Timothy and Titus, Epistles to

Timothy And Titus Epistles To

1. Purpose.-The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are conveniently, if inaccurately, called the Pastoral Epistles, because, in contrast to Pauls other letters, their object has been thought to be primarily that of equipping his two lieutenants, Timothy and Titus, for pastoral work in two particular regions-Ephesus, with its circle of churches, and Crete. This is, however, too narrow a scope. The letters deal with a situation, and are only secondarily concerned with the personal equipment of Timothy and Titus, whose ministry is not essentially different from that which Paul exercised throughout his churches (1Ti 4:6, 2Ti 4:5, 1Co 4:17; 1Co 16:10-11, Eph 3:7, Col 1:23; Col 1:25; Col 4:7, 1Th 3:2). They cannot be regarded as outlining the character and work of the ideal pastor, but are intended, especially 1 Tim. and Titus, to impress upon the recipients the necessity of taking measures to preserve in its purity and strength the gospel which they had learnt from Paul, in view of special false teaching already present in Ephesus and Crete and threatening to increase. In the face of error, Timothy must boldly preach the gospel, and he and Titus must organize the churches with capable moral and spiritual leaders. The Second Epistle to Timothy is much more personal, and emphasizes his duty as an evangelist in a difficult situation.

The Epistles possess common elements of language, similar features of doctrine, discipline, and organization, and an atmosphere laden with kindred varieties of error, which constitute them a group distinct from the other Epistles of Paul, in fact so distinct that many scholars of varied schools have found difficulty in accepting them as authentic.

2. The text.-For the full discussion of noteworthy readings reference must be made to the standard works. Our purpose will be served by the mention of a few, chiefly from 1 Timothy.

(1)1Ti 1:4 (a) , A G3 K L P, most cursives, arm. boh. Chr.

(b) , D2c and a few cursives.

(c) , D2* Lat. vg. go., syr. pesch., Iren.

Most editors accept (a), and with good reason.

(2)1Ti 3:16 (a) , * A* C* F2 G3 boh. sah. go. arm. syr. hl.

Origen, Theod. Mops., Cyril Alex.

(b) , D2* lat. vg., syr. vg., arm.

(c) , c Cc D2c K L P.

For treatment of evidence see the notes in Horts Greek Testament, who rightly accepts (a) and is followed by nearly all modern editors.

(3)1Ti 4:3 , . Hort believes that there is a primitive corruption, and suggests that the reading may have been or . Bentley conjectured that had fallen out, but Blass finds an ellipsis in which is to be supplied from .

(4)1Ti 4:10 (a) , * A C E G.

(b) . c D2 vg. go. syr. boh. arm.

Most modern editors place (a) in the text, and yet (b) has much in its favour both externally and intrinsically. That Christians were held in scorn for their unsubstantial hope is an excellent interpretation of the passage.

(5)1Ti 6:7 (a) ., * A G3 17 vg. sah. boh. arm.

(b) ., D2* m. [Note: . margin.] go.

(c) , c D2bc K L P Chr.

(d) ., arm. Cyr., apparently Cyprian.

Hort seems to be right in accepting (d), and he suggests that may have come in by dittography after .

(6) 2Ti 4:10 (a) , A D G K L P, vg. syr. Chrys., Theod. Mops.

(b) , C 5 cursives, vg. Epiph.

(a) is best attested and accepted by most editors, though it may mean European Gaul.

In the text, especially of 1 Timothy, apart from readings there are difficulties, occasioned apparently by some disorder owing possibly to a disarrangement of notes in the hand of an editor. Of this disorder the most evident traces are 1Ti 5:1-2; 1Ti 5:8; 1Ti 5:16; 1Ti 6:9-10; 1Ti 6:17-19; also 1Ti 3:11, 1Ti 5:23, 1Ti 6:20-21 may be later interpolations. Less is to be said for the view, which, however, is plausible, that Tit 1:7-9 has been inserted by a later hand, and that 1 Tim. originally ended at 1Ti 5:16.

3. Contents

(i.) 1Ti 1:1-2. Greeting.-Paul, in the full apostolic authority which he had received from God our Saviour and Christ Jesus, the surety for the Christian hope, formally addresses Timothy, his true son in the faith.

1Ti 1:3-7. General occasion of the letter.-Formal reminder of warning once given at Ephesus in person against false teaching, which substitutes idle speculation for Christian love, springing out of a pure heart and unfeigned faith, which it is the aim of preaching to produce. Already this error has shipwrecked some would-be teachers of the Jewish Law, who, without understanding it, pervert its meaning.

1Ti 1:6-11. The right use of the Law.-According to its true spirit the Law is to be invoked against such vices as are condemned by the healthy teaching of the gospel.

1Ti 1:12-17. Pauls stewardship.-The gospel ministry of Divine power and salvation from sin was granted by an act of Gods grace in Christ Jesus to the most unworthy Apostle, whose redemption is an example of many others to come; for all of which the writer makes solemn thanksgiving to God.

1Ti 1:18-20. Paul recommits this ministry to Timothy. He encourages him that in spite of hard warfare he will not be defeated, because the Holy Spirit had led him to choose Timothy for this service. The fearful example of two apostates excommunicated in the hope that punishment would lead to their reformation.

(a) The furtherance of the ministry of the gospel.-(1.) The ministry of the gospel is furthered by rightly ordered public prayer and worship (1Ti 2:1-15).

1Ti 2:1-8. Since Timothy is to preach the gospel of salvation for all, constant prayer must be made for all sorts and conditions of men, who have one Father and one Mediator of His will for men, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all. Special supplication is to be made for kings, because if they are favourable the Church will have rest, its worship will continue undisturbed, and salvation will come to all men.

1Ti 2:9-15. These verses set forth womans function in the Christian community. She is not to teach or pray in public, but is to be modest in apparel and to adorn herself with good works, performing her function in salvation by her maternal calling, whereby she will, in a life of faith, love, and holy restraint, redress the balance against her through the sin of Eve. (The formula probably refers to what precedes; if to what follows, it means that in the Church it is a common saying, if a man desires the office of a bishop, etc. An inferior reading, , would be connected with what follows-It is a common human saying.)

(2) It is furthered also by the appointment of officials of worthy character (1Ti 3:1 to 1Ti 4:6).

