Not only do Paul and Jesus compare different referents to a thief, but they also employ different literary devices. Therefore, the different referents of “thief” in Paul’s and Jesus’s usage of the imagery decrease the probability that Paul is alluding to Jesus’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 5:2.
Nevertheless, the probability of a proposed allusion depends in part on the repetition of lexical connections between two texts. Admittedly, both Paul and Jesus are discussing the same event. In Jesus’s use of the imagery, “the Son of Man” is “the thief” (Matt 24:43, 44 Luke 12:39–40). However, Jesus does not use “day of the Lord” language in either Matthew 24:42–44 or Luke 12:39–40. Paul compares “the day of the Lord” to “a thief in the night” (1 Thess 5:2). Scholars who argue that Paul is alluding to a Jesus tradition in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 have overstated their case by neglecting to list the differences between Paul’s imagery in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and Jesus’s imagery in Matthew 24:42–44 and Luke 12:39–40. 8 In this respect, Joel 2:9 fares significantly better than Matthew 24:42 upon close inspection. Lexical Evidence for an Allusion to Joel 2:9īeale’s second criterion for evaluating potential allusions is whether “there is a significant degree of verbatim repetition of words or syntactical patterns,” which Beale calls volume. In any case, Joel was more available to Paul for a possible allusion in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 than Matthew 24 or Jesus tradition behind it.
He may or may not have had access to an oral tradition of Jesus’s Olivet Discourse (later recorded in Matthew 24, as well as in Mark 13 and Luke 21). 7 Paul therefore likely did not have a copy of Matthew’s Gospel when he wrote 1 Thessalonians. 6 Even conservative scholars, however, date Matthew to the 60s CE. Many scholars agree that 1 Thessalonians should be dated to the early 50s CE. 5 By contrast, Paul may or may not have had access to Matthew or the specific Jesus tradition Matthew cited in Matthew 24:42. 4 Paul therefore had access both to Hebrew and Greek copies of the OT. Of Paul’s 107 identified OT citations across his corpus, Moisés Silva identified most citations as agreeing with both the Septuagint and Hebrew Masoretic Text, but Paul 7 times agreed with the MT against the LXX. Paul likely had access to both Hebrew and Greek texts of Joel. Availability of Joel 2:9 to Paulīeale’s first criterion for evaluating potential allusions is the source text’s availability to the writer. Because Joel 2:9 meets the criteria for allusions better than Matthew 24:42 in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, Paul more likely drew from Joel in comparing the day of the Lord to a thief in the night than from Matthew or Jesus tradition. 3 I will also show how Matthew 24:42 fails some of those criteria. Beale lists in his Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament for evaluating potential allusions. To argue that Joel 2:9 is more likely the source of Paul’s comparison of the day of the Lord to a thief in the night, I will demonstrate that Joel 2:9 meets or can answer objections from all seven criteria that G. 2 Though many NT scholars have argued that Paul alludes to the words of Jesus in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, he is more likely alluding to Joel 2:9. Hundreds of years before Jesus compared his return to a thief’s invasion of a home, Joel had foretold a day of the Lord that would afflict God’s people in the form of an invading army that would overtake Jerusalem “like a thief” (Joel 2:9). Though this conclusion is one possible explanation for Paul’s simile, NT scholars have neglected to examine whether another, earlier usage of this comparison may better account for Paul’s language in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 4. Many of these scholars have argued that Paul’s comparison of the day of the Lord to a thief in the night alludes to Jesus’s earlier teaching on the subject. 1 As numerous scholars have noted, Jesus used the image of a thief when prophesying his second coming (Matt 24:42–44 Luke 12:39–40). Paul’s comparison of “the day of the Lord” to “a thief in the night” in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 4 did not originate with him. Paul’s contextually faithful interpretation of Joel 2:9 is a model for how Christians should continue to interpret OT prophetic literature. Beale’s Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. While the scholarly consensus is that the thief imagery owes to Jesus’s thief imagery for his second coming in Matthew 24:42–44 or Luke 12:39–40, Joel 2:9 better fits the criteria for allusions identified in G. This article argues that Paul compares the day of the Lord to a thief in the night in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 because of the influence of Joel 2:9.
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