other · 64 · Thessalonica
Demas is greeted in Colossians and in Philemon as a fellow worker, in the same breath as Luke and Mark. In the last letter he is gone: Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. That is the entire explanation offered, and the New Testament names no other defection like it — plenty of opponents, plenty of false teachers, but only one former colleague who simply left. The sentence that follows is the one that gives it weight: only Luke is with me. Whether Thessalonica means he went home or went to trade is not said. Later writers filled the silence in with apostasy and idolatry, none of it earlier than the fourth century, and none of it is recorded here. What is recorded is that he was greeted last in the Colossians list, and without the commendation everyone else in it receives.
Paul alone but for Luke, and the one defection the New Testament records by name.