1Ti 3:1-7. The type of man to be chosen as bishop.-This office is eagerly sought after, and Timothy is to employ discretion in choosing candidates. They must be men of irreproachable character, possessing self-restraint, tact, ability to control others, as shown by the control of their own family, given to hospitality, able to teach, not youthful but fortified by experience against dangers to which such an office would expose the immature.

1Ti 3:6-13. The type of man for the diaconate.-Tested men with personal qualities and administrative powers similar, except for ability to teach, to those of the bishop. Their wives, probably bishops as well as deacons, must be respected, discreet, and trustworthy (1Ti 3:11 reads in this connexion like an interpolation, and it may refer to deaconesses). Honourable service secures a good degree of honour and greater confidence in the gospel ministry (or a good basis for the next grade, i.e. bishop).

1Ti 3:14-16. The Church holds forth the truth, in opposition to error, of which an example is given (1Ti 4:1-6). After an interjected reference to the possibility of delay in coming to Ephesus, the Apostle states that the purpose of the letter is to instruct Timothy as to his right ordering of the Church, which, as the dwelling-place of the God of Israel, supports and is the foundation of the truth. This truth is a great mystery revealed in a Person only to those who lead godly lives, and is summed up in the words of a Christian hymn setting forth the gospel of the Incarnation.

The Spirit, through prophets in the Church, perhaps also through the words of written prophecy, foretells that there will be a great apostasy, led by teachers under demonic influence, who will enjoin abstinence from marriage and certain foods. But by the gospel the old Jewish distinctions of clean and unclean and heathen asceticism have been abolished, and the Christian may sanctify by prayer, and possibly by a psalm, any meat set before him, and thankfully partake of it.

Timothy is to fulfil his ministry by transmitting to his brethren the wholesome teaching of the Apostle (1Ti 4:6).

(b) Personal advice to Timothy (1Ti 4:7-16). 1Ti 4:7-10. The man of God must practise piety, and not asceticism. Piety has the sure promise of life here and hereafter; but the pursuit is arduous, and the goal will be attained only as we set our hope on the living God, who will save the believer unto eternal life.

1Ti 4:11-16. Timothy must overcome his diffidence, which arises partly from his youth, and in the constant exercise of his Divinely inspired gift of teaching become an example in life and doctrine of what the Christian minister should be.

(c) Further advice as to various classes in the Church (1Ti 5:1 to 1Ti 6:2).-Evidently there is insubordination, and the Apostle warns Timothy not to allow himself, when he breaks through his diffidence, to be swept into passionate rebuke.

1Ti 5:3-16. Widows in the Church.-(1) Those who have children or other relatives, or who are in the employ of a Christian woman: Christian piety demands that their support must fall upon these (1Ti 5:3-4; 1Ti 5:8; 1Ti 5:16). (2) The real widows above sixty years of age and destitute who have a character for stability, hospitality, and good works are to be enrolled for service in the Church, on whom their support must fall if their relatives are poor (1Ti 5:5-7; 1Ti 5:9-10). (3) Since younger widows may fall into sin under passion, or into indolent enjoyment, they are advised to marry (1Ti 5:11-15).

(Note the disordered arrangement of this section, esp. 1Ti 5:1-2; 1Ti 5:8; 1Ti 5:16.)

1Ti 5:17-25. The honourable position of the elder.-The elder who fulfils his function well, especially if he can preach and teach, is to be given double honour (or it may be double pay), and, in accordance with our Lords instructions, is to be supported for his works sake. The dignity of the office demands that charges preferred against elders are not to be lightly received; though, if they be substantiated, the rebuke is to be public. Judgment must be well considered and impartial, and no one is to be ordained without careful consideration. In order to be able to give such a judgment and not be involved in the sins of others, Timothy must keep himself pure, though he is not to be an ascetic. (Possibly 1Ti 5:23 is interpolated to meet ascetic tendencies.) Such sins as drunkenness and open vice will be evident at once, but secret sins will come out in time. So with mens good deeds. With care he will not make mistakes.

1Ti 6:1-2. Slaves.-Service honourable to the faith must be paid to masters unbelieving or believing, in the latter case inspired by the knowledge that it is a service of love to brethren.

(d) Final exhortations (1Ti 6:3-21).

1Ti 6:3-5. Teach healthy doctrine, based on the teaching of Jesus, which ensures piety.-The befogged teacher of false doctrine does not practise virtue, but by his empty disputations stirs the churches into strife, and in the muddy waters he fishes, using so-called piety as a means of gain.

1Ti 6:6-10. The practice of godliness in contrast with the pursuit of riches.

1Ti 6:11-16. Solemn adjuration to Timothy.-The Christian minister must pursue those virtues the possession of which brings life, and Timothy must give a pure testimony to the gospel, even if through suffering. In a liturgical formula he reminds him that the Lord will come to judge.

1Ti 6:17-19. Advice to the rich as to the use of wealth.

1Ti 6:20-21. Final exhortation to guard the deposit of Christian faith and avoid the meaningless profanities of men who claim a gnosis falsely so called, the pursuit of which has already caused some to lose their faith.

(This chapter also has a disordered arrangement. Cf. 1Ti 6:3; 1Ti 6:20-21 and 1Ti 6:9-10; 1Ti 6:17-19.)

(ii.) 2Ti 1:1-2. Greeting.-Paul, appointed by God as an apostle of Jesus Christ to proclaim the promise of life in Christ Jesus, addresses Timothy, his well-beloved son in the gospel.

(a) Timothy to succeed Paul in the service, suffering, and final reward of the gospel of Christ (2TI 2Ti 1:3 to 2Ti 2:13).

2Ti 1:3-14. Timothy is exhorted not to be ashamed, through fear of suffering, to preach the gospel for which Paul is a prisoner. Timothy, the thought of whose hereditary faith is a constant source of intense joy and affection to the Apostle, is urged to fan into flame his gift of preaching the gospel of Divine power, which cannot fail, even though thereby he, like Paul, may suffer. Of this gospel of salvation from death unto eternal life in Christ Jesus, Paul is an apostle and teacher, and he has made no mistake in committing himself to God in its service though he is a prisoner; and now Timothy is, by his preaching through the indwelling Spirit, to guard this pure gospel of faith and love in Christ.

2Ti 1:15-18. Defections of followers in Asia serve as a warning, and devoted service on the part of Onesiphorus towards the Apostle as an encouragement.

