The tradition delivered by the missionaries at the foundation of the Thessalonian church had been received as authoritative but had, at the same time, caused the new converts to grieve hopelessly over fellow believers who had died. In response to this situation Paul could not simply abrogate the founding tradition in favour of some new and more palatable ‘word of the Lord’. However, he could perhaps guide the Thessalonians towards an alternative interpretation of the authority they had already embraced. This observation enables the isolation of two distinctive properties of the founding tradition: it caused the Thessalonians’ grief, while also being open to Paul’s alternative reinterpretation. These two features, in combination with other indicators in 1 Thessalonians, provide a means of rigorously testing Didache 16 as a potential candidate for the role of the eschatological tradition behind 1 Thessalonians.
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