The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (147 page)

Map 15.1: Provenance and Destination of 1–2 Timothy and Titus

relates to the authorship of the Pastorals. In addition, students should be able to assess critically the alternative structural proposals for 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

INTRODUCTION

T
HE PASTORAL EPISTLES, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, make a unique and indispensable contribution to the writings of the NT.
¹
Supplementing Acts, they provide vital instructions regarding qualifications for church leaders and other important matters for governing and administering the church. Most likely, they were the last letters Paul wrote during his long missionary career toward the end of his apostolic ministry. As early as in the Muratorian Canon (later second century), the special character of the Pastorals was acknowledged, and they were designated as having to do with “the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline.”
²
The designation “Pastoral Epistles” apparently dates back to D. N. Berdot, who called Titus a “Pastoral Epistle” in 1703, and P. Anton of Halle, who in 1726 delivered a series of lectures on 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus entitled “The Pastoral Epistles.”
³

Timothy and Titus are often viewed as paradigmatic (senior) pastors of local congregations. It should be noted, however, that, technically, Timothy's and Titus's role was not actually that of a permanent, resident pastor of a church. Rather, the men were Paul's apostolic delegates who were temporarily assigned to their present locations in order to deal with particular problems that had arisen and needed special attention.
⁴
For this reason the Pastorals are not merely letters giving advice to younger ministers or manuals of church order. They are Paul's instructions to his special delegates, set toward the closing of the apostolic era at a time when the aging apostle would have felt a keen responsibility to ensure the orderly transition from the apostolic to the postapostolic period. As such, they contain relevant and authoritative apostolic instruction for the governance of the church at any time and place.

As discussed below, it appears that 1 Timothy and Titus were written subsequent to Paul's release from his first Roman imprisonment (see chap. 14 on the Prison Epistles above) but prior to a second, considerably more severe, Roman imprisonment, during which Paul composed 2 Timothy and which turned out to be his final letter included in the canon. It is not known whether 1 Timothy or Titus was written first.
⁵
In the canon, the order is “1 Timothy—2 Timothy—Titus,” even though the actual chronological order of writing was
almost certainly “1 Timothy—Titus—2 Timothy” or “Titus—1 Timothy—2 Timothy”
⁶
For our present purposes, we follow the canonical order, treating 2 Timothy prior to Titus and in conjunction with 1 Timothy, since 1 and 2 Timothy are addressed to the same individual and the same church, and thus both letters entail a similar set of introductory issues that are best discussed jointly.
⁷

HISTORY

Author

External Evidence
The authenticity of Paul's correspondence with Timothy and Titus went unchallenged until the nineteenth century.
⁸
In all probability Paul's letters to Timothy were known to Polycarp (c. 117), who may have cited 1 Tim 6:7,10 (
Philippians
4.1).
⁹
The first unmistakable attestations are found in Athenagoras
(Supplication
37-1; c. 180) and Theophilus
(To Autolycus
3.14; later second century), both of whom cite 1 Tim 2:1—2 and allude to other passages in the Pastoral Epistles. Irenaeus (c. 130—200), in several passages in his work
Against Heresies
(see 1.pref.; 1.23.4; 2.14.7; 3.1.1), cited each of the letters and identified their author as the apostle Paul. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150—215;
Stromateis
2.11) noted that some Gnostics who perceived themselves to be the targets of the denunciation of 1 Tim 6:20—21 rejected Paul's letters to Timothy. The Muratorian Canon (later second century?) included all three letters in the Pauline corpus.

Marshall's overall assessment of the patristic evidence regarding the Pastorals is noteworthy especially since he did not hold to Paul's authorship: “It can be concluded that the PE [Pastoral Epistles] were known to Christian writers from early in the second century and that there is no evidence of rejection of them by any writers except for Marcion.”
¹⁰
Consequently, the Pastorals became part of the established NT canon of the church, and Paul's authorship of the Pastorals was not seriously questioned for a millennium and a half.

Pseudonymity and Internal Evidence
It was only in the nineteenth century that an increasing number of commentators began to allege that the Pastoral Epistles constituted an instance of pseudonymous writing in which a later follower attributed his own work to his revered teacher in order to perpetuate that person's teaching and influence.
¹¹
At first, this view may seem surprising since all three Pastoral Epistles open with the unequivocal attribution, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus,” or a similar phrase (1 Tim 1:1; 2 Tim 1:1; Titus 1:1). It seems hard to fathom how someone other than the apostle Paul could have written those letters that he falsely attributed to the apostle, with these letters being accepted into the NT canon as Pauline. And all of this supposedly took place without any intent to deceive or any error on the church's part.

Indeed, as will be seen, Paul's authorship of the Pastoral Epistles is by far the best conclusion based on all the available evidence and on several major problems attached to any pseudonymity or allonymity position.
¹²
The question is primarily a historical one. Is pseudonymous letter-writing attested in the first century? If so, was such a practice as ethically unobjectionable and devoid of deceptive intent as is often alleged?
¹³
Could pseudonymous letters have been acceptable to the early church? If so, is pseudonymity more plausible than authenticity in the case of the Pastorals?
¹⁴

Attention has frequently been drawn to the differences in style and vocabulary between the Pastorals and the other Pauline letters.
¹⁵
The Pastorals feature words not used elsewhere in Paul, such as “godliness”
(eusebeia)
, “self-controlled”
(sōphrōn)
, or
epiphaneia
rather than
parousia
to refer to Christ's return (but see 2 Thess 2:8), while characteristic Pauline terminology is omitted: “freedom”
(eleutheria)
, “flesh”
(sarx
, especially used versus Spirit), “cross”
(stauros)
, “righteousness of God”
(dikaiosynē theou).
¹⁶
However, conclusions regarding authorship based on stylistic differences are highly precarious because the sample size is too
small for definitive conclusions on the basis of word statistics alone.
¹⁷
Moreover, there is the difference between public letters sent to congregations (the 10 Pauline letters) and personal correspondence such as the Pastorals.
¹⁸
Also, Paul felt that he was nearing the end of his life and that there was an urgent need to ensure the preservation of sound doctrine for the postapostolic period, which accounts for the Pastoral Epistles' emphasis on qualifications for leadership, church organization, and the faithful passing on of apostolic tradition.