2Ti 2:1-13. Timothy is to be Pauls successor in the transmission of the gospel with its suffering, its triumph, its final reward. He is to draw his strength from the grace which is in Christ Jesus, and transmit the gospel to a succession of worthy men. The Christian teacher must, as a good soldier, endure the hard conditions of the campaign, or, like the athlete, obey the rules of the game, suffering being one of the conditions. Only the toiling husbandman gets his reward. When discouraged, Timothy must think upon the gospel that Jesus died and has risen in triumph. Paul also suffers as a malefactor, but these sufferings are for the furtherance of the gospel, and will bring a glorious reward in Christs Kingdom, as is set forth in a verse of a hymn or a liturgical formula. (The formula here refers to what follows.)

(b) Circumstances which demand faithful service in the gospel on the part of Timothy (2TI 2Ti 2:14 to 2Ti 4:8)

2Ti 2:14-18. Timothy must prove himself a reliable workman, and set forth the gospel according to the pattern laid down by Paul, and avoid profane idle talk which leads to apostasy, and which, like a running sore, will eat into the Churchs life. Already some are teaching that there is no bodily resurrection.

2Ti 2:19-26. The Church of God, however, is built upon a firm foundation, and its members must be pure; but, like a large house, it contains vessels of all qualities: some will have honourable, others dishonourable uses, and Timothy, as the true servant of God, must choose for Divine service vessels cleansed of the vices of the false teachers. Christian virtues are to be cultivated among the faithful as a protection against error, and the disputations of false teachers are to be avoided, though in a gentle spirit, in the hope that some of those who are in error may be granted repentance and be saved.

2Ti 3:1-9. The worst has not come yet. Though already the Church has a commingling of good and evil, in the last days it will be invaded by men who, under the mask of piety, will practise manifold and abominable vices, and will cause some to apostatize, women especially becoming an easy prey. This will be a sign not that God has forsaken His Church, but of the end of the age; and, as was the case with the magicians who resisted Moses, these corrupt men will be detected in their folly.

2Ti 3:10-17. To this error Pauls gospel and manner of life are the only antidote. He has always been Timothys example, even in suffering; and with the invasion of these impostors sufferings will multiply. Timothy must abide by Pauline doctrine, which is the fulfilment of what was taught to him as a true Israelite; it is the doctrine of salvation contained in the inspired Scriptures from which the man of God must equip himself for his ministry.

2Ti 4:1-8. Solemn appeal by the dying Apostle.-The Lord will assuredly return to judge the living and the dead, and to set up His eternal Kingdom. Timothy is therefore urged to preach the gospel, whether men are willing to receive it or not, and with much patience to rebuke sin and error. For soon many will refuse to listen to him and will turn to false teachers with their gossipy fables. He must not be discouraged, but must take up and carry to its completion, as far as in him lies, the work which the Apostle is about to lay down, when he will close a life of sacrifice in a martyrs death. St. Pauls bark is about to cast off from the shore of time; having kept the faith he will soon receive the crown of life, a reward which Timothy and all others will also get if they are faithful and eagerly look forward to greet their Lord.

(c) The Apostles lonely state and his recent deliverance (2Ti 4:9-22)

2Ti 4:9-13. Only Luke is with Paul. Some have failed him; others have gone on missionary duty. He urges Timothy to hasten and bring Mark to minister to him, also to bring his cloak and parchments from Troas.

2Ti 4:14-18. Timothy is to be on his guard against Alexander the coppersmith. In spite of his abandonment by men the Lord gave the Apostle a wonderful deliverance from deadly peril which has enabled him to complete his ministry, and now he has received confidence in his final salvation.

2Ti 4:19-22. Greetings to and from other friends.

(iii.) Tit 1:1-4. Greeting.-Paul addresses Titus, his son in the Christian faith. This gospel, in the service of which he is an apostle, is the irreversible truth of God revealed according to His promise in Christ Jesus, and brings hope of eternal life to those who hold fast to its truth in a life of godliness.

Tit 1:5-9. The character of the men to be chosen by Titus for the eldership.-Titus was left behind in Crete, the island of an hundred cities, to complete Pauls work by appointing elders. These men (also called bishops, though possibly one bishop might preside over a presbytery) must be of blameless reputation, and as stewards of Gods House prove their fitness by ruling well in their own families. Self-controlled, hospitable also and pious, they must hold so firmly to healthy doctrine that they will be able to refute perverse teachers.

Tit 1:10-16. False teachers.-In these churches, false and insubordinate teachers, of Jewish origin, full of empty talk, have arisen, who for money have perverted many of the Cretan families, inclined as they are by nature to sensuality. (He quotes a hexameter of Epimenides, one of the seven wise men of Greece, giving the Cretans a poor character.) These teachers and perverts must be sharply refuted so as to check the apostasy and to discountenance idle Jewish tales and Jewish precepts as to clean and unclean. Their professed distinctions between clean and unclean are meaningless when the heart is pure, for then outer distinctions vanish; and on the impure heart they have no effect. Though these errorists may profess to believe in God, like good Jews, their defiled lives prove that they are infidels.

Tit 2:1-10. Titus is to regulate the conduct of various classes within the Church. Old men must be self-restrained and dignified, and set forth healthy Christian virtues; especially must the older women be models of goodness, self-control, and family virtue to the younger women. Titus also must be a pattern of self-restraint, gravity, and sound doctrine for the young men. Slaves are to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour by faithful service.

Tit 2:11-15. The gospel motive.-The saving grace of God in Christ is for all men, and challenges us to a life in this present of self-restraint, justice to our fellows, and reverent holiness towards God; at the same time it creates the hope of the appearing of our Saviour, who died for us that He might redeem us as His true Israel, zealous of good works. These demands of the gospel must be authoritatively set before the people.

Tit 3:1-8. A life of goodness the fruit of Divine mercy.-These Cretans must defer to authorities and lead lives of gentleness and goodness, as all Christians do who have been converted from disobedient, sensual, and hateful lives. Everything is due to the goodness of God appearing in Christ, who, not for any righteousness of ours but of His grace, saved us from sin, when in baptism the Holy Spirit of renewal was poured out upon us through Jesus our Saviour, so that being justified by His grace we may become heirs of eternal life. It is all-important that believers should be careful to maintain good works.

Tit 3:9-11. Final advice as to false teachers.-Titus is to avoid disputations with the false teachers, and if, after warning, the factious man proves obdurate, he must be left alone.

Tit 3:12-15. Personal references.-Titus is to come to Paul at Nicopolis as soon as the Apostle can send Artemas or Tychicus to relieve him of his post. Hospitality in general is enjoined, and in particular towards certain visiting brethren.

