Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
New Testament epistle ascribed to Paul
The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians is a Pauline epistle from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle, with Timothy as a co-author. Its authorship is disputed, with critical commentators being evenly divided on Pauline authorship. Those who reject its authenticity point to differences in style and theology between it and the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is undisputed.
Scholars who support its authenticity view it as having been written around 51–52 AD, shortly after the First Epistle. Those who see it as a later composition assign a date of around 80–115 AD.
The original text was written in Koine Greek.
Composition
Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians [...]
The authenticity of this epistle is still in dispute. James D. G. Dunn finds a “roughly even split among critical commentators on Colossians and 2 Thessalonians.” A survey of 111 scholars from the British New Testament Conference in 2011 found 63 in favor of authenticity, while 13 rejected Pauline authorship and 35 felt uncertain. Even assuming that it is authentic, this epistle was not sent by Paul alone, but by three people: Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.
As Professor Ernest Best, New Testament scholar, explains the problem:
[I]f we only possessed Second Thessalonians few scholars would doubt that Paul wrote it; but when Second Thessalonians is put alongside First Thessalonians then doubts appear.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Second Epistle to the Thessalonians” is new Testament epistle ascribed to Paul. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Second, Epistle and Thessalonians, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “new Testament epistle ascribed to Paul” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131107. VIAF identifies the subject as 292615356. The Library of Congress control number is n83010808. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Second Epistle to the Thessalonians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.