Pastoral epistles

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The three pastoral epistles are three 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 the Apostle 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 because they are addressed to individuals with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership. The term "pastorals" was popularized in 1703 by D. N. Berdot and in 1726 by Paul Anton.^[1]

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 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 episkopoi (translated as "bishops") and diakonoi ("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.

2 Timothy

The author (who identifies himself as Paul the Apostle) 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 combating 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 living and the dead.

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" (Titus 1:12).

Authorship

For Pauline authorship

Among the Apostolic Fathers, 'a strong case can be made for Ignatius' use of ... 1 and 2 Timothy'.^[2] Similarly for Polycarp.^[3] The unidentified author of the Muratorian fragment (c.170) lists the Pastorals as Pauline, while excluding others e.g. to the Laodiceans. Origen^[4] refer to the "fourteen epistles of Paul" without specifically naming Titus or Timothy.^[5] However it is believed that Origen wrote a commentary on at least the epistle to Titus.^[6]

Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) gives a date for the First Epistle to Timothy of around A.D. 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."

Adherents of the traditional position 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.

Those who ascribe the books to Paul find their placement fits within his life and work and see the linguistic 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. Johnson^[7] asserts the impossibility of demonstrating the authenticity of the Pastoral Letters. Donald Guthrie claims that the authorship of Paul is the most likely explanation and the burden of proof now falls to those who would dispute it.

Against Pauline authorship

On the basis of their language, content, and other factors, the pastoral epistles are today widely regarded as not having been written by Paul, but after his death.^[8] (Although the Second Epistle to Timothy is sometimes thought to be more likely than the other two to have been written by Paul.) Critics examining the texts fail to find their 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.

As an example of qualitative style arguments, in the First Epistle to Timothy 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 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 Paul's more egalitarian teaching that in Christ there is neither male nor female. Separate male and female roles, however, were not foreign to the authentic Pauline epistles; the First Letter to the Corinthians (14:34–35) commands silence from women during church services, stating that "it is a shame for women to speak in the church." This is widely regarded to be an interpolation by a later editor of 1 Corinthians of a passage from 1 Timothy 2:11–15 that states a similar "women should be silent in churches". This made 1 Corinthians more widely acceptable to church leaders in later times. If verses before or after 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 are read, it is fairly clear that verses 34 and 35 were inserted later.^{[citation needed]}

Similarly, some authors charge that the pastoral epistles seem to argue against a more developed Gnosticism than would be compatible with Paul's time.

Date

It is "highly probable that 1 and 2 Timothy were known and used by Polycarp".^[9] Irenaeus made extensive use of the two epistles to Timothy as the prime force of his anti-gnostic campaign, ca. 170 AD. Proposals by scholars for the date of their composition have ranged from the 1st century to well into the second.

The later dates are usually based on the hypothesis that the Pastorals are responding to specific 2nd-century developments (Marcionism, gnosticism). That Marcion (ca. 140) betrays knowledge of a collection of Paul's letters that lack the Pastoral Epistles is another piece of evidence for which any model must account.^[10] (This is a separate question to Marcion's "canon", which included only edited versions of Luke and the Pauline epistles; according to Tertullian, Marcion "omitted" the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles.)

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 favour 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 alluding 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 2nd century.^{[citation needed]}

Within the New Testament, these letters are arranged in order of size, though this does not represent a chronological order.

See also

• Authorship of the Pauline epistles

Notes

External links

• Pastoral Epistles.com:
• Early Christian Writings:
  • 1 Timothy
  • 2 Timothy
  • Titus
• Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the pastoral epistles
• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: First Epistle to Timothy
• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: Second Epistle to Timothy
• Pastoral Epistles: