The ImITaTIon hypoThesIs: pseudepIgraphIc remarks on
2 ThessalonIans wITh help from documenTary papyrI
christina m. kreinecker
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
several of the letters of the corpus paulinum have been claimed to be of
doubtful authorship, 2 Thessalonians (2 Thess) being prominent among
them. up to the present day, the arguments for and against are mani-
fold, based on content, style, theology, and many other observations. no
answer has yet been found that would remove all doubts and could settle
the matter definitely in one direction or the other.
In this article, I will not focus on traditional arguments, but will take a
closer look into documentary papyri.1 documentary papyri are a primary
source for the actual language spoken and used at the time the new Tes-
tament was written (koine greek). The question whether documentary
papyri can help us to identify or—to be more cautious—to comment on
possible pseudepigraphy among the letters belonging to the corpus pau-
linum might be astonishing on first glance: how can thousands of indi-
vidual (and mostly independent) pieces possibly provide any information
about the author of 2 Thessalonians? how are they supposed to illumi-
nate the background of this letter in comparison to other letters of the
pauline corpus? of course, we cannot expect to get any “direct” answers
to the question of the identity of the author of 2 Thessalonians. even if
there were a document among the papyri, such as a letter from a paul to a
Timothy, saying, “I paul saw a letter as if written by me but I tell you it is
not” or the opposite, “I paul heard people say this letter is not by me but
I tell you it is,” how could we begin to assess its trustworthiness? This kind
of evidence would not be an answer but would just puzzle us further. The
way in which documentary papyri can help us to bring forward arguments
for or against pseudepigraphy is of a different nature—and for the lack of
a better word I call this evidence “indirect.”
1 The ideas expressed in this article were first published in german in christina m.
kreinecker, 2. Thessaloniker (pknT 3; göttingen: Vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 2010), 75–99.
documentary papyri are quoted according to John f. oates and roger s. Bagnall et al.,
Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets (5th ed.;
Baspsup 9; oakville and oxford: american society of papyrologists, 2001) (for the most
recent version cf. http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html).