THE FIRST LETTER  

OF SAINT PAUL 

TO  THE  THESSALONIANS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my comments for today is, “The First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians.”

Instead of a homily for this Sunday’s readings for the Third Sunday of Advent [B], I just want to say about 10 things regarding today’s second reading - something about Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians - from which we get a section for our second reading: Chapter 5,  verses 16-24. 

NUMBER OF BOOKS IN THE BIBLE

The Old Testament  has 46 books - none of which is a letter. We only get letters in the New Testament.  However, there are mention of letters in the Old Testament and parts of letters.  Moreover there are in museums and libraries and archives around the world, lots of letters of all sorts from B.C. For example in Egypt there are thousands of Greek letters and parts of letters. Human beings send letters, e-mail, faxes, twitter, etc. etc. to communicate information to each other. [Cf. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 769 #4.] 

The New Testament consists of 27 books. Different from the Old Testament, it has 19 letters.  Paul has the most 13, but there are letters from John, Peter, James, Jude.

The Old Testament is in Hebrew. The New Testament is in Greek.

The Catholic Bible - has both the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, These are the so called, Old Testament and New Testament. The Catholic Old Testament has more books than the Protestant and the Jewish Bible's Old Testament.  46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books was the standard number for the Bible till the Protestant Reformation.  Reason: Way back before Christ the Jews in Alexandria - which was Greek speaking for starters - chose more books to be in the Bible than the Hebrew Collection in Israel. Broadly speaking that Greek text from Alexandria was translated into Latin and it became the so called Vulgate. At the time of the Protestant Reformation the King James folks chose the Hebrew text to translate into English and the Roman Catholics chose the Greek and then the Latin Vulgate text.

COMING UP WITH THE BEST COMMON TEXT

A goal in the last 150 or so years among Christians was to come up with the best Greek text as opposed to force a text to say something that would support a theological position. Catholic and main stream Protestant communities have for the most part come up with an agreed upon Greek text.  Within this century some believe Jews, Catholics and Protestants will have come up with an agreed upon common Hebrew Text. 

In time - mistakes were made in copying the scriptures for the next generation - that is before the printing press. Scholars by studying all the texts that they could look at - as well as texts that quote the bible - can come up with an agreed upon common text.  Then we work together to come up with the best translations - into the various languages. Translations differ because of different styles and word selections.

As already mentioned the New Testament has 21 letters. The rest of the New Testament is the 4 gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. Then there is the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation.

OLDEST NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENT

The oldest New Testament document is Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. That’s some 20 years earlier than Mark, the earliest of the Gospels.

LETTER AND EPISTLE

Scholars like to make a distinction between a letter and an epistle. I heard this after we finished our scripture studies. A letter is more like a personal letter we would write.  An epistle is more polished, more worked out, more like an essay or a magazine article than a letter.

I would put Hebrews in this category. It’s been called a letter - but if it’s a letter, it’s certainly a different kind of  letter than the other New Testament documents. I was taught it’s more a sermon - a long sermon.  Others say that James and a few others are more epistles than letters. [Cf. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 771, #16.]

FORMATS FOR LETTERS

Letters have formats. Then there are business letters, love letters, personal letters, etc. etc. etc.

We put an address or letter head on top of some letters. Then we put the date. Then we put Dear John or Mary or whoever.

Then we give the purpose of the letter or what have you.

My sister Mary recently handed me a plastic bag of all my letters home from the seminary.  I looked at them. They are all almost the same. “Dear Mom and Dad, How are you. I am fine. Hope you are fine as well. Weather is cold. We had 6 inches of snow. All is well. Your loving son, Andy.”

We were told we had to write home every week.  Recently a marine told me said that they were handed a post card every week and told to write home.

I don’t know if they offer guided tours of the U.S. Military Archives in Carlisle Pa, but that would be interesting.

Well, New Testament times letters had a different format.

NAME

TO WHOM

ADD CO-SENDERS AND WRITERS.

GREETINGS: GRACE AND PEACE....

A WISH

A THANKSGIVING

A COMPLAINT

AN URGING

A CONCLUSION AND FINAL BLESSING

SOMETIMES A PRAYER OR A HYMN IS PUT INTO THE LETTER.

OFTEN THERE WERE SOME EXHORTATIONS OR NAGGING.

Letters were self written, dictated, given to someone else to compose but with the content from the author, or have given to someone else to even come up with the content.  [Cf. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 771, #19.]

Letters were also cut and paste at times.

13 letters are attributed to Paul - but there are arguments about that - based on research. Computers catch plagiarism in term papers in college - so we know now, this section of an ancient letter could not have been written by the person who wrote another section of that same letter.

CHAPTER AND VERSE

The Old Testament has 929 chapters and the New Testament has 260 chapters. In other words the Bible is 2/3 Jewish Scriptures and 1/3 Christian Scriptures.

As you know chapter and verse were not put into the Bible till way after the Bible was together.

Chapters were put in by the Archbishop of Canterbury around 1227.

Verses for the Jewish OT were put in by Rabbi Nathan around 1448.

Verses for the New Testament were put in by Robert Estienne in 1555.

CHERRY PICK

Some people start reading the Bible from page 1, Genesis 1: 1 - which begins “In the beginning” - Hebrew for Genesis and go from there.

I suggest you do a book at a time - starting with the Letters - and I would always suggest the Letter of James.  If something in there, doesn’t grab you, forget it.

Or just play Bible Bingo, just turn to a page and read and ponder.

Or read the scripture readings in the Missalette for the Sunday. Today’s reading from 1^st Thessalonians might get you praying about prayer, joy, gratitude, don’t quench the Spirit, test everything, do good and avoid evil.

Pick - like at a smorgasbord. Pick and choose and pick and chew and then digest.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Many Bibles have color maps.

Check them out.

Study where places are and who’s from where, and all that.

For example, Thessalonica is a port city north of modern Greece. It was also on a main Roman Road across  the Balkans. It was founded in 315 BC by Cassander - one of Alexander the Great’s generals - who named the city after his wife, the half-sister of Alexander.  It had a synagogue, something Paul looked for while traveling, but the Christian community there were mostly Gentiles.

CONCLUSION

The catholic approach is that we don’t take the Bible literally. It’s a library with all kinds of different types of literature.

So we don’t take some of the types of literature in the Bible literally, just as we don’t take little kids books literally. Snakes and donkeys talk, but in real life they don’t, but the stories have great messages.  Be careful of snakes in the grass.

There’s a lot more  that all of the above - besides how to interpret the Bible. There are different translations, geography, customs,  but that’s enough for a start.

Do self-study. Take courses. Deacon Tony Norcio gave a short course here. So too Father Joe Krastel. There is a bible study group at St. John Neumann on Monday night and I think Monday morning. Check out google and go from there.