4. The condition of the churches.-The churches of which Timothy has oversight are within the circle of Ephesus, and those under Titus are in the island of Crete. Their members are drawn from different social strata. Some are rich, and others aspire to become rich, though probably the average is similar to that of other Christian communities. There are masters, and there are slaves. Some were formerly Jews, and Jewish influence is strong (1Ti 1:7, Tit 1:10; Tit 1:14), but the majority are, it would appear, of pagan origin. The Cretans, a people of crude morality and insubordinate temper, have fallen an easy prey to the same kind of error as was working havoc in Ephesus. Envy, strife, blasphemies, and suspicions abound (1Ti 1:4; 1Ti 1:19-20; 1Ti 6:4-5; 1Ti 6:21, 2Ti 2:14; 2Ti 2:23; 2Ti 3:6-9, Tit 1:11; Tit 1:13). The Church has become a commingled body or household with good and bad elements (1Ti 4:1, 2Ti 2:20), the gospel having been cast upon poor soil or choked by evil doctrine. Pauls influence in Asia has been seriously impaired (2Ti 1:15); already there has been apostasy, and worse is yet to come; grievous times are impending (1Ti 4:1, 2Ti 3:1). For such a serious state of affairs the only remedy is a powerful ethical revival, induced by the preaching of the gospel in its purity, and maintained in a healthy church organization, directed by officials of the highest character.

Either as a cause or as an effect of this condition false teaching has vogue in the churches.

(a) In form it was a knowledge which is falsely so called (1Ti 6:20), concerned with fables and endless genealogies (1Ti 1:4), profane and old wives fables (1Ti 4:7, 2Ti 4:4), foolish inquiries and genealogies, profane babblings and oppositions (1Ti 6:20, 2Ti 2:16), Jewish fables, and commandments of men (Tit 1:14). It gave rise to questionings and disputes (1Ti 6:4, 2Ti 2:23), strifes, and fightings about the law (Tit 3:9), and it was eating into the life of the churches like a cancer (2Ti 2:17).

(b) Those who propagated this error seem to have done so by an abuse of the liberty of prophesying, and also by a house-to-house propaganda, which carried away many women. The teachers, who were evidently of Jewish origin, talked much about the Law, but acted in a manner that was contrary to its spirit, turning that which was pure to impure purposes (1Ti 1:7-10, Tit 1:15). They clung for self-enrichment to forms of piety (1Ti 6:5, 2Ti 3:5, Tit 1:11), some of them perhaps practising magic (2Ti 3:13); but they were indifferent to Christian virtue, being of corrupt minds, consciously insincere, full of lust, reprobate and unholy men (1Ti 4:1-2; 1Ti 6:5, 2Ti 3:1-8; 2Ti 4:3; Tit 1:15-16). As might be expected, they revolted against authority, as did Jannes and Jambres, the opponents, according to the Midrash, of the Divine prophet Moses (2Ti 3:8, Tit 1:10; cf. also 2Ti 2:19, with quotation from Num 16:5 referring to the rebellion of Korah).

(c) It is held by some that there were varieties in the form of error, the teachers of 2Ti 2:18 being thought to differ from the supposed magicians of 2Ti 3:8-9; 2Ti 3:13; and those of 1Ti 1:19; 1Ti 6:21, who missed the goal of faith, from the false teachers of the Law (1Ti 1:7). But, while there are not sufficient data to arrive at a confident opinion, it is probable that the differences might be explained as being common elements in a Hellenistic-Jewish type of thought which pervaded the Christian churches of Asia Minor and Crete like an atmosphere. Though the descriptions are vague, certain features stand out connecting this error with tendencies which prevailed during the latter half of the 1st century.

It is frequently assumed that it was a type of Gnosticism-in particular, such a phase as the Ophite sect-and the words , , might easily describe their speculations, which were accompanied, as here, by emphasis on knowledge and on the practice of asceticism. It is not improbable, however, that 1Ti 6:20-21 is a later addition. W. Bousset holds that Gnosis first appears in a technical sense in 1Ti 6:20. But the developed characteristics of Gnosticism, as he describes it, are not found in the false teaching condemned in the Pastorals-a mystic revelation and a deeply-veiled wisdom the ultimate object is individual salvation, the assurance of a fortunate destiny for the soul after death. The Gnostic religion is full of sacraments. Sacred formulas, names, and symbols are of the highest importance among the Gnostic sects, in order that the soul may find its way unhindered [by demons] to the heavenly home. The basis of the Gnostic world-philosophy is a dualism and a theory of emanations, including a belief in the Demiurge, who created and rules over this lower world, together with a hostile attitude towards the Jewish religion, which was represented in the later Christian Gnosticism. In Gnosticism salvation always lies at the root of all existence and all history, is always a myth, not an historical event (Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 xii. 152 ff.).* [Note: Wendland, Die hellenistisch-rmische Kultur3, pp. 165, 168, 184 f.] In these Epistles we have no trace of any fundamental philosophical contrast between the Creator God, who is the God of the Law in the OT, and the God and Father of Jesus Christ. As regards the mystery element, there are far fewer indications of the sacramental spirit than in the Epistles of Paul written to Corinth, where the Gnostic tendencies were perhaps less strong than in Ephesus. There is, it is true, a reference to magicians, but the Jewish world was only too submissive to their spells.

A primary fact is that this teaching was more or less of Jewish origin, which is to say that it was not Gnostic, though the Judaism of Asia Minor had been much influenced by the pagan world, and had even yielded to some of the tendencies which were more powerfully expressed in Gnosticism, such as star worship and mystery ideas. Ascetic practices found favour even with such a good Jew as Philo, who held to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It is quite intelligible, therefore, that teachers who inculcated a false asceticism, forbidding marriage and enjoining abstinence from foods (1Ti 2:15; 1Ti 4:3; 1Ti 5:14; 1Ti 5:23, Tit 1:13; Tit 2:4), who also discounted historical facts and taught that there was no resurrection (2Ti 2:18), were Jews of the 1st century or had come under their influence. Indeed, Colossians presents similar teaching on the part of those who extended the old Jewish prescriptions as to clean and unclean, and probably enjoined abstinence from marriage (cf. Col 2:16-23 with Tit 1:13-15). Even in the Roman Church there were those who practised asceticism, which may have been supported by speculative theories (Romans 14; Wendland, op. cit., p. 237). The spiritualization of the resurrection also was, according to Hippolytus, found among the Nicolaitans of Rev 2:6; Rev 2:15.

