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In my previous post I showed why the vocabulary of the Pastoral epistles and the kinds of problems they address suggest that they were written after Paul’s time, by a follower who was using his name.  As I indicated there, of particular importance for establishing they do not come directly from Paul is the way [...]

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Now that I have given an overview of each of the Pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, I can turn to the key question of whether Paul actually wrote them, when they were written, and why.  This will take several posts. I have taken the information with some revision by book, The [...]

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I continue now with my nutshell overviews of the Pastorals by summarizing 2 Timothy and Titus.  I begin with a 50-word overview of the book Timothy. 2 Timothy, a more intimate letter (allegedly) by Paul to Timothy, recounts their past relationship, expresses hope that his disciple will come to visit him in prison in Rome, [...]

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In this series providing summaries of each book of the New Testament “in a nutshell�� I have dealt with three of the letters that claim to be written by Paul but probably were not: Colossians, Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians.  We now come to the three letters that are grouped together and called the “Pastoral Epistles,�� [...]

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I thought it migh be interesting for readers who like on occasion to get down into the weeds of scholarship to see a more detailed argument for how the *similarity* of 2 Thessalonians to 1 Thessalonians suggests not that Paul wrote both of them but that a later author (of 2 Thessalonians) was imitating Paul's [...]

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An obscure verse in 2 Thessalonians may conceivably lead to World War III.  OK, it sounds sensational and implausible, but hear me out. The following is taken from my book Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, 2023), edited for this occasion. Evangelical Christians historically have believed that the Bible predicts the future, that many prophecies are being fulfilled [...]

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Here is an annotated list of books on 2 Thessalonians, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles (that is, the letters that are assigned a “secondary�� standing in the New Testament collection of Paul’s letters because scholars doubt they were actually composed by Paul himself) with a couple of commentaries that deal with [...]

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Dear Platinum Members, Let’s call this a humble moment of accountability: we’ve fallen behind on something important. As many of you know, one of the special privileges of Platinum membership is the opportunity to submit guest posts to the blog �� and then, every four submissions, we open it up for a Platinum vote. The [...]

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In my previous post I explained the major theses and emphases of 2 Thessalonians, and pointed out that in many ways it is very similar in its concerns and themes to 1 Thesssalonians.  But I also said that it is commonly considered by scholars to be "Deutero-Pauline," that is, written by a later author only [...]

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In this series of “nutshell�� overviews of each of the books of the New Testament, we move now to one of the most intriguing instances of a book that claims to be written by Paul, but was apparently, instead, written by someone else who wanted his readers to think he was the apostle. 2 Thessalonians [...]

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