What is more, while pseudonymity was not uncommon for apocalyptic writings, gospels, or even acts, pseudonymous
letters
are exceedingly rare.
¹⁹
Of the two extant Jewish sources, the
Epistle of Jeremy
and the
Letter of Aristeas
are really misnomers, for neither can properly be classified as a letter: the former is a homily, the latter an account of the circumstances of the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.
²⁰
In the apostolic era, far from an acceptance of pseudonymous letters, there was actually considerable concern that letters might be forged (2 Thess 2:2: “a letter seeming to be from us,” author's translation). Thus Paul referred to the distinguishing mark in all his letters (Gal 6:11; 2 Thess 3:17; 1 Cor 16:21; Col 4:18; Phlm 19). In the second century, Tertullian (c. 160-225) reported that an Asian presbyter was removed from office for forging a letter in Paul's name (
On Baptism
17). Both
3 Corinthians
and the
Epistle to the Laodiceans
are transparent attempts, in customary apocryphal fashion, to fill in a perceived gap in canonical revelation (see 1 Cor 5:9; 2 Cor 2:4; 7:8; Col 4:16).
²¹
Toward the end of second century, Serapion, the bishop of Antioch (died 211), sharply distinguished between apostolic writings and those that “falsely bear their names”
(pseudepigrapha;
cited in Eusebius,
Eccl. Hist.
6.12.3). On the basis of this evidence it seems doubtful that the early church would have been prepared to accept pseudonymous letters into the Christian canon.
²²

Another important issue is the significant number of historical particularities featured in the Pastorals. While it is possible that a later imitator of Paul fabricated these pieces of information to lend greater verisimilitude to his letter, it seems much more credible to see these references as authentic instances in Paul's life and ministry.
²³
For this reason Carson and Moo are surely right that “[t]he Pastorals are much more akin to the accepted letters of Paul than they are to the known pseudonymous documents that circulated in the early church.”
²⁴
This, of course, in no way obviates the possibility that Paul may have employed an amanuensis, as he frequently did in other instances.
²⁵

If Paul, then, was the author of the Pastorals, it is necessary to remember some of the major biographical details in his life prior to his writing these letters. Paul came from “the thriving commercial and intellectual center”
²⁶
of Tarsus of Cilicia (Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3). He studied under the eminent first-century Jewish rabbi Gamaliel I (Acts 22:3; see 5:34—39) and zealously persecuted the early Christians (Acts 7:56—8:3; 9:1—2; 1 Cor 15:9; Phil 3:6). An encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9; 22:6—10; 26:12—18), however, caused a paradigm shift in Paul's thinking and a radical reorientation of the course of his life. He who had assumed Jesus to be a messianic pretender accursed by God now recognized him as God's Messiah (Gal 3:10—14; 2 Cor 5:21). And he who had been the church's most committed nemesis (see 1 Tim 1:15—17) now became its most fervent propagator. After several years of quiet (Gal 1:21—24), Paul was recruited to participate in the early church's Gentile mission (Acts 11:25—26). He quickly became the leader of this mission and gathered around himself a group of coworkers that included Timothy and Titus.

While Paul himself assumed responsibility for the churches he established, he delegated certain tasks to his trusted associates. This became a necessity especially toward the end of
Paul's life, which was characterized by several imprisonments (Acts 24:22—27; 28:11—31; 2 Cor 11:23; Eph 6:20; Phil 1:14; 2 Tim 1:8), various ailments (Gal 4:13-15; 2 Cor 12:7—10), and advancing age.
²⁷
Hence, as shown below, if Paul is affirmed as the author of the Pastorals, the setting in life of these writings was most likely Paul's desire to provide continuity between the apostolic and the subapostolic periods (the time subsequent to the apostolic era), to pass on the orthodox message of the Christian faith, and to provide sound principles for church government. While addressed to specific situations, these instructions transcend their original context and apply also to the church of all ages.

Destination

1—2 Timothy
Paul wrote in 1 Tim 1:3, “As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus.” This indicates that Timothy had been put in charge of the church in this important city. Ephesus was situated on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey).
²⁸
Josephus calls Ephesus “the chief city of Asia”
(Ant.
14.224). Similar to Corinth, the city's location along a major trade route made it a primary prospect for planting a church that could serve as a beachhead for other congregations over the Roman Empire. The city was famous for its cult and temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Artemis (see Acts 19:28—41). As a center of pagan worship, Ephesus presented a considerable challenge for the Christian mission. The Ephesian church was started during Paul's three years in the city (Acts 19:8; see 20:31) and probably consisted of several house churches (see 1 Cor 16:19). Ephesus also boasted a considerable Jewish population. There is no indication in 2 Timothy of any difference of location with regard to Timothy's ministry, and there is every reason to assume that Timothy and the church in Ephesus are also the destination of Paul's second letter to Timothy.