Moreover, the Jew of the Dispersion had fallen under the influence of the peripatetic schools of Hellenism and of the Greek lecturer, who played a large part in the Hellenistic world, speculating with empty verbal dialectic and setting forth pretentious moral theories about the simple and ascetic life. They freely used myths, romances, and love-stories for decking out traditions and historical personages, applying them even to the gods. In such myths and genealogies, profane and gossipy legends couched in rhetorical phrases () with immoral tendencies, there was no reality (). Borrowing the use of allegory from the Greek, perhaps also his frivolous literary methods, the Jew, even the Pharisaic Jew of Palestine, had long before this set to work upon the OT with such an aptitude that in his Haggdic Midrash, full of senseless stories and supposed genealogies of Hebrew heroes, and in the Book of Jubilees, which sets forth mythical lines of descent of the families of the Patriarchs, he easily rivalled his master in riotous imagination and subtlety* [Note: Wohlenberg (p. 31 n.) quotes two relevant passages-Polyb. IX. ii. 1, who says that he will not follow the method of many who deal with , ; and Philo, Vit. Mos. ii. 8, , deals with the history of the human race until the giving of the Law.] (Wendland, op. cit., pp. 199-202). This method did away with the reality of the fact; history was turned into phantasy. As applied to the Law, especially by the Hellenized Jew of Asia Minor, and to the facts of gospel history, it would produce similar results-that is to say, a false spiritualization, followed by indifference to the facts of morality; and so these triflers with silly tales may have undermined the reverence for the moral order of the Law which had been the bulwark of the Jew against the pagan world. This evil tendency would be further aided by the widespread influence in Asia Minor of pre-Christian Gnosticism and the mystery-religions, from which even the Jew could not escape; and, though he may not have adopted the pessimistic philosophy that lay at their roots, he often glided insensibly into asceticism or licence.

There are still traces in these Epistles of opposition to Paul on the score of the Law, though it is different from that of the earlier Epistles (1Ti 1:7, Tit 1:10; Tit 3:9). Here it comes from teachers who by their interpretation and method take all the moral meaning out of the Law. These errorists are a piratical crew, who have seized the good ship and kept her in a pestilential harbour till her timbers are befouled and worm-eaten.

It may be that in the emphasis placed upon the conception of God as One and the Saviour of all, and of Christ as the only Mediator (1Ti 2:1-7, Tit 2:10-14), there is an allusion to contemporary Gnostic tenets, but it is more justifiable to see in it a veiled protest against the tendency to ascribe divine honours to heroes or local dynasts, to whom, as possessing the manifest power of the Divine presence, the word Saviour was often applied ( [Wendland, op. cit., pp. 126, 127]). Quite probably Christians were often tempted to secure favour from their rulers by this homage and to cloke the profession of their faith. When 2 Timothy was written, the confession of Christianity, or at least the preaching of it, seems to have been dangerous (2Ti 1:8; 2Ti 2:11-13), and Timothy is warned not to refrain on this account from delivering Pauls message. In 1 Tim. the skies are clearer, and the Christians are bidden to pray for kings and rulers in order that under their governance the Church may have freedom in worship (1Ti 2:1-4). If her testimony is open and unmolested, the gospel will have freer course. Possibly the words may mean that by this time Christianity had penetrated to circles near the throne, and the Church may have been looking for permanent relief. The Cretans, who are urged to obey rulers (Tit 3:1), seem to have led a secure life unless they provoked reprisals by violence or a harsh spirit, which might have given them the reputation of being haters of their kind (Tit 3:2-3). There is not sufficient evidence in any of the Pastorals to assume the existence of systematic persecution arising from an Imperial policy.

5. Organization and worship of the Church.-The Church is the household of God, the successor of the old theocracy, to which the living God had at all times committed His Word (1Ti 3:15, 2Ti 2:19; 2Ti 3:14-17; cf. Eph 2:19). As the warden of Divine truth, which has been fully revealed in Christ, it must be pure in life, sound in doctrine, and firmly organized. Apostasy from or injury to its fellowship incurs the worst consequences (1Ti 1:20; 1Ti 3:6-7, 2Ti 2:18; 2Ti 3:8-9, Tit 3:10-11). (It is to be observed, however, that, though the Church is to be kept pure by the removal of unclean elements, the excommunication of Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were delivered over unto Satan [1Ti 1:20], was intended to have a reforming effect upon them, whereas in other Christian communities, on occasion at least, a similar act had a severer issue [Act 5:1-11, 1Co 5:5].)

In the earlier Epistles Paul addresses his churches both with authority in the name of Christ and with paternal solicitude (1Co 7:17; 1Co 11:23; 1Co 16:1, Gal 4:12-20, 1Th 4:2). In the Pastorals also the same notes rise clear in his urgent commands or appeals to Timothy and Titus (1Ti 1:18, 2Ti 4:1-2, Tit 1:5; Tit 1:13). As formerly he handed on traditions (, 1Co 11:2, 2Th 2:15; 2Th 3:6) and injunctions (, 1Th 4:2), so now his lieutenants are to guard and transmit the Pauline deposit, which he claims to be the sound teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Ti 1:18; 1Ti 6:3; 1Ti 6:14; 1Ti 6:20), committing it to trustworthy and capable successors (2Ti 2:2, Tit 1:5)-a procedure in which some have discovered, though without sufficient reason, the beginnings of apostolic succession and the mark of later Catholicity, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.

The function of Timothy and Titus was to represent the Apostle with the authority of his gospel and of the order which he had established in his churches. Their duty seems to have been, for the time, confined to definite regions, being unlike that of the later monarchical bishop, who presided permanently over the church in one city. On former occasions also they had been sent on missions (1Co 4:17; 1Co 16:10, 2Co 2:13; 2Co 12:18, Php 2:19-23), but it is quite possible that Titus had also evangelized on an independent authority, both he and Timothy apparently being regarded as apostles (cf. Rom 16:7, 2Co 8:23; cf. Php 2:25, 1Th 2:7). In Ephesus and Crete, however, their duties are more arduous and more permanent, because of the necessity of getting distracted or turbulent communities into an ordered administration. Their ability to do this was due to the fact that they understood the Apostles mind and practice as well as his gospel.

