A few months ago Deep Drinks hosted a debate, “Did Jesus Exist Historically? Godless Engineer vs Brave New History.” It was fairly boilerplate. As usual, the historicist (Elliott Saxton / Brave New History) failed to prep and didn’t know half of what they were talking about and didn’t use their time well or respond to half the points made; while the mythicist (John Gleason / Godless Engineer) at least bettered him on all those measures. But I was in the audience and I was struck by an odd thing that happened around the end of minute ten: Saxton started selling a really weird literary thesis about 1 Thessalonians 2 that was meant to prove its authenticity.

I’m preparing an omnibus study of the doubted passage there (a formal expansion and revision of There Is No Logically Sound Case Against Interpolation in 1 Thessalonians 2) and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything important. I am usually a fan of chiastic arguments (more about that in a moment). But Saxton’s was just bonkers. So much so I thought he must have garbled something from some peer reviewed book or article, so I asked him for the scholarship on it and, nope. It’s just something he made up. As best I can tell, he has no relevant degrees and does not read Greek. But okay. Complex literary analysis in Classics it is. I’ve lambasted amateurs screwing this up before (see, for example, Reading Josephus on James: On Valliant Flunking Literary Theory). So here we go again. Lessons to be learned.

What We Are Talking About

A chiasmus in ancient literature (or even modern, though it’s less common there) was a particularly popular form of rhetorical structure, in which items covered in the first half of a text are paralleled in reverse order in the second half. For example, I show how the entire structure of Matthew’s Gospel is a chiasmus in On the Historicity of Jesus (p. 463), and I show a key section of Mark forms a chiasmus out of the letters of Paul in Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles (neither is my own discovery). The basic idea is something like A–B–C–D–C–B–A or A–B–B–A, and the like, where one half mirrors the other. They contain different content, but they strive to draw on common themes to line up in reverse. But this should not be confused with a parallel, where you have the structure A–B–C–D … A–B–C–D. Take note as we go.

The Hurd Argument

Saxton did cite and present one “Argument by Parallelism” from a real study. It comes from John Hurd, “Paul Ahead of His Time: 1 Thess. 2:13–16,” in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, Volume 1: Paul and the Gospels (ed. Peter Richardson and David Granskou; Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986), pp. 21–36. But you’ll notice there are some problems with it (besides the fact that this is not a chiasmus; it’s a parallel). This is my screencap from Saxton’s presentation (with superfluous footers and captions removed):

Whether Saxton noticed or not, this is not a proper demonstration of authenticity, because the only thing being paralleled is the interpolation. So the evidence is equally expected on both theories of the text. This doesn’t demonstrate any of the interpolated material was originally in Chapter 2. It shows the author of verses 13–16 (and just those verses) built them out of themes spread across the entirety of Chapter 1. But that could be the literary activity of the interpolator. I think more likely it’s 14–16 that are, and I will assume so from now on. Because I now think verse 13 is by Paul (as could be the first part of 14, but I won’t get into that here). Hence it is notable that more than half of Hurd’s parallelisms all occur in verse 13, not the interpolation. With one single verse doing most of his work, and that verse not even all that suspect, this is already telling. But regardless, that his “parallel” only exists with the suspect material leaves all the arguments against authenticity in full force (only some of which I brief in There Is No Logically Sound Case). But there are also problems even with the parallel itself.

First, to get this result, Hurd had to omit a bunch of things from the suspect verses that don’t line up with anything in Chapter 1. Just right-click and open this link and take a look and compare the second column and notice what Hurd leaves out; then do the same with Chapter 1. This is cheating. The parallel is mostly in Hurd’s imagination. When we look at the actual texts, they don’t actually parallel each other very well. Parallels don’t require every detail to be repeated, and they can thematically span whole blocks of text. But when substantive and distinctive material has to be omitted to make the parallel work, you are fudging, not finding. For example, the author of 2:14–16 belabors a list of crimes of the Jews (five participial clauses beginning with and, a radically un-Pauline structure) that should be paralleled in Chapter 1 but conspicuously isn’t. It doesn’t look like the author of that Chapter knew he also wrote those coming verses. That suggests someone else did. Likewise, Chapter 1 has no knowledge of the Thessalonians enduring any persecution. That’s also missing from the parallel. And so on.

