The First Epistle to the Thessalonians

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians is a short, warm pastoral letter that Paul wrote to the young church at Thessalonica, the chief city of the Roman province of Macedonia. It is brief and affectionate rather than systematic, but it carries an outsized importance: on the standard scholarly dating it is the earliest surviving letter of Paul — and therefore, most likely, the earliest surviving Christian document of any kind, written before any of the Gospels. (Scholarship) For a reader tracing the life of Paul and the first phase of the mission to the gentiles, it is a rare window onto the movement as it actually looked within roughly two decades of the crucifixion. It is one of the seven letters that the overwhelming majority of critical scholars accept as genuinely Paul's own composition; see our reference on the Apostle Paul for how those seven "undisputed" letters relate to the disputed ones.

What it is

The letter is addressed jointly in the names of "Paul, and Sylvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians" (1 Thessalonians 1:1, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) It was written after Paul had founded the Thessalonian community during his second journey and then been forced to leave it early. According to the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul preached in the synagogue at Thessalonica before hostility drove him on to Beroea, Athens and Corinth (Acts 17:1-9). (Scripture) The letter itself confirms that Paul had been "taken away from you for a short time" and longed to return (1 Thessalonians 2:17). Anxious for the converts he had left behind under pressure, he sent Timothy back to strengthen them, "and we sent Timothy, our brother... to confirm you and to exhort you concerning your faith" (1 Thessalonians 3:2); the letter is Paul's response to the encouraging report Timothy brought back (3:6). (Scripture) Its purpose is pastoral: to reassure new believers who were suffering opposition, to defend the integrity of Paul's own conduct among them, and to answer a specific worry about fellow Christians who had died before Christ's expected return.

Authorship and dating

The Pauline authorship of 1 Thessalonians is not disputed; it is a bedrock example of Paul writing in his own voice. (Scholarship) The debate concerns not *who* wrote it but *when*, and specifically whether it or Galatians holds the title of Paul's earliest letter. Most scholars date 1 Thessalonians to about AD 50-51, written from Corinth soon after the events it describes. That date rests in part on the same near-fixed chronological anchor that dates the second journey as a whole — Paul's appearance before the proconsul Gallio at Corinth, whose term of office is independently datable to about AD 51-52. (Scholarship) Galatians competes for the title of "earliest" only on its earliest possible ("South Galatian") dating; on other reconstructions Galatians is later, which would leave 1 Thessalonians alone at the head of the surviving Christian record. Because the question turns on unresolved debates, the careful statement is that 1 Thessalonians is *either the earliest or among the two earliest* letters of Paul, and one of the earliest Christian texts in existence. (Scholarship)

What it tells us about Paul

The letter says nothing about Tarsus — Paul's birthplace is named only in Acts, never in his own letters — and it is not primarily autobiographical. Its value for the life of Paul lies instead in what it shows of his manner of mission. In defending his conduct at Thessalonica, Paul recalls that he worked to support himself rather than burden the community: "For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil: working night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any of you, we preached among you the gospel of God" (1 Thessalonians 2:9). (Scripture) This is first-person confirmation of the self-supporting missionary practice that Acts elsewhere links to his trade as a tentmaker or leather-worker (Acts 18:3), and that he asserts again in 1 Corinthians 9:6. The letter also preserves the tone of that early ministry — Paul likens his care for the converts to that of a nursing mother and of a father with his children (2:7, 2:11) — and records the practical rhythm of the mission: the founding visit, the enforced departure, the sending of Timothy, and the letter itself as a substitute for a longed-for return.

It is also a source for the earliest recoverable stratum of Christian belief and practice. Paul reminds the Thessalonians how they "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10) — a compact summary of the gentile convert's turn, embedded in a text written within about twenty years of the crucifixion. (Scripture)

The earliest Christian hope

The passage for which 1 Thessalonians is best known is its answer to the community's grief. Some believers had died, and the survivors feared these dead would miss Christ's return. Paul writes to console them: "And we will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He then describes the return, or *parousia*: "For the Lord himself shall come down from heaven... and the dead who are in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ, into the air" (4:16-17). (Scripture) Because of the letter's very early date, this is prime evidence for what the movement expected within a generation of Jesus — and Paul's language, "we who are alive, who are left," is often read as reflecting an early expectation that the return might come within his own lifetime. (Scholarship) The theme continues in chapter 5, with its counsel to be watchful, "for the day of the Lord shall so come, as a thief in the night" (5:2). (Scripture)

Key passages

1 Thessalonians 1:1 (the joint address of Paul, Silvanus and Timothy); 1:9-10 (turning from idols; waiting for the Son from heaven); 2:1-12 (Paul's conduct and manner of mission); 2:9 (working night and day, self-support); 3:1-8 (the sending of Timothy and his return); 4:13-18 (grief, resurrection, and the *parousia*); 5:1-11 (the day of the Lord "as a thief in the night").

For the narrative frame against which this letter is read, see the Acts of the Apostles and the companion source entry on Galatians, Paul's most autobiographical letter and 1 Thessalonians' only rival for the title of earliest. Short answers to common questions are gathered on the questions and answers page, and the wider story of the Apostle's birthplace is told in where Tarsus is.