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WEDDING TEXTUAL AND RHETORICAL CRITICISM TO UNDERSTAND

THE TEXT OF 1 THESSALONIANS 2.7

Timothy B. Sailors
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge CB3 0DG

The discussion over the variant readings finioi and v1Íntot in 1 Thess.
2.7 is not a new one.’ Since the time of Clement of Alexandria the two
readings have been noted and explanations offered for one, the other, or
both. Was Paul referring to himself and his fellow apostles as ’gentle’
or as ’babies’? The increased popularity of the text-critical method (as

practiced, for example, by Westcott and Hort) and the discovery of the
papyri in Egypt led many text critics and commentators of the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries to prefer the older, wider, and
better attested reading v1ÍntOL This, in fact, has become the reading in

*
This present article, and the research presented herein, was originally given
as a paper at the 1998 Upper Midwest Regional Meeting of the AAR/SBL (St Paul,
Minnesota, April 17-18, 1998).
1. For a short history of the interpretation of this variant, see Charles Crawford,
’The "Tiny" Problem of 1 Thessalonians 2,7: The Case of the Curious Vocative’,
Bib 54 (1973), pp. 69-72.
2. E.g., B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original
Greek (Cambridge and London: 1881, 2nd edn, 1896); Friedrich Zimmer, Der Text
der Thessalonicherbrief samt textkritischem Apparat und Kommentar (Quedlin-
burg : Chr. Friedr. Viewegs, 1893); J.B. Lightfoot, Notes on the Epistles of St Paul
from Unpublished Commentaries (London: Macmillan, 1895; repr. Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1995); G.G. Findlay, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Thessa-
lonians (CGTSC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904); J.E. Frame, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul to the Thessalonians
(ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912); J. Knabenbauer, Commentarius in S. Pauli
Apostoli epistolas. V. Epistolae ad Thessalonicenses, ad Timotheum, ad Titum et ad

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