In the Second Epistle of Timothy the Apostle recalls to his disciple the fact that he is an evangelist and must speak with the authority of his gospel. When he was ordained this gift had descended on him with power, but its glow seems to have become hidden under a cooled surface; now he is to stir up his gift and to preach a pure gospel with courage, love, and prudence (1Ti 4:11-16, 2Ti 1:6; 2Ti 3:10-17; 2Ti 4:1-5). Here is a challenge not to missionary evangelism of new regions, but to a revival of faith in old churches; and it rests not on extrinsic authority but on the power of the gospel of Christ.

In 1 Tim. and Titus the function of both these lieutenants is more of an organizing than an evangelizing character. They have great authority, and yet they are to act as brethren (1Ti 5:1, Tit 2:7-8; Tit 2:15; Tit 3:10) Timothy is to rebuke even an elder openly, to assign him honour or promotion, and not to invest with office by weak concession the wrong type of man. This authority seems to be personal rather than official.

There was still in the churches a remnant of the primitive charismatic gifts, for apparently it was under the guise of Christian prophecy that false prophets introduced their errors (1Ti 4:1; cf. 1Co 12:3). But the sudden overpowering charism of earlier days seems to have given way to an endowment of more permanent and illuminating inspiration (1Ti 1:18; 1Ti 4:14-16, 2Ti 3:16-17). Against irresponsible, unrestrained, and immoral teachers, who profess to rely on the Spirit, a well-ordered and organized church becomes a bulwark of the faith.

In these Epistles no definite form of organization is prescribed, but an order is accepted as already in existence-one object of the letters being to emphasize the necessity that Timothy and Titus shall secure men of the proper character and qualifications to fill the constituted offices. The first order in government is that of the bishop (1Ti 3:2, Tit 1:7), who seems to be identical with the presbyter (1Ti 5:17, Tit 1:5; Tit 1:7), of whom there were probably more than one in each church, though the article (1Ti 3:1, Tit 1:7) does not of itself indicate this. The office was invested with peculiar dignity (1Ti 5:19-21) and was much sought after (1Ti 3:1); it was, therefore, the duty of the Apostles delegates to select from the aspirants those whose character, abilities, and experience fitted them for directing the Church at the present crisis. It cannot be shown that the office was elective, but it may be that the function of Timothy and Titus was that of selecting suitable candidates from whom the brethren would make their choice (cf. 1Ti 3:2; 1Ti 3:10; 1Ti 5:22).

The qualifications for the bishop given in 1 Tim. and Titus are almost identical, though their order seems to be casual, and it cannot be assumed that they were meant to be an exhaustive list or had been codified; the emphasis was probably determined by local conditions. The bishop as the steward, with oversight of the house of God, should be a married man of proved capacity to govern, as shown in the lesser sphere of his own family. Free from the faults of youth, he must have won in the eyes of the world a character for uprightness and piety. Great stress is put upon the practice of self-restraint in all its forms, on tact and active goodness-probably to counteract the temptations to an undue exercise of authority. More distinctly official requisites are hospitality, freedom from avarice-needful in one who may have been responsible for finances-and ability to teach. If bishop and elder were identical, it may be inferred from 1Ti 5:17 that some elders did not teach, inasmuch as those who did were to receive either double pecuniary support or to be regarded as holding a more honourable office. In Tit 1:9, however, the ability to teach and to resist heresy is emphasized as being so essential as almost to suggest that this distinction in the eldership did not exist in Crete. These officials were evidently to be supported by the churches which they served (1Ti 5:18).

It cannot be successfully maintained that already a clerical morality beyond that required of the laity is being required of the bishop. The virtues are ordinary Christian virtues. The expression husband of one wife, for example, if it means prohibition against having a mistress as well as a wife, sets forth the Christian rule, though the mention of it here would indicate how slowly those who emerged from paganism in these districts adjusted themselves to the higher standard. If the words imply that the bishop was not to contract a second marriage after the death of his first wife, as is probably what is intended, they indicate that the bishop must be a man whose manner of life would win for him the highest respect in the Christian community (1Co 7:8-9; cf. Luk 2:36-37). On inscriptions of the Augustine age the word virginius is applied to a man who had married but once. By the 2nd cent. the standards became much more rigid.

The second rank, the diaconate, which was probably a stepping-stone to the higher office (1Ti 3:13), is mentioned only in 1 Timothy. The deacon seems to have been a younger man, though many of his qualifications are the same as those of the bishop-control over his family, a blameless character, freedom from drunkenness and avarice. No reference is made to the exercise of hospitality or teaching power, but the deacon is warned against being double-tongued, a danger to which he may have been exposed by gossip in his house-to-house visitation.

Opinion is divided as to the meaning of women in 1Ti 3:11. If the integrity of the text be assumed, the more probable view is that it means the wives of bishops and deacons, this being supported by the possibility that in order to counteract a false asceticism ( , 1Ti 4:3) Paul may have intended that bishops and deacons should be chosen from among married men. If, however, as is not improbable, the verse be an interpolation, it is a later reference to the order of deaconesses, which was in existence early in some churches (Rom 16:1). More is to be said for the view that there was an order of widows, who were assigned a special ministry (1Ti 5:3; 1Ti 5:9-10).

The young men (1Ti 5:1, Tit 2:6) seem to have had some official standing, though it is probable that the line that divided between any class and the brethren was not sharply drawn.

Prominent though the idea of the Church and its organization is, the sacramental element does not appear in the Pastorals except in Titus. If it was regarded as an essential condition for the welfare of Christian life, it is strange that the mystery of godliness should be expressed in doctrine (1Ti 3:16). Stress is everywhere laid on teaching, healthy instruction as to the gospel, right conduct; and to do the work of an evangelist is to fulfil the ministry. The sacrament of baptism is, according to Tit 3:5-7, the outward act whereby the Divine salvation is consummated. In this bath of regeneration the world beheld the Church cleansed from its old life of heathenism, and thereafter endued with the quickening Holy Spirit. No mention is made of any name or word as of mystical power: nothing is said of the laying on of hands as conveying any supernatural endowment. Whether baptism was a necessary channel of grace, and, if so, in what measure, is left undetermined. As in Rom 6:1-5; Rom 8:15-17, baptism with its concomitants is at least (1) a proof of the effectiveness of Divine grace, (2) a pledge of eternal life. A remarkably similar view of baptism to that of Tit 3:5-6 is found in Eph 5:26-27, with the addition of in a word.

