Pastoral epistles

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The three pastoral epistles are books of the canonical New Testament: the First Epistle to Timothy (1 Timothy) the Second Epistle to Timothy (2 Timothy), and the Epistle to Titus. They are presented as letters from Paul of Tarsus to Timothy and to Titus. They are generally discussed as a group (sometimes with the addition of the Epistle to Philemon) and are given the title 'pastoral' not because they are uniquely caring or addressing personal needs, but because they are distinctive in being addressed to an individual person rather than a whole church or group of churches.

1 The epistles
2 Authorship and date
- 2.1 Traditional viewpoint
- 2.2 Contemporary viewpoint
3 Date
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The epistles

[edit] 1 Timothy

The epistle (letter) consists mainly of counsels to Timothy regarding the forms of worship and organization of the church, and the responsibilities resting on its several members, including episcopi (translated as "bishops") and diaconi ("deacons"); and secondly of exhortation to faithfulness in maintaining the truth amid surrounding errors (iv.iff), presented as a prophecy of erring teachers to come. The epistle's "irregular character, abrupt connections and loose transitions" (EB 1911) have led critics to discern later interpolations, such as the epistle-concluding 6:20–21, read as a reference to Marcion of Sinope, and lines that appear to be marginal glosses that have been copied into the body of the text.

[edit] 2 Timothy

In this epistle the assumed author, Paul, entreats Timothy to come to him before winter, and to bring Mark with him (cf. Phil. 2:22). He was anticipating that "the time of his departure was at hand" (4:6), and he exhorts his "son Timothy" to all diligence and steadfastness in the face of false teachings, with advice about combatting them with reference to the teachings of the past, and to patience under persecution (1:6-15), and to a faithful discharge of all the duties of his office (4:1-5), with all the solemnity of one who was about to appear before the Judge of the quick and the dead.

[edit] Titus

This short letter is addressed to Titus, a Christian worker in Crete, and is traditionally divided into three chapters. It includes advice on the character required of Church leaders (chapter 1), a structure and hierarchy for Christian teaching within the church (chapter 2), and the kind of godly life and moral action required of Christians in response to God's grace and gift of the Holy Spirit (chapter 3). It includes the line quoted by the author from a Cretan source: "Cretans are always liars, wicked beasts, and lazy gluttons" 1:12

[edit] Authorship and date

[edit] Traditional viewpoint

The traditional view accepts Paul as the author. William Paley wrote in Horae Paulinae (1785),

Both letters were addressed to persons left by the writer to preside in their respective churches during his absence. Both letters are principally occupied in describing the qualifications to be sought for in those whom they should appoint to offices in the church; and the ingredients of this description are in both letters nearly the same. Timothy and Titus are likewise cautioned against the same prevailing corruptions, and in particular against the same misdirection of their cares and studies.

This affinity obtains not only in the subject of the letters, which from the similarity of situation in the persons to whom they were addressed might be expected to be somewhat alike, but extends in a great variety of instances to the phrases and expressions. The writer accosts his two friends with the same salutation, and passes on to the business of his letter by the same transition (comp. 1 Tim. 1:2, 3 with Titus 1:4, 5; 1 Tim.1:4 with Titus 1:13, 14; 3:9; 1 Tim. 4:12 with Titus 2:7, 15).

Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) gives a date for the First Epistle to Timothy of around AD 66 or 67 and says of 2 Timothy, "It was probably written a year or so after the first, and from Rome, where Paul was for a second time a prisoner, and was sent to Timothy by the hands of Tychicus," as the text indicates. Of the Epistle to Titus, Easton's says "Paul's authorship was undisputed in antiquity, as far as known, but is frequently doubted today. It was probably written about the same time as the First Epistle to Timothy, with which it has many affinities."

Traditionalists date the Epistle to Titus from the circumstance that it was written after Paul's visit to Crete in Titus 1:5. That visit could not be the one referred to in Acts 27:7, when Paul was on his voyage to Rome as a prisoner, and where he continued a prisoner for two years. Thus traditional exegesis supposes that after his release Paul sailed from Rome into Asia, passing Crete by the way, and that there he left Titus "to set in order the things that were wanting." Thence he would have gone to Ephesus, where he left Timothy, and from Ephesus to Macedonia, where he wrote the First Epistle to Timothy, and thence, according to the superscription of this epistle, to Nicopolis in Epirus, from which place he wrote to Titus, about A.D. 66 or 67.

[edit] Contemporary viewpoint

On the basis of the language and content of the pastoral epistles, many scholars today doubt that they were written by Paul, and believe that they were written after his death. Critics examining the text fail to find its vocabulary and literary style similar to Paul's unquestionably authentic letters, fail to fit the life situation of Paul in the epistles into Paul's reconstructed biography, and identify principles of the emerged Christian church rather than those of the apostolic generation.

In the First Epistle to Timothy, for example, the task of preserving the tradition is entrusted to ordained presbyters; the clear sense of presbuteros as an indication of an office, is a sense that to these scholars seems alien to Paul and the apostolic generation. Examples of other offices include the twelve apostles in Acts (an additional apostle was selected to replace Judas Iscariot) and the appointment of seven deacons, thus establishing the office of the diaconate. Presbuteros is sometimes translated as elder; by a longer route it is also the Greek root for the English word priest. (The office of presbyter is also mentioned in James chapter 5.)

A second example would be gender roles depicted in the letters, which proscribe roles for women that appear to deviate from Pauls eariler more egalitarian teaching that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

Conversely, those who ascribe the books to Paul find their placement fits within his life and work (as above), and see the linguistical differences as complementary to differences in the recipients. Other Pauline epistles have fledgling congregations as the audience, the pastoral epistles are directed to Paul's close companions, evangelists whom he has extensively worked with and trained. In this view, linguistic differences are to be expected, if one is to assert Pauline authorship to them. However, many scholars have seen the arguments against Pauline authorship as convincing.

[edit] Date

Though Irenaeus made extensive use of the two epistles to Timothy as the prime force of his anti-gnostic campaign, ca 170 CE, there is no certain quotation of any of these epistles before him. Proposals by critical scholars for the date of their composition have ranged from the first century to well into the second.

The later dates are usually based on the contention that the Pastorals are responding to specific second-century developments (Marcionism, gnosticism); the fact that they are absent from Marcion's canon, assembled ca 140, is not an overly significant part of the argument for their date (though it does weigh into the larger body of evidence), for Marcion's exclusionary canon omitted all New Testament books save edited versions of Luke and the Pauline epistles, omitting the Epistle to the Hebrews and these pastoral epistles, according to Tertullian. However, scholars do not agree that the targets of the epistles' criticism can be definitely identified.

According to Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament, 1997), the majority of scholars who accept a post-Pauline date of composition for the Pastorals favor the period 80-100. Scholars supporting a date in this mid range can draw on the description in 2 Timothy 1:5 of Timothy's Christian mother and Grandmother who passed on their faith, as elluding to the original audience being third generation Christians.

More recently, earlier dates have been argued by scholars who have identified targets of the epistles' criticism among those also known to Ignatius and Polycarp, who died in the early second century.

Within the New Testament these letters area arranged in size order and some scholars doubt this represents chornological order, speculating that 2 Timothy was an eariler book than 1 Timothy.