Paul Foster, and Kretzmann. According to Leon Moris in 1986, the majority of current scholars at that time still held to Paul's authorship of 2 Thessalonians. Opposition to authenticity At least as early as 1798, when Johann Ernst Christian Schmidt published his opinion, Paul's authorship of this epistle was questioned. More recent challenges to this traditional belief came from scholars such as William Wrede in 1903 and Alfred Loisy in 1933, who challenged the traditional view of the authorship. Regarding Nicholl's argument for authenticity, on the one hand, it is worth noting that at least some forged Pauline letters were written well after a date modern scholars might deem early enough for the letter to be considered Pauline, such as the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, estimated to have been written around 160-170 CE; forgers were not forced to write close in time to the writers they imitated. On the other hand, it is not clear that a forger would need to ensure his writing was not contemporaneous with 1 Thessalonians if he was not actually writing the letter to Thessalonica; furthermore, if Nicholls is correct in believing 2 Thessalonians to be authentic, then Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:2 provides evidence that forgeries in his name already existed in his own lifetime, discrediting his argument that forgers would take care to write far enough apart in time to ensure contemporaries could not denounce the forgery. In his book Forged, New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman puts forward some of the most common arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians. For example, he argues that the views concerning the Second Coming of Christ expressed in 2 Thessalonians differ so strikingly from those found in 1 Thessalonians that they cannot be written by the same author. Several modern scholars agree with Ehrman that 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul but by an associate or disciple after his death. Scholars include Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Vincent Smiles, Udo Schnelle, Eugene Boring, and Joseph Kelly. Norman Perrin observes, "The best understanding of 2 Thessalonians[...] is to see it as a deliberate imitation of 1 Thessalonians, updating the apostle's thought." Perrin bases this claim on his hypothesis that prayer at the time usually treated God the Father as ultimate judge, rather than Jesus. Background Thessalonica was the second city in Europe where Paul helped to create an organized Christian community. At some point after the