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Message: The salutation of 1 Thess. is typical of the Pauline Epistles. The format would become formal, almost standardized: The names of the author(s), the name or names of the intended recipient(s), and the blessing “grace to you and peace.” Usually both the author and recipient are modified by a parenthetical clause, identifying their status: the recipients as faithful Christians, the writer as a person with authority to teach. As Paul grows older these become increasingly elaborate; by the time he wrote Romans, he followed the word “Paul” with a seventy-word parenthetical description of himself! (Romans 1:1-6) Here, however, he is restrained; there is only the expression “in the name God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Whether this describes the Thessalonian church, or Paul and his two disciples, or the blessing of grace and peace, or characterizes the spirit of the letter itself, is ambiguous. In fact, this presents us with an opportunity to discuss a basic issue in the difficulties of Bible translation. Romans papyrus Bible This fragment of Romans, ca. 200 AD, will give you an idea of how difficult translation can be. I have had to choose what I think is Paul’s primary intention in order to write a clear flowing English sentence. A verbatim translation would be more like, “paul and silvanus and timothy to the church of the thessalonians in god father and lord jesus christ grace to you and peace.” (Most translations simply follow the word order of the Greek, saying “to the church . . . in God the Father . . . .” This is a fine translation, but word order does not have the significance in Greek that it does in English.) As we will see time and again in Paul, such ambiguities are often best resolved by considering the ambiguity intentional; which is to say, Paul intended that the reader understand all three meanings. Paul, the Thessalonian church, and the letter between them are unified by their new existence in God the Father and Jesus Christ. So, you can see the purpose of looking at a “literal” translation for deep study. Our translation sounds quite specific: “I wish you grace and peace in the name of God . . . .” But the translator (moi!) has chosen one of several possible translations and omitted the others. He is not (necessarily) trying to fool anybody; it is an unavoidable burden of translating ancient Greek. The inclusion of Silvanus and Timothy in the “from” clause might look innocent enough, but it is Exhibit #1 in one of the great debates about the Bible: Who wrote Paul’s epistles, and which of them are authentic to Paul? It is natural for Paul to include Timothy and Silvanus, whether or not they had any part in writing the letter, since they were co-founders of the church in Thessalonica, and Timothy (as we will see) had returned there after they had been driven out. Angel illuminated Bible pretty ancient We do know that Paul’s eyesight became poor quite early, requiring that he dictate his letters to a scribe, but we don’t know when this began, nor the degree of editorial freedom that the scribe might have had. On the other hand, Paul may be the only apostle whom we are certain could read and write Greek. (Luke wrote the most educated and elegant Greek of any New Testament author, but he is not considered an apostle; he was a Gentile convert after Jesus’ ascension.) The problem is compounded by Paul’s frequent use of “we”, raising the question: Does this mean more than one person is participating in writing the letter? This is not a great issue in 1 Thess., where he has included Timothy and Silvanus as senders of the letter — we could decide that Paul is simply writing the letter on behalf of himself and the other two. It will become a more difficult issue in later epistles, where only Paul himself is named. The phrase “grace to you and peace” will become virtual boilerplate for Paul. “Grace” is actually an Hellenistic concept; the term was widely used in the Greek-speaking world over a wide range of meanings, including the favor of a god. Paul might have actually picked the term up as a greeting from pagan Greeks! But certainly, it has specific meaning to Greek converts. “Peace”, on the other hand, is typically Semitic; even today, Israelis greet one another with the Hebrew Shalom, “peace”. So, the phrase “grace to you and peace” is calculated to appeal to both of the groups Paul sought to teach: Jews and Greeks.