The Story Behind My Books: 1-2 Thessalonians (Book #8)
Zondervan Critical Introductions to the New Testament
**Substack Series**
This series (inspired by Mike Bird’s Substack series on his previous work) is called “The Story Behind My Books” (2010-2025). Fifteen years is a good time for a rear-view mirror perspective. I offer stories about how the book came to be and my thoughts now as I look back.
Book #8: 1-2 Thessalonians (Zondervan Critical Introductions to the NT)
This is yet another occasion where I have benefited from my friendship with fellow NT scholar Mike Bird. Mike came up with this idea of beefy technical introductions to each book of the NT. These are not commentaries, but rather imagine a book-length treatment of just “introductory matters”: background, authorship, situation, opponents (if relevant), etc.
Mike had previously commissioned me to work on 1-2 Thessalonians for the New Covenant (Cascade Books) series, so he knew I was already working on these Pauline texts. He graciously invited me to do this critical introduction. I said “yes” for several reasons:
I respect Mike as an editor and I wanted to work with him again
I was already digging into scholarship on these texts
I wanted to work with Zondervan
I liked the idea of this series
I have to say, this was a very difficult project to complete, simply because I had to read as much as I could of the vast scholarship on 1-2 Thessalonians. Mike told me to read everything academic (books, journal articles, essays) in English over the last 30-40 years and the most important works in German and French. I did the best I could—I think I cited around 500 pieces of scholarship. This was like a second dissertation for me, a massive amount of research to summarize. But I now see the incredible value of this kind of volume, and I can’t wait to read other volumes as they are published. I may have access to an old list (for various reasons people drop out of reference series), but according to one source, here are some of the expected authors: Mark Strauss (Gospel of Mark), Steve Walton (Acts), Tim Gombis (Romans), Brian Rosner (1 Corinthians), Lynn Cohick (1-2 Timothy, Titus).
One of my favorite things about this series is that Zondervan made it very affordable: right now $17 on Amazon (hardcover). This makes it easy to plan to collect the whole set as volumes become available!
In retrospect: there is not much that comes to mind about how I would do it differently now. Perhaps, it could have been longer and slightly more technical, but at that time it was the longest manuscript I had ever worked on (320pp). Overall, I am very pleased with it and I hope it serves students and scholars well.