The public worship of the Church is well developed. Under the direction of presbyters, teaching takes the place held by prophecy in the Corinthian Church (1Ti 4:13-16, 2Ti 2:24-25). There was public reading of the Scriptures accompanied by an exposition of the Word of God, of which perhaps the quotations in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Epistle to the Hebrews are good examples. 2Ti 3:15-17 refers to OT Scriptures. In them is Divine wisdom, which, when accompanied by faith, begets salvation; and all Scripture, or every passage of Scripture which is inspired (the false teachers used Jewish fables, etc.), is useful for equipping the man of God for his work. In these Epistles no trace of the canonization of the NT books is discoverable. Prayer also, rich and varied (1Ti 2:1-2; 1Ti 2:8), was regulated, and again restraint appears in place of the freedom of the earlier charismatic days. It seems that, as in 1 Corinthians, only men took part in public prayer (1Ti 2:8-12). Hymns, germs of a creed, liturgical snatches, doxologies-all for public use-are embedded in these letters (1Ti 1:15; 1Ti 1:17; 1Ti 3:16; 1Ti 6:15-16, 2Ti 2:11-13),* [Note: Zahn finds traces of a fixed baptismal creed in 1Ti 6:12-18 and 2Ti 2:2; 2Ti 2:8; 2Ti 4:1, though F. A. Loofs, while admitting that and the reference to the (1Ti 6:13) may be an allusion to a baptismal confession (which he thinks had its origin in Asia Minor, where also he places the home of the Pastorals at the end of the 1st cent.), does not believe that it was the original of the Roman symbol (Symbolik oder christliche Konfessionskunde. Tbingen, 1902, p. 28).] everything combining to show that a regulated form of public worship was rapidly displacing the individual charismata of the more primitive days. In private also, prayer was employed to sanctify the daily meal (1Ti 4:4-5).

6. Christian faith and life.-There is already a common faith ( ) (Tit 1:4), the substance of which is set forth in Tit 2:11-14; Tit 3:4-7. God is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords (1Ti 6:15), but also the Saviour (1Ti 2:3-4; 1Ti 4:10, 2Ti 1:9, Tit 3:4) of all men, from whose goodness and philanthropy [Note: There was hardly any virtue so often commended in the Hellenistic sovereign as (Wendland, op. cit., p. 407, note 4).] proceeds saving grace (Tit 2:11; Tit 3:4) in fulfilment of an eternal purpose (2Ti 1:9, Tit 1:2). Between God and men there is only one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus (1Ti 2:5), who from a pre-incarnate life came into this world (1Ti 1:15, 2Ti 1:10). This manifestation, the mystery of godliness, and the essential truth held forth by the Church (1Ti 3:15-16), is expressed in a hymn, evidently a common confession of faith, though it does not contain a complete Pauline view of the mystery (Rom 16:25-27), omitting as it does the Death, and laying stress on the Ascension rather than the Resurrection. Jesus Christ, descended from David (2Ti 2:8), came into the world to save sinners (1Ti 1:15). He annihilated death and brought life and incorruption to light (2Ti 1:10). By the gift of Himself on our behalf He ransomed the new Israel from sin, and made it pure (1Ti 2:6, Tit 2:14). Jesus Christ is the living strength (1Ti 1:12) and hope of the Christian (1Ti 1:1, Tit 2:13), who lives his holy life in Him (2Ti 3:12); and the Holy Spirit, who is seldom mentioned, is given through Christ (2Ti 1:14, Tit 3:6). The appearing of Christ, who will come to judge, is not far distant, and is longed for by the believer (1Ti 6:14, 2Ti 4:1; 2Ti 4:8, Tit 2:13). Then will be the final salvation unto eternal life (2Ti 4:18, Tit 3:7).

The Church, built upon this solid foundation of Christian teaching, holds aloft the truth which shines forth in the lives of believers as a light in the darkness, and against such a beacon the waves of error will break in vain.

In 1 Tim. the Church, the house in which God dwells, takes a place of great importance as the organized body which guarantees the Truth. This Truth is healthy doctrine, but in 1Ti 3:16 it is also equivalent to the mystery of godliness, and is set forth in a hymn which contains the salient features of the historic manifestation of Jesus Christ, what we might term an outline gospel. The hymn seems most simply interpreted as referring to the Incarnation; the recognition of Divine sonship in the Baptism, Temptation, Transfiguration; the revelation of the historic Jesus to the heavenly world, as e.g. to the celestial choir at His birth, the Transfiguration, Gethsemane (Luk 22:43), the Resurrection (Luk 24:4-5; cf., for same idea, Joh 1:51); the preaching to the Gentiles; the founding of the Church in the world; and the culmination of His triumph in the Ascension.* [Note: For the use of the aorist to express the completeness of an event that may have recurred see F. W. Blass, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, Gttingen, 1896, 57 f.] This survey fits into the scheme and purpose of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. According to 1Ti 3:16, this tradition of the historic Jesus, this mystery which is the Truth, is preserved in the Church of the living God, which must, therefore, be regulated by Timothy with a due sense of his responsibility. It is true that in the earlier Pauline Epistles we find the conception of the Church and the necessity of its organization (1Co 12:28; 1Co 15:9, Gal 1:13), but there is no such emphasis on it as here. These verses remove us from the Pauline atmosphere of the gospel of the Risen and Living Christ, who Himself is the source of truth, the Person in whom through His Spirit the body of believers is held together. Instead of the Spirit, we find organization and order.

When the gospel is preached and is received in a pure heart, a good conscience, and with faith unfeigned, the moral life will manifest itself in the pursuit of righteousness, piety, love, patience under suffering, endurance never embittered whatever evil may befall, peace and hope in the living God who gives life eternal (1Ti 1:5; 1Ti 4:10-12; 1Ti 6:11, 2Ti 2:22; 2Ti 3:10). This is similar to the righteousness of the Kingdom as it is set forth in the Gospels. Good though the soil may be, it must be tilled with care; vigorous effort is required of the Christian, in co-operation with the saving grace of God in Christ: true godliness must manifest itself in good works (1Ti 2:10; 1Ti 6:11; 1Ti 6:17, 2Ti 3:16-17, Tit 2:11-12; Tit 3:6; Tit 3:14). This side of the Christian life is emphasized in these Epistles both by the words employed to describe the effort and by the moral quality of the result. The word discipline (, ) occurs four times in the Pastorals, and only three times in the other Pauline letters, but seven times in Hebrews and twice in Acts, where it is employed for the education of the child. A similar idea lies in the word exercise (, 1Ti 4:7). As might be expected, teaching plays a large part in the discipline of a Christian character. The word teaching () occurs fifteen times in these Epistles, being often qualified by the attributes good () and healthy (), and only six times in the rest of the NT. Occasionally it is almost equivalent to the concept of faith as the objective belief of the Christians (1Ti 6:1; 1Ti 6:3, Tit 2:10). In the early Epistles of Paul the gospel, which is a Divine mystery hidden from the wise and prudent, is revealed unto the saved by the Spirit as the power of God (1Co 1:18 ff.); but in these Epistles healthy doctrine may be taught to and understood by reasonable and moral men. It is one of the necessary qualifications of the bishop that he be apt to teach (1Ti 3:2), and Paul himself is a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth (1Ti 2:7, 2Ti 1:11).

