Paul and "the Jews" in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

In 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, Paul wrote what appears to be the most virulent anti-Semitic expression of the New Testament. This text is so extreme, not to mention inconsistent with some of Paul’s other letters, that scholars have questioned whether it is original to the letter, not perhaps an interpolation by a later editor, yet the evidence points to the verses’ authenticity. Here is the ESV translation of the text:

For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵ who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind ¹⁶ by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!

What follows is a concise response from my postsupersessionist perspective. I’ve listed some key references at the end.

Firstly, there are good reasons to narrow the target of Paul’s attack to a small sub-group of the Jewish people at the time:

• The word that the New Testament uses for “Jew” can equally be translated as “Judean.” Use of people in the Diaspora, “Jew” is an appropriate translation, but when the setting is Jerusalem, “Judean” is generally better, differentiating Jews of Judea from Jews of the Diaspora. (At least the ESV translators inserted a footnote after verse 14 make mention of some ambiguity around the meaning of “the Jews”: “The Greek word Ioudaioi can refer to Jewish religious leaders and others under their influence, who opposed the Christian faith in that time.”)
• This comma between verses 14 and 15 is so critical that much research has been done on it. Why? Because by its inclusion, the text implies that all the Jews (at least of that era) were guilty of murdering Jesus and the prophets, but without the comma, the “who” restricts that guilt to specific Jews—those who committed such acts themselves.
• The comma simply cannot be justified, since it’s clear that Paul did not intend to condemn all the Jewish people. (Note that the punctuation was only inserted several centuries later.) 1 Thessalonians 2:14 shows that Paul is referring to the Judean Jews in particular; he is concerned about the churches in Judea. Moreover, Paul often used articular participles to restrict the application of a general term (here, “the Jews”) to a subset of that group. In all six times Paul used participles with the definite article from the start of the letter up to 2:15, he was denoting a sub-group of the broader group by that name. It’s good, therefore, to note that the NIV omits the comma, unlike most English translations.
• Tōn apokteinantōn (in v15), typically translated as “who killed” could reasonably be translated “those who killed.” Examples of such use of the definite article are easy to find, e.g. in Romans 1:32, hoi prassontes: “those who do.”
• Not only that, but Acts 21 tells us that myriads of Jews in Jerusalem were believers, so he didn't mean all Judean Jews.
• Some scholars have made a plausible case that “the prophets” referred to those of Jesus’ followers who had already been martyred. While, in no way would that alleviate the gravity of the offence, it would clearly restrict the blame to a minority group of Ioudaioi within the general population of Ioudaioi.

For all these reasons, the phrase is better translated to indicate a particular group of guilty individuals rather than the entire Jewish population:

“from those [particular] Judean Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets”.

Aside from that vital information, there are other mitigating factors to consider:

• Paul was writing as a Jew who practised a messianic form of Judaism. He had not converted to another religion. This much is clear from the New Testament, as confirmed by modern scholarship.
• Paul wasn’t standing apart from the Jewish people, pointing fingers at them, but he was standing as a representative of one Jewish sect critiquing others. It was very common to do so then even as it is today. There are many examples in Jewish and non-Jewish writings of the period in which members of a society make scathing attacks on other members, yet without meaning to attack all the people.
• Paul’s main purpose was to comfort and encourage the Thessalonian believers, not to vilify the Jews. He wanted to remind the Thessalonian believers who were being persecuted by their own people that the churches in Judea knew what that felt like. In fact, Judean believers had had it worse. God’s faithful people tend to get persecuted by their own people. Paul himself had suffered at the hands of his kinsmen. But we know from his other writings that Paul loved the Jewish people dearly – and so does the LORD.  The Thessalonian church was not alone in being persecuted by their countrymen.
• His forceful comments were a common rhetoric device. Both Jewish and non-Jewish writers of the time also used it. His critique is similar to that of the prophets and other Jewish writers of the time, like the Qumran community, who did not write off the people of Israel but sought their repentance, lashing out at those among them who hindered God's eschatological work. Likewise, Paul saw Judean opponents of the gospel as blocking God's purpose of saving the nations.
• On Jesus’ similar words about Jerusalemites, “who kill the prophets”: these were a lament, not a curse, and ended with confirmation that its people will repent and that Jesus will return to them.
• Ultimately, the wrath of God (v16) comes (aorist tense) on those particular Jews. The temporal sense of the verb is uncertain. Perhaps Paul thought the downturn of fortunes of Judean Jews in the late forties signalled the soon return of Messiah. Or perhaps he was expecting a worse outcome for them in the future. In any case, we should not be surprised that, inasmuch as the guilty are judged, those not guilty (the majority of the Jewish people) of the particular offence Paul mentioned are not judged for it.
• Finally, the purpose of Paul in mentioning the judgement of those particular Jews who were guilty of killing Jesus and the prophets was simply to encourage the believers in Thessalonica: their own persecutors would face God’s wrath. Paul wasn’t developing some doctrine of anti-Semitism.

