Introductory Issues#

Theme#

First and Second Timothy and Titus constitute the Pastoral Letters, so called because Paul writes them to young pastors (literally, “shepherds”). They contain instructions concerning the administrative responsibilities of Timothy and Titus in churches, plus warnings against heresy and personal matters.

Subsidiary Purposes#

In addition to the administrative instructions, Paul summons Titus to come to him in Nicopolis on the west coast of Greece. And in 2 Timothy, Paul, reminiscing over his past career and expecting his execution soon, asks Timothy to come to him in Rome before winter (1:17; 4:6-9, 21). Paul fears that otherwise he may never see Timothy again, for navigation ceases during winter and the execution might occur in the meantime.

The Question of Authenticity#

Modern higher critical scholarship casts more doubt on the authenticity of these letters than on any of the others claiming authorship by Paul. According to the view that denies his authorship, a pseudonymous writer of the second century is using the authority of Paul’s name to combat the rising tide of Gnosticism. It is said either that the Pastorals are wholly pseudonymous or, more often, that an admirer of Paul incorporates authentically Pauline fragments in writing the letters after Paul’s lifetime.

Fragmentary Theory#

Disagreement exists concerning what sections of the Pastorals contain the supposed fragments written by Paul. Moreover, it is unlikely that mere fragments of genuinely Pauline letters would be preserved, especially since most of them are of a personal nature and lack theological attractiveness. It is still more unlikely that they would later be incorporated into longer pseudonymous letters in a haphazard way. And why would a forger concentrate almost all the fragments in 2 Timothy instead of distributing them evenly throughout the Pastorals? For that matter, why does he write three Pastorals? Their contents do not differ enough to indicate why he should be writing three instead of one.

Pauline Authorship#

In favor of authorship by Paul stands the claim in the first verse of each pastoral that he is writing. Against this claim it is argued that in ancient times and in the early church pseudonymous writing was an accepted literary practice (“pious forgery”). But 2 Thessalonians 2:2 and 3:17 warn against forgeries in Paul’s name, and the early church expelled an elder from ecclesiastical office for writing pseudonymously and exercised itself over questions of authorship, as shown, for example, by debate on the authorship of Hebrews and by hesitancy in adopting a book of unknown authorship into the New Testament canon.

Furthermore, it is very improbable that a late admirer of Paul would have called him “the foremost of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:16). The Pastorals are much closer in style and content to Paul’s other letters than are noncanonical and indubitably pseudonymous books to the authentic writings of those in whose names they were forged.

Vocabulary and Style#

Doubt about Paul’s authorship stems primarily from differences in vocabulary and grammatical style that appear when the Pastorals are compared with other Pauline letters. Comparisons consist of statistical tables, sometimes drawn up with the aid of computers. But this scientific-sounding objection to Pauline authorship does not take sufficient account of differences in vocabulary and style as caused by differences in subject matter and addressees and by changes in a person’s writing style because of environment, age, experience, and the sheer passage of time. Perhaps even more significant is the possibility that stylistic differences stem from different amanuenses and from Paul’s giving greater freedom to his amanuenses in the exact wording of his thoughts at some times than at other times.

Yet again, the generally accepted Pauline letters, or extended passages within them, sometimes exhibit the same kinds of differences that assertedly disprove Paul’s authorship of the Pastorals. And most of the words occurring only in the Pastorals among his letters also occur in the Septuagint and in extrabiblical Greek literature of the first century, so that the words must have belonged to his and his amanuenses’ vocabulary.

Marcion’s Omission#

Doubters of Pauline authorship also contend that the Gnostic heretic Marcion omitted the Pastorals from his New Testament canon because Paul did not write them. But Marcion had a propensity for rejecting parts of the New Testament accepted by orthodox Christians.

He rejected Matthew, Mark, and John, and excised portions of Luke.

The statement that “the law is good” (1 Timothy 1:8) must have offended Marcion’s radical rejection of the Old Testament, and the disparaging reference to “what is falsely called knowledge [Greek: gnōsis]” (1 Timothy 6:20) must also have offended him because of his calling his own system of doctrine gnōsis—ample reasons from his standpoint for omitting the Pastorals without any implication that they are pseudonymous.

Gnosticism#

Some also assert that the Pastorals attack a kind of Gnosticism that arose only after Paul’s lifetime. To be sure, the asceticism criticized in 1 Timothy 4:3 (“forbidding people to marry and teaching them to abstain from foods”) sounds like a branch of later Gnosticism. Nevertheless, the prominent Jewish element in the false teaching—“those of the circumcision,” “Jewish myths,” “disputes about the law” (Titus 1:10, 14; 3:9)—disproves that the Pastorals necessarily attack later Gnosticism

for later Gnosticism, though it borrowed its cosmological myth from Judaism, was opposed to the other features of Judaism.

