their continuing exile, he would also, within that context, ‘raise’ those people (literally) who had died in the hope of that national and covenantal vindication.

....

To write this seems almost uncontroversial as a historical summary of Jewish belief. Dozens of texts of the period point this way; we are on absolutely firm historical ground.

So my position is that the resurrection is (probably) referenced, both in Matthew 24 = Mark 13 and in 2 Thessalonians 2, in the form of the gathering together of the faithful. But, again, I am not desirous of getting into a debate about that at this time. You may have the last word on that topic on this thread if you wish.
Wild Hypothesis: this apocalyptic prediction was left on the cutting room floor from the pre-70 era. Someone decided to paste it into a Pauline epistle, the purpose of which was perhaps just to get people back to living normal lives. Hence, the discourse against idlers.
This is pretty much my position on the "little apocalypse" in Matthew 24 = Mark 13. I have argued elsewhere on this forum (in rather many scattered threads, unfortunately) that the core of this shared chapter was a prediction from before 70 that the temple would be desecrated (as implied by the very term used: the abomination of desolation, which in Daniel and 1 Maccabees was a desecration of the temple); the temple, however, was destroyed instead, and the chapter was preserved in a form that tweaked its original prediction of desecration into a prediction of destruction.

It would not surprise me if something similar happened in the case of 2 Thessalonians 2, and the reference to the temple were a holdover from a layer of text dating to before 70. However, with the synoptic apocalypse I have argument after textual argument in favor of my thesis, whereas I have nothing (yet?) of that nature for 2 Thessalonians 2.

Good idea, though.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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Let's separate the issue of (1) the death and resurrection of Jesus, an already witnessed event for Paul in 1 Thessalonians, from (2) the anticipated general resurrection that will attend the parousia.

(1) Death and Resurrection of Jesus
John2 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:41 pm Without resurrection, how did Jesus get to heaven...?
It is not clear that, for all NT texts, the Lord Jesus Christ had already come to earth once, as a historical man, had died and been resurrected, and was now expected to return to earth from heaven. Earl Doherty:
Epistle writers from Paul on make frequent reference to the arrival of the Son at the End-time. But is this a second coming? ...If readers can free themselves from Gospel preconceptions, they should find that [some NT epistles] convey the distinct impression that this will be the Lord Jesus' first and only coming to earth, that this longing to see Christ has in no way been previously fulfilled. We keep waiting for the sense of "return" or the simple use of a word like "again." We wait for these writers to clarify, to acknowledge, that Jesus had already been on earth, had begun the work he would complete at the parousia; that men and women had formerly witnessed their deliverance in the event of Jesus' death and resurrection; that he had been revealed to the sight of all in his incarnated life as Jesus of Nazareth. But never an echo such ideas do we hear in the background of these passages.
(The Jesus Puzzle, p. 50)
Paul affirms a death and resurrection of Jesus in 1 Thessalonians, but of course it is a point of great contention (at least for those who take mythicist arguments into account) what manner of event that was for Paul, and where and when it occurred.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:53 pm1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 is all about the concern of the living on behalf of the dead; of course it is going to talk explicitly about resurrection. 2 Thessalonians 2.1-12, on the other hand, concerns only the living.
In fact 1 Thessalonians refers to the death and resurrection of Jesus in three separate places. First, in a general way at 1:9-10:
...for they themselves [believers in Macedonia and Achaia] report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Then at 4:14, and then again, in light of the concern in 4:13-18, Paul articulates an idea of atonement at 5:9-10:
For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.
In line with Paul's theology in other letters, then, 1 Thessalonians refers explicitly and repeatedly to the Lord JC's death and resurrection as a cardinal event that has already set in motion the end times, generating expectation of an imminent parousia both for Paul and for his eager disciples in Thessalonica.