All told, the evidence in this very superficial study is more than adequate to challenge the tradition Christian reading of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. What’s the problem with this text? Paul is not the problem. His writing is not the problem. Rather, it is the translation of his text, its reading, and application by Christians that is the problem! And the evidence for this gets stronger the more closely one studies the literature. (See the readings listed below; I didn't use them all but found Brown very useful.)

Recommended Reading

Bockmuehl, Markus N A. “1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 and the Church in Jerusalem.” Tyndale Bulletin 52, no. 1 (2001): 1–31.

Brown, Dave. “Documentary Study of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16,” n.d. https://www.academia.edu/9256736/Documentary_Study_of_1_Thessalonians_2_14-16.

Dickieson, Brenton DG. “Antisemitism and the Judaistic Paul: A Study of I Thessalonians 2:14-16 in Light of Paul’s Social and Rhetorical Contexts and the Contemporary Question of Antisemitism,” n.d. http://place.asburyseminary.edu/trendissertations/4126.

Gilliard, Frank D. “Paul and the Killing of the Prophets in 1 Thess. 2:15.” Novum Testamentum 36, no. 3 (1994): 259.

Gilliard, Frank D. “The Problem of the Antisemitic Comma Between 1 Thessalonians 2.14 and 15.” New Testament Studies 35, no. 04 (1989):481–502.

Lowe, Malcolm F. “Who Were the ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ?” Novum Testamentum 18, no. 2 (1976): 101–30.

Unity with distinction in Acts 15

The rulings of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 for Gentile believers were just four minimal rules that would allow table fellowship of believing ("Messianic") Jews with Gentile believers (Christians). Their eating together was an important sign of their unity in Christ without any discrimination against either party, yet without nullifying the Law of Moses. The Gentiles didn't convert to Judaism, and the Jews didn't abandon their Law. They continued to live as Torah-observant Jews, eating and worshiping side-by-side with Gentile believers. Now we are touching on what has been called unity with distinction, or what Mark Kinzer refers to as bilateral ecclesiology. (See my review of Kinzer's book, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism.) So there is still discrimination between (that is, "differentiation of", not "discrimination against") Jews and Gentiles - which starts in Genesis and continues to Revelation. Otherwise there was no need for the Jerusalem Council to make a ruling; they could have just said, "The Gentile believers are free from the Law just as we have been freed from the Law." But they didn't.

For a careful study of Acts 15, and Peter's mention that God made "no distinction" between Gentiles and Jews (Acts 15:9) in particular, see my paper, "Does Acts 15:9 refute intra-ecclesial Jew-Gentile distinction?"

Surprises in Esther

Jews around the world celebrate Purim every year at this time, a festival founded on the story told in the book of Esther. It’s an awesome record of God’s deliverance of his people, yet his name is not mentioned in the book nor is there any explicit reference to him. In the Hebrew Bible, only Song of Songs and Esther don’t mention God's name directly. Esther doesn't directly mention God at all. This is a bit of a mystery for us. Was the omission of references to God a rhetorical device intended to elicit a particular response from the readers? Was it to demonstrate that God is always at work behind the scenes? Was the author at risk of persecution or having his work destroyed if he mentioned the God of Israel? We don’t know the answer for certain, but we can see that he wrote very deliberately. For instance, the narrative has a symmetric structure, with a sleepless night for the king (Achashverosh/Ahaseurus/Xerxes) in the middle leading to a turnaround for the Judeans; danger mounts progressively through the first half of the book, but deliverance unfolds in the second.
Similarly, the author of Esther uses ironies and even ‘coincidences’ (implicitly God-ordained). He also seems to love presenting the historical elements in pairs, e.g. two queens, two fasts, two occasions where Zeresh speaks to Haman, two royal edicts, and so on.

Incidentally, Ruth and Esther are the only two books of the Bible named after women.