Worse, if you are claiming as parallels what are in fact anti-parallels, you are really in trouble. For example, look above: elements M in both columns actually contradict each other. The author of the first one only knows of a wrath to come. It’s always in the future (and Paul says so again and again across numerous letters, without distinction, from the beginning to the end of his career). They apparently didn’t get the memo that it had already come, in the past—as the author of the second column says. This means the author of that knows the author of the other, enough to emulate what they wrote; but the author of the other doesn’t know the author of that, enough to anticipate their reversal of what they just said. This is actually one of the reasons scholars doubt Paul wrote it. And they’re right. The parallel is real. It just can’t have been composed by Paul.

We see this happen as well with element J: in Chapter 2 it refers to a persecution of the same people supposedly being successfully evangelized in Chapter 1; but in Chapter 1 it refers to a suffering that preceded their evangelism altogether (and probably refers to Paul’s persecution, hindering his evangelizing them; that’s otherwise the only persecution he mentions: e.g., 2:1–2, 17–18). The author of verses 14–16 is accidentally or intentionally twisting Paul’s reference to something else into a claim of persecution of the Thessalonians. Paul would not do that. He would mention their enduring a persecution in his list of thanks and praises in Chapter 1. He would make an actual parallel. The same goes for element I, which in Chapters 1 and 2 are unrelated: in 2 it’s persecution after conversion; in 1, it’s trouble occurring before they were even evangelized.

By contrast, the parallel in verse 13 is real, it just isn’t the one Hurd noticed. Paul everywhere in his letters uses the phrase power or in power to refer to miracle-working (e.g. Romans 15:19, 1 Corinthians 2:3-5, 1 Corinthians 12:10). He means in Chapter 1 that they received and displayed Gifts of the Holy Spirit. They didn’t just hear and accept the gospel; it was proved to them by its effects. The author of 2:14–16 doesn’t know this. Hurd incorrectly imagined Paul meant by “power” some epistemological distinction between the mere word of men and the word of God, that they did not treat it as a human teaching but as God speaking to them. In that Paul parallels this in “at work in those who believe.” He is talking about the evidences confirming it. So Hurd’s F in chapter 2 actually parallels his G in chapter 1, not his F there. And the true parallel ends there.

Once we get past that, it falls apart. Element L in both columns fails to correspond properly in almost every detail. One centers the resurrection, the other never mentions it; one names Jesus, the other doesn’t; one is about a report of messengers, the other isn’t. The author is not trying very hard to do the one thing Hurd is alleging: craft an elegant literary parallel that reaffirms and recapitulates points in Chapter 2 here that were surveyed in Chapter 1. They are, instead, hastily contriving a few verses attacking the Jews in which they try to merely sound like Paul by lifting ideas from the first chapter, but changing them around to mean different things. You’ll also notice that Hurd has even transposed M and L with the theme of salvation: in Chapter 1 that belongs to element M; but element M in Chapter 2 is missing that, it’s been moved clumsily to element L instead (and that, we know, is stuffed inside a list of crimes, not hopes; a list which has no parallel at all in Chapter 1). That’s a fudge. Which by itself isn’t fatal to Hurd’s thesis (sometimes transpositions occur in parallels), but when you add it to all the rest, it’s looking bad for his thesis.

We see this all coming together in element H, where the author of 14–16 has altered Paul’s description of imitating his faithfulness into imitating Judean churches’ endurance—but the latter is precisely what Paul never mentions any thanks or praise for in Chapter 1. It’s out of the blue. The author of 14–16 is transforming Paul; Paul is not paralleling his own ideas. Elements A through G, however, could very well be by Paul. Notice they make sense on their own, without any of the continuing material. I think Paul is ending his thought there. Then some other author decided to tack in this whammy about how the Jews are totes evil and deserve everything they get, and God has even visited an actual final wrath upon them for it. It doesn’t fit in parallel structure at all. It’s fudged—by either the forger, or Hurd, depending on which element we’re looking at.

Even before we fix all of Hurd’s fudges (and especially after we do), the “parallel” he draws only highlights how out of place verses 14–16 are. They don’t parallel Chapter 1; they contradict it. And they stuff all kinds of extra things in that make no sense in either Chapter. This parallel structure illustrates that the author of Chapter 1 had never heard of the content of 2:14–16; whereas the author of those verses definitely knew about the content of Chapter 1 so as to shred spare parts from it to assemble and insert a quasi-Pauline tirade against the Jews that serves no identifiable purpose in the letter.