By contrast, 2 Thessalonians seems to go out of its way not to refer to Jesus' death and resurrection. For this author, the Thessalonians have been saved not by Jesus' death, but by their own belief in "our gospel" and through the sanctification of the spirit. Theirs is not a faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but merely "faith of/in the truth" (πίστει ἀληθείας).
But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth [εἰς σωτηρίαν ἐν ἁγιασμῷ πνεύματος καὶ πίστει ἀληθείας]. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2:13-14)

(2) The General Resurrection
John2 wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:41 pm But "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him" [καὶ ἡμῶν ἐπισυναγωγῆς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν] seems to require resurrection to me (2 Thessalonians 2:1).
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:53 pm...the regathering of Israel generally included the resurrection of the dead in Jewish thought. It was a matter of theodicy: it would be unjust for those who had died in the struggle not to share in the rewards once God had set things right and inaugurated the age to come....So my position is that the resurrection is (probably) referenced, both in Matthew 24 = Mark 13 and in 2 Thessalonians 2, in the form of the gathering together of the faithful.
I trust you will agree that the word ἐπισυναγωγή by itself carries no connotation of resurrection. In context, it is a "gathering of us" to the Lord, and hence a gathering of the living merely. The author could easily have added καὶ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων, i.e., the coming of our LJC and the gathering of us and of all his holy people to him, but he didn't.

Compare the two epistles regarding the language of "the holy people" (or "saints") at the parousia:
1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10
Αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ ἡμῶν καὶ ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς κατευθύναι τὴν ὁδὸν ἡμῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς· 12ὑμᾶς δὲ ὁ κύριος πλεονάσαι καὶ περισσεύσαι τῇ ἀγάπῃ εἰς ἀλλήλους καὶ εἰς πάντας καθάπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς ὑμᾶς, 13εἰς τὸ στηρίξαι ὑμῶν τὰς καρδίας ἀμέμπτους ἐν ἁγιωσύνῃ ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ μετὰ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων αὐτοῦ, 6εἴπερ δίκαιον παρὰ θεῷ ἀνταποδοῦναι τοῖς θλίβουσιν ὑμᾶς θλῖψιν 7καὶ ὑμῖν τοῖς θλιβομένοις ἄνεσιν μεθ’ ἡμῶν, ἐν τῇ ἀποκαλύψει τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ μετ’ ἀγγέλων δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ 8ἐν πυρὶ φλογός, διδόντος ἐκδίκησιν τοῖς μὴ εἰδόσιν θεὸν καὶ τοῖς μὴ ὑπακούουσιν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ, 9οἵτινες δίκην τίσουσιν ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ κυρίου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς δόξης τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ, 10ὅταν ἔλθῃ ἐνδοξασθῆναι ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτοῦ καὶ θαυμασθῆναι ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς πιστεύσασιν, ὅτι ἐπιστεύθη τὸ μαρτύριον ἡμῶν ἐφ’ ὑμᾶς, ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ.
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. 12 May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13 May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

In the second letter, Jesus does not come "with his holy ones," but with the angels. He is instead glorified "in his holy people," in "those who have believed, including you."

What is the meaning of these changes? I am not suggesting that this author positively seeks to deny a general resurrection at the end time, only that, for some reason, he goes out of his way not to affirm what is explicitly affirmed by Paul in the first letter. I assume that the author is well acquainted with the first letter, and makes the changes he does with a purpose. These questions about resurrection in 2 Thessalonians cannot be shrugged off as an argumentum ex silencio, at least not if we are interpreting this letter in relation to Paul and to the NT canon. If one simply falls back on the general trend of Jewish belief about resurrection in the Hellenistic era, as Ben seems to do, that seems to remove 2 Thessalonians from the NT context.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2019 9:55 amIf one simply falls back on the general trend of Jewish belief about resurrection in the Hellenistic era, as Ben seems to do, that seems to remove 2 Thessalonians from the NT context.
As promised, the last word on this topic at this time is yours, especially since the only parallels that I have leaned on for the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 2 come from the synoptic apocalypse (Matthew 24 = Mark 13), which also fails to explicitly mention a resurrection. I obviously concede nothing overall, but I am happy not to rely upon some kind of reference to the resurrection of the dead anywhere in 2 Thessalonians for my interpretation of chapter 2.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

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What was the outcome here of the discussion re the nature of the temple per 2 Thess. 2:1-4 (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3460&hilit=hadrian&start=100#p98959) ? It seems to have been deflected by a discussion on the resurrection, or have I misread the thread?