Symmetry

From danger (first half) to deliverance (second half), the text can be summarised symmetrically, as follows:

Prologue

Ahasuerus’ first decree, spelling death for the Jews

Haman's anger toward Mordecai

Ahasuerus gets no sleep

Modecai is exalted over Haman

Ahasuerus second decree, spelling deliverance for the Jews

Epilogue

Two-by-two

Many of these points have been borrowed from the NIV Study Bible:

• The 3 pairs of key banquets in a symmetric structure
• Two lists of the king's servants (1:10,14)
• Two reports of Esther concealing her Jewish identity (2:10,20)
• Two gatherings of the women (2:8,19)
• Two houses for the women (2:12-14)
• Two fasts (4:3,16)
• Two times when Haman speaks to his wife and friends (5:14, 6:13)
• Haman's wife, Zeresh, speaks twice:
  • the first time her advice is bad but Haman takes it: hang Mordecai (5:14)
  • the second time gives a good warning (don't try to destroy the Jews, 6:13), but Haman ignores it
• Two unannounced appearances of Esther before the king at the risk of her life (5:2, 8:3)
• Two investitures for Mordecai with royal garments and a crown (6:7-11, 8:15)
• Two coverings of Haman's face (6:12, 7:8)
• Two passages referring to Haman's 10 sons (5:11, 9:6-14)
• Possibly two appearances of Harbona (1:10, 7:9) – if these refer to the same person (Hebrew spelling differs)
• Two royal edicts (3:12-14, 8:1-13)
• Two references to the king's subsiding anger (2:1, 7:10)
• Two references to the irrevocability of Persian laws (1:19, 8:8)
• Two days for the Jews to take vengeance (9:5-15)
• Two letters to institute the commemoration of Purim (9:22-28, 9:29-31)
• Twice the king gives over his ring to an official (firstly to Haman, then to Mordecai; 3:10, 8:2)
• Twice Esther spoke to Hathach and sent him to Mordecai (4:5, 4:10)

Ironies and ‘coincidences’

• Vashti refused to appear before Ahasuerus, so he forbad her from seeing him ever again
• Haman hated the Jews, but was working under Esther and alongside Mordecai
• The king agreed to Haman's plot not knowing that it would kill his own wife and his prime minister, Mordecai
• Haman's suggestion to the king on how to commend and reward himself led to his own humiliation: having to do it for his enemy Mordecai
• Haman was accused of trying to attack or molest Esther, when he was actually pleading with her for his life
• Haman's body was hanged out on the gallows he made for Mordecai
• Like Saul, Esther was a Benjamite; Haman was an Agagite and thus an Amalekite. Samuel sent Saul to finish off Agag because of God's promise to destroy the Amalekites, but Saul didn't and Samuel had to do it himself. Now Esther and the Jews finally wiped out the Amalekites - Haman and his tribe
• Right before Haman was to charge Mordecai before Ahasuerus, Ahasuerus had a sleepless night and got his attendants to read to him; they read the story of how Mordecai had saved his life
• The irony of Haman taking his wife's bad advice but ignoring her wise warning

Contrasts and turn-arounds

• Vashti refused to appear before the king; Esther appeared unannounced before the king
• Exiled orphan becomes queen of a vast empire
• The victims become the victors; the oppressors are wiped out
• In Haman’s anger toward one Jew, Mordecai, he decided to kill all the Jews. In the end, Haman and all his kin, the descendants of the Amalek, were killed
• Instead of Haman getting everything of Mordecai, Mordecai ends up with Haman's whole estate

The Name of the LORD

Now for an even bigger surprise. The name of the LORD is encoded four times in the text of Esther. Twice in the text it is encoded forwards when a Jew is speaking, and twice backwards when a Gentile is speaking. It is twice the first letter of each of four successive words, and twice the last letter of each of four successive words, once by the Queen, once about the Queen, once by Haman, once about Haman.

Verse	Speaker	Topic: honour/dishonour	Reading	Letter position
Est 1:20	Gentile	About the Queen (Vashti), dishonours her (Est 1:19-20)	Backwards	First
Est 5:4	Jew	Esther speaking, supposedly honours Haman	Forwards	First
Est 5:13	Gentile	Haman speaking, dishonouring Mordecai after boasting in Est 5:12	Backwards	Last
Est 7:7	Jew	About Haman humbling himself	Forwards	Last

A random outcome? I don’t think so. Acrostics are not uncommon in the Hebrew Bible; authors used them deliberately for various purposes, including memorisation. Remember that there were no punctuation marks or even spaces between words (!) in the original Hebrew, so the readers were keenly aware of the first and last letters of each word. Also, the pairing revealed in the table above is in keeping with the writer’s use of pairs.

Look for God’s Name in the text below, according to the reading direction and letter of each word indicated in the table above.