Again, this is just a tip of the iceberg. I’m not making a comprehensive argument against the authenticity of these verses here. There is a lot more evidence besides this; and there are a lot of apologetics besides this, that also falls apart in its own ways. My only point here is that literary analysis has to be sound; it has to follow coherent and established procedures. It can’t cherry-pick evidence and ignore poor fits between hypothesis and evidence. Any one of the things here could happen in a real parallel; none is a “slam dunk” against it (though some carry more weight than others). But what cannot be denied is that a real parallel would not contain so many incongruities as this. It would not require so much fudging. That it does is what is evidence against Hurd’s point. He is forcing a fit, not finding one. And in the process he is only bringing into clearer view what is wrong with verses 14–16. This is, quintessentially, a bad argument.

The Saxton Argument

Okay. That’s Hurd—an actual professional with real expertise who can read Greek. Now let’s get to Saxton’s attempt to jump in with some amazing new discovery. He starts with this proposed chiasmus (which I think he gets from an online document by an engineering professor by the name of Hajime Murai):

Most of this is a proper chaismus. And it’s actually from Paul. There are problems with it (e.g. a lot of gaps in what are supposed to be sections B and B’ that don’t line up). But where Saxton particularly drops the ball is precisely where it is supposed to pick up the interpolation as a part of the original: verses 14–16, or A’. There is no actual parallel to this in A, or verses 1–2. There, Paul refers to himself being persecuted and thus hindered in evangelizing the Thessalonians, but succeeding anyway. This parallels 1:6, where he mentions suffering occurring before he evangelized the Thessalonians, not after. He is talking about his tribulations in bringing them the gospel. He there has no knowledge of them having faced any tribulations afterward. Multiple verses in praising them, and their enduring their own persecution never comes up. Which means Paul had no idea of it. That is being added by the interpolator (I suspect on inspiration from the forgery of 2 Thessalonians, which invented the idea).

Saxton’s section A makes no mention of the crimes of the Jews, a persecution of Thessalonians, or killing anyone. It doesn’t mention Jews hindering him at all (it is entirely, and thus deliberately, non-specific). Its only commonality with Saxton’s A’ is the theme of hindering and persecution; but the author of that has completely transformed what Paul was doing with that theme into a completely unrelated tirade against the Jews, which has no functional place in the letter. Hence the very thing in his A’ that does not look like it is from Paul is what is not paralleled in his A. The chiasmus he wants, does not exist. The interpolator certainly has taken up a theme from Paul here; but he has done something completely different with it.

The actual A’ is what we expect it to be: 1 Thess. 2:17–18, which is an obvious recapitulation of 1 Thess. 2:1–2:

• “You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results. We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.

• “But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. 18 For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan blocked our way.

Here in the Greek we see a clever repetition of the verb eidô, in its sense as “know” (twice, in verses 1 and 2), and in its (regular) sense of “see” (in verse 17; indeed also twice by pun, the phrase “for a short time” using the orthographically identical ὥρας, “hour”). We have a repetition of the address (“brethren”). We have recapitulated references to his visiting them, with a reversal of success (past, in verses 1–2; future, across verses 17–18; then: successful in verses 1–2; foiled in verses 17-18). We have Paul being hindered by opposition in both sections (neither mentioning “the Jews”). We have a reference to God bringing success (v. 2); then a reference to Satan hindering success (v. 18). We have clever parallels more evident in the Greek, like οἴδατε ἐν Φιλίπποις ἐπαρρησιασάμεθα (“see/know in Philippi, speaking freely”) in v. 2 being matched by ἰδεῖν ἐν πολλῇ ἐπιθυμίᾳ (“see/know, in much desire”) in v. 18, which also parallels ἐν πολλῷ ἀγῶνι (“in much conflict”) in v. 2. In this parallel, A starts with “you,” and A’ starts with “we”; A soon transitions to “to you,” and A’ soon transitions to “from you.” Note also the recapitulation of the filial metaphor (tekna, “children,” first of a mother, v. 7, then of a father, v. 11) now in “being orphaned” (v. 17). This is the same author. This metaphor is absent everywhere from the anti-Jewish tirade. As are all the other parallels. That is a different author. Whoever was constructing the chiasmus Saxton detects skipped directly from verse 13 to verse 17. That is Paul. Verses 17–18 are what a chiastic parallel looks like in connection to verses 1–2. This means Saxton’s own evidence actually proves that verses 14–16 interrupt the chiasmus and thus are not by the same author. He has proved interpolation!