(One post did insist on the central importance of methodology but none of the links I followed seemed to explain the nature of that methodology. Is there a post that addresses the nature of that methodology?)
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

Post by neilgodfrey »

For general interest:
It has sometimes been thought that, if 2:4 refers to the temple in Jerusalem, the letter would have to have been written before 70 (see discussion by Wrede, 36–37, 96–113), but that is not a strong argument against a late date, ―for the apocalyptists often write as if things are still in existence when they are not (cf. Rev. 11:1ff. re the temple)‖ (Best 1972: 58). If 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul, a dating late in the first century is a reasonable conjecture.
and
so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. The extent of his arrogance becomes evident in its result (hoste plus the infinitive; cf. 1:4; 1 Thess 1:7). He (auton is emphatic) takes his seat (kathisai is intransitive) in God‘s temple. What Paul means by "temple," or more precisely "shrine," (naos) is not clear. The word is used of the physical body (1 Cor 6:19), but that does not fit this context. The church also is called God‘s temple (1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21), and this interpretation has had its patristic as well as modern proponents (see Giblin, 76–80). It has also been thought by some patristic and modern commentators that Paul is referring to the heavenly temple, where God sits (Ps 10:4, ―The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord, his throne is in heaven‖; cf. Isa 66:1; Mic 1:2; Hab 2:20; 1 En 14:17–22; 2 Bar 4:2–6; cf. Frame, 256).

The most obvious identification is the Jerusalem temple and it is held by most commentators, but problems attach to it. Although certain individuals in the OT (Isa 14:3–4; Ezek 28:2) and Nero (Sib Or 5.29–34) made divine claims for themselves, and Gaius Caligula considered himself a god and wished to have his statue erected in the temple (Josephus, Jewish War 2.184–85), nobody actually entered the temple proclaiming himself to be God. It would appear that it is still the figure of Antiochus IV Epiphanes as described in Daniel that is behind Paul‘s language here. The figure so described will halt worship to God and install the abomination that makes desolate (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) and speaks against God (11:36–37). Paul uses this language apocalyptically, as Matthew also does (24:15).

The destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 has also posed problems for interpreters who think that Paul had the Jerusalem temple in mind. Patristic commentators overcame the problem by claiming that the temple would be rebuilt. Some commentators, who hold that the letter is pseudonymous, have seen in this a difficulty for their theory, if the letter were written after the temple was destroyed [Seite 421] (see discussion in Wrede, 94–114; Trilling 1972: 126). This problem is more apparent than real; other writings dating after A.D. 70, including Hebrews, convey an impression that the temple was still standing (cf. Attridge, 8). Irenaeus, who thought that Paul was referring to the Jerusalem temple and also echoed the passages in Daniel, saw no problem in his position (Against Heresies 5.25.4; see von Dobschütz 1909: 276–77). The usurpation of the temple of God as the locus for claiming himself to be God symbolizes the gravest act of defiance imaginable, and to express that is Paul‘s intention as he writes in starkly apocalyptic language.

Luckensmeyer, David. 2009. The Eschatology of First Thessalonians. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
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Re: The date of 2 Thessalonians.

Post by Charles Wilson »

2nd Thessalonians: 3- 6 (RSV):

[3] Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition,
[4] who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
[5] Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this?
[6] And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.

Although the references are simply too vague to attach to events with certainty, a few possibilities present themselves:

1. There is the possibility that this is another Jannaeus sighting. The son of perdition is Demetrius Eucerus with the entire sordid history of his Greek family on display. Demetrius appears to have sacrificed pigs on the altar at Gerizim, alienating and infuriating the Jewish Mercs in his army. The Jewish fighters defect to Jannaeus. Demetrius all of a sudden gets frightened and leaves the country. Probably not an accurate rendering in Josephus but Josephus has to cover his ass here as the New Religion is being constucted. If this references Jannaeus, the text has probably been scrubbed many times to get to where we are today.

2. Nero. A plausible candidate. [Note: Nero's Bio-Dad was a totally horrible person and this idea insults horrible people. I mean, RILLY bad person.]

3. Domitian. As in "Lord-God-Domitian". Another plausible candidate.

4. Titus. What's a story of the Destruction of the Temple without Titus, son of god the father?

CW
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