Text	Esther
ונשׁמע פתגם המלך אשׁר־יעשׂה בכל־מלכותו כי רבה היא וכל־הנשׁים יתנו יקר לבעליהן למגדול ועד־קטן	1:20
ותאמר אסתר אם־על־המלך טוב יבוא המלך והמן היום אל־המשׁתה אשׁר־עשׂיתי לו	5:4
וכל־זה איננו שׁוה לי בכל־עת אשׁר אני ראה את־מרדכי היהודי יושׁב בשׁער המלך	5:13
והמלך קם בחמתו ממשׁתה היין אל־גנת הביתן והמן עמד לבקשׁ על־נפשׁו מאסתר המלכה כי ראה כי־כלתה אליו הרעה מאת המלך	7:7

Esther’s inclusion in the canon may have been controversial, but it was no mistake!

A type of Messiah

Finally, parallels may be drawn between Esther and Messiah. Esther left her home with her godly father and dwelt among a common people. She was used and profaned by the position she was called to. Esther did not want to ‘drink the cup’ before her but when the crucial moment came, she chose to lay down her life if need be (4:16, even as Isaac accepted that he was to be the sacrifice). In so doing, Esther proved herself, gained the favour of the king, and interceded with him for her people, pleading for their deliverance. In the end, the Jews and all who joined them (9:27), will forever rejoice in God’s salvation through Esther, the ‘shadow’ of the coming Messiah.

Here we have a female image of Messiah, a true saviour, and we are reminded that male and female together were created in God’s image. Indeed, only after Eve’s creation did the LORD call creation ‘very good’. Esther had a beautiful figure and was good looking (2:7)—she was the most beautiful woman from north Africa to Pakistan. Now that’s something to think about!

Purim: a time for thanksgiving and a call to intercession

Did you see the full moon last night? It's the Jewish feast of Purim this weekend, a celebration of the salvation of the Jewish people from the satanic attack of their enemies during their exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC. The story is recorded in the book of Esther, a young Jewish lady who was married to Xerxes, the king of the Persia. One night she put her life on the line to appeal to her husband to spare her life, and the lives of her people. Xerxes, whose empire stretched all the way from Egypt to India (!), could not annul the decree to kill all the Jews in the empire but he did authorize them to defend themselves on the day planned for their extermination -- and even to kill their attackers. Thus the Jews survived one of the greatest threats to their existence, and now celebrate their victory in the feast of Purim.

Purim is a time for us to read the book of Esther. It has incredible relevance in our day, even as radical Islamists seek to exterminate the Jewish people worldwide. Read these words by Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah:

We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we will take from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death. [Source]

Purim is a time for us to pray for the Jewish people to come to know their own Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus). Circumcision is not enough; it never saved anyone from his sins. People need Jesus! Jews are loved by God on account of the patriarchs, but they are enemies of the gospel for our (Gentiles') sake (Romans 11:28) and unsaved (11:14). This is the Church that has persecuted them for 19 centuries, instead of loving them and interceding for them as it should have.

Purim is a time for us to pray for Messianic Jews (Jewish believers in Jesus). They are generally rejected by mainstream Judaism and by mainstream Christianity (unless the "de-Judaize" themselves by forsaking all things Jewish). Messianic Jews are facing increasing persecution, especially in Israel, as this short video shows.

Purim is a time for us to give thanks for the Jewish people, through whom we have received the Bible and the Saviour of the world! It was with Israel that the New Covenant was made (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and by their preaching to the Gentiles that we came to share in the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:44). It is into the Olive Tree (Israel) that Christians have been grafted, connecting us to the blessings of Abraham (Romans 11:17), through whom all nations have been blessed (Genesis 18:18, 22:18, 26:4). Purim is a time for Christians to:

remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:12-13)

Purim is a time for us to stand up for the rights of Jews to life and to their homeland, Israel. Esther put her life at risk to save her people. The ultimate outcome of this is that Jesus was born! Similarly, the Jews -- and particularly the religious establishment in Jerusalem -- have a crucial role to play in bringing about Jesus' return (Matthew 23:37-39). This is why Hitler was, and Ahmadinejad is, inspired by Satan to exterminate the Jews -- just like Haman in the story of Esther. Haman was hanged and you know what became of Hitler. Internationally, pressure is mounting for Christians to condemn Israel regarding the Palestinian conflict, but we who form the bride of the King are to speak up for Israel and to intercede for the Jews. If we fail to do so, deliverance for them will rise from another place, but we will have failed to fulfil God's calling on us. It is time for the Church to take up the challenge of Mordecai to Esther (4:13-14):

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"