Then Saxton Queers Hurd’s Pitch

Besides coming up with that boner, Saxton also tries to help Hurd by eagerly pointing out “more” parallels confirming Hurd’s. It’s a disaster. Again, not a chiasmus. And of course, we already know Hurd’s parallel is not a demonstration of anything Saxton wants. It just shows that the interpolator was cannibalizing ideas and vocabulary from the real letter to construct his fake addition to it. But regardless, Saxton tries to “help” Hurd in ways Hurd would wish he hadn’t. So we get this weird mishmash:

As you can see here, even Saxton’s attempted model skips over a bunch of material in both comparanda (making this a bad parallel), and the matching material from the interpolation (everything after, certainly, verse 2:14a) is contradictory (e.g. a wrath coming only in future has now become a wrath already come in the past; a suffering prior to the Thessalonians’ conversion has now become a suffering caused by it; and even the Greek has changed, from Paul’s θλίψει to the interpolator’s ἐπάθετε), or else is a non-parallel.

For example, how does “keep us from speaking” the gospel parallel “we do not need to say anything about” your reputation? They share neither subject nor point. And any vocabulary they share is commonplace (e.g., the verb for “speak” here is used by Paul three times across chs. 1–2). Do you want to know what verse actually is paralleled here? 1 Thess. 2:16 is almost identical to 1 Thess. 2:2 in vocabulary, point, and subject: “to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition” (v. 2) becomes “[Jews] keep us from telling Gentiles [the gospel]” (v. 16). The author of verse 16 is trying to ape the author of verse 2. But this destroys Hurd’s parallel—thus signaling it isn’t authentic. And insofar as one might try to reuse it to “fix” Saxton’s chiasmus, it is clearly eclipsed by verses 17–18 already better serving for that. The author of verses 14–16 is simply lifting ideas from Paul to construct an out-of-place digression here—again, he’s simply borrowing the idea of hindering the gospel as a pretext for an unrelated spinoff point about “the Jews.” Because the rest simply doesn’t jive: “drove us out” (ἐκδιωξάντων, v. 2:15) does not parallel “news rang out” (ἐξήχηται, v. 1:8) in any way at all (neither subject, vocabulary, or point); nor does “imitator’s of God’s churches” (2:14a) parallel “brethren loved by God” (1:4); there is no line-up with the list of crimes or mention of Jews or even mention of a Thessalonian persecution. So Saxton’s parallel doesn’t exist either. This isn’t helping Hurd.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing. Literary structure is actually a very helpful tool of analysis of ancient texts and their intentions and meanings; and can be used to validate material as authentic. But only when you do it correctly. Parallels have to be real, not fudged or bogus. They can’t skip tons of vital material; doing that amounts to a cherry-picking fallacy, where you are creating a parallel by pretending text that disproves it doesn’t exist. And to be clear, parallels can be padded, so in recognizing them material can be skipped—as long as it does not contradict the parallel. Its the contradictory material that is the problem. Conversely, parallelisms have to be distinct; they cannot be identified on ubiquitously common features like the word for “say,” unless there are an unusual number of them or they are tied to distinctive yet similar themes (see Proving History, pp. 192–205, for a discussion of the probabilistic logic of identifying parallelisms). Likewise, while parallels often enjoy the rhetoric of reversals and inversions (e.g., Paul’s successful visit in the face of opposition in A (2:1–2) paralleling his unsuccessful visit in the face of opposition in A’ (2:17–18)), that doesn’t mean they allow of complete contradictions (e.g., an author who says the wrath comes in the future is not going to say just a couple paragraphs later that it has already come; an author who shows no knowledge of a Thessalonian persecution is not going to suddenly discover a Thessalonian persecution a couple of paragraphs later; praising someone’s reputation spreading does not parallel lamenting someone else being exiled, and while that could be jiggered to suggest an inversion of concepts, it’s awkward, and not paired with enough other links to indicate an intended parallel). That actually disproves a parallel.

By contrast, notice the large number of semantically and rhetorically brilliant ways verses 2:17–18 parallel and invert verses 2:1–2: that is what a parallel looks like. Because that many of such peculiar matches in so brief a space is too improbable to be by accident, and clearly are designed to recapitulate each other. But since vv. 17–18 being the mirror of vv. 1–2 completes the chiasmus across 1 Thessalonians 2, that leaves verses 14–16 the odd man out, a strange orphaned point breaking the entire intended structure of the chapter. And that signals it’s a fake. It’s an intrusion into what was originally a much more elegant construction of Paul’s rhetorical engineering. For more of what disproves this material’s inauthenticity, see, again, my previous article There Is No Logically Sound Case Against Interpolation in 1 Thessalonians 2.