The Pastorals strike rather at the mixed kind of heresy rebutted earlier in Colossians and now known to have originated in syncretistic Judaism of a pre-Christian variety. Thus, an early date for the Pastorals is preferable; and an early date favors authorship by Paul, since a pious forger would not likely have succeeded in using Paul’s name so close to Paul’s lifetime.

Ecclesiastical Structure#

It is claimed that the Pastorals reflect a more highly organized ecclesiastical structure than had developed during the lifetime of Paul. But they mention only elders (or bishops), deacons, and widows, all of whom figure earlier in the New Testament period as distinct classes within the church. Moreover, the pre-Christian Dead Sea Scrolls describe an officer in the Qumran community who bears remarkable similarity to the bishops (literally, “overseers, superintendents”) who appear in the Pastorals.

Instructions for the appointment of elders by Timothy and Titus (1 Timothy 5:22; Titus 1:5) are due, not to advanced, hierarchical church government, but to the starting of new churches under missionary conditions, just as Paul and Barnabas at a very early date appointed elders for the new churches in South Galatia (Acts 14:23).

Orthodoxy#

In the same way it is argued that the Pastorals’ emphasis on orthodoxy of doctrine implies a post-Pauline stage of theological development when Christian doctrine was considered complete and therefore to be defended from corruption rather than widened in scope. But the defense of traditional Christian orthodoxy characterized Paul’s letters from the very earliest. Galatians as a whole and the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians provide outstanding examples.

Conflicting Data#

Finally, some maintain that the Pastorals give historical and geographical data which do not harmonize with Paul’s career as recorded in Acts and the other letters. These are supposed to be the telltale mistakes of a pious forger. The conflicting data are:

• Paul left Timothy in Ephesus when he traveled on to Macedonia (1 Timothy 1:3; contrast Acts 20:4-6)

• Demas has deserted Paul (2 Timothy 4:10—yet Demas is still with Paul in Philemon 24)

• Paul left Titus in Crete (Titus 1:5) and went to Nicopolis (Titus 3:12) while Titus proceeded to Dalmatia (2 Timothy 4:10—whereas in Acts, Paul visits neither Crete nor Nicopolis)

Two Roman Imprisonments#

Answering the foregoing argument is the hypothesis that Paul was acquitted and released from his first Roman imprisonment; that he enjoyed a period of freedom, into which the travel data of the Pastorals fit; and that he was later reimprisoned and condemned to die as a martyr for the Christian faith. Thus the historical and geographical data of the Pastorals refer to events that took place after the close of Acts.

The Pastorals themselves constitute evidence favoring this hypothesis, but independent support comes from Paul’s expectation of being released in Philippians 1:19, 25; 2:24, written most likely during the first Roman imprisonment, in contrast with Paul’s failure to entertain any possibility of release in 2 Timothy 4:6-8, written during the hypothesized second Roman imprisonment.

Order of Writing#

We may conclude that Paul wrote 1 Timothy and Titus between the imprisonments and 2 Timothy during the second imprisonment, just before his martyrdom. Whether or not he ever reached Spain, as planned in Romans 15:24, 28, remains unknown. First Clement 5:7 says that he “reached the limits of the West,” a statement that may be interpreted as a reference either to Rome or to Spain at the far western end of the Mediterranean Basin.

Summary#

The Pastoral Letters—1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—have disputed authorship, mainly because of differences from other letters whose authorship by Paul is undisputed. But similar differences within those undisputed letters, changing circumstances, and Paul’s use of various amanuenses support the early church tradition of Pauline authorship. Under this view Paul suffered two imprisonments in Rome, wrote 1 Timothy and Titus between them, and wrote 2 Timothy during the second one shortly before his martyrdom.

The overarching purpose of the Pastorals is to instruct Timothy and Titus on the administration of church life. The instructions deal by and large with

• orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right conduct) over against heterodoxy (wrong belief) and heteropraxy (wrong conduct)

• the proper organization of the church; the qualifications of bishops/elders, deacons, deaconesses or deacons’ wives, and widows

• the roles of these and others, both men and women, in the church

• the behavior of Timothy and Titus toward various classes in the church.

Personal details concerning the last phase of Paul’s life, plus reminiscences of earlier phases, come up here and there in the Pastorals.