The thoroughly disciplined Christian, instructed in sound doctrine, will deny worldly lusts and live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world (Tit 2:12). The frequent occurrence of the term godliness () and its associated forms constitutes one of the features of these Epistles (1 Tim. ten times, 2 Tim. twice, Tit. twice). Outside the Pastorals they are found most frequently in Acts, in which also the phrase God-fearers ( , ) is used of the proselytes who have discovered in the God of the Christians the true Jahweh and the object of reverent worship leading to a holy life. The terms are also very characteristic of pagan thought in the Hellenistic age. The root idea of the word is reverence, primarily as directed towards God, who is recognized as holy and must receive His due in worship, and then as shown in the conduct of a man who performs towards others what piety demands. The good man must be godly (). His godliness must manifest itself in the performance of practical duties and in goodness towards all men in their several stations. Godliness is almost synonymous with the righteousness of the citizen of the Kingdom of God, who has the promise both of this life and of that which is to come. It brings contentment with ones lot, and willingness to take all blessings from Gods hand, surpassing by this religious motive the old Stoic virtue of contentment or independence of external goods. There was need of the practice of this virtue, because even in the Christian world of Ephesus riches had already become a root of manifold evils (1Ti 6:6-10). Other words from the same root peculiar to the Pastorals (with the exception of Php 4:8) are and (cf. , 1Ti 2:9), which signify a reverent type of life becoming to the Christian and winning respect for him from his neighbours (1Ti 2:2, 1Ti 3:4; 1Ti 3:8, Tit 2:7).

From godliness () it is not a long step to self-control () and its cognates, ten instances of which out of sixteen in the NT occur in the Pastoral Epistles. Self-restraint is a chief virtue for youth, and with reverence is the adornment of pious women (1Ti 2:9, Tit 2:5-6; Tit 2:12). Many parallels to the three virtues , , are to be found in ancient ethics, in particular being the Greek ideal of a harmonious, well-ordered life as opposed to the character divided against itself by its passions. In contrast to the ecstatic worship or ascetic practices of the pagan religions, and even to the inspiration of the primitive Christian, the believer of the Pastorals is self-controlled, having disciplined his moral life into reverence and dignity. His character, however, has a supernatural source, Jesus Christ Himself being the fountain of piety, faith, and love (2Ti 1:13; 2Ti 3:12). But the emphasis is different from that of the major Pauline Epistles. There the Christian life is the fruit of the indwelling Spirit, from whom as the outcome of full liberty in Christ springs a splendid luxuriance of virtues. In these Epistles discipline and teaching prune the moral life, which shows itself in a reverent and restrained piety.

7. Relation of the Pastoral Epistles to the other books of the NT

(i.) The Pauline Letters

(a) 1 Timothy.-There is undoubtedly a strong Pauline basis underlying this Epistle.

Rom 7:12 and 1Ti 1:8-9; Rom 16:27 and 1Ti 1:17; Rom 13:1 and 1Ti 2:1-2;Rom 3:29-30; 1Ti 5:6; 1Ti 5:10 and 1Ti 2:4-6; Rom 14:14 and 1Ti 4:4.

Corinthians: 1Co 5:5 and 1Ti 1:20; 1Co 11:8-9; 1Co 14:34 and 1Ti 2:11-12; 2Co 11:3 and 1Ti 2:13-14; 1Co 12:3 and 1Ti 4:1; 1Co 16:10-11 and 1Ti 4:12; 1Co 7:8-9 and 1Ti 5:14; same quotations in 1Co 9:8, 2Co 13:1, and 1Ti 5:18-19; 1Co 9:25-26 and 1Ti 6:12.

Ephesians: the conception of ministry, the need of unity and sound doctrine similar in Eph 4:11-14 and 1Ti 3:1-16; 1Ti 4:1-6; cf. also Eph 2:19-20 and 1Ti 3:5; 1Ti 3:15; Eph 4:21 and 1Ti 3:15-16; 1Ti 2:2 and 1Ti 4:1;Eph 6:5 and 1Ti 6:1.

Philippians: Php 4:13 and 1Ti 1:12; Php 2:25 and 1Ti 1:18; Php 4:6 and 1Ti 2:1; Php 4:11-12 and 1Ti 6:6-8; Php 1:1 and 1Ti 3:2; 1Ti 3:8.

Colossians: Col 1:23-27 and 1Ti 1:1; 1Ti 1:4; 1Ti 1:11-12; 1Ti 3:15-16.

These parallels do not exhaust the likeness. Only a writer extremely familiar with Pauls writings or thought could have written 1Ti 1:8-20; 1Ti 2:1-7; 1Ti 6:11-16, though the distinctively Pauline notes of justification, life in Christ, and the work of the Spirit have been toned down in the Epistle at large. Frequently also a word or conception strange to the Pauline soil is turned up by the critical ploughshare, e.g. the application of the attribute Saviour to God. Further, the emphasis is changed. Teaching, especially healthy teaching ( ), is much commoner than in the earlier Epistles (1Co 4:17, Col 1:28; Col 2:7; Col 3:16), and in 1Ti 6:1 it is almost convertible with the gospel. Christian faith is spoken of less from the personal side than from the objective as a body of doctrine, twice, indeed, being synonymous with truth (though, of course, this use of faithis also found in the earlier Epistles) (1Ti 1:19; 1Ti 4:1; 1Ti 6:10; 1Ti 6:21); and Christian life and doctrine are the new law () (1Ti 6:14). As has been remarked above, the prevalence of the idea of discipline and of the word godliness () is a feature of these later Epistles. Again, the use of the phrases faithful is the saying ( , 1Ti 1:15, 1Ti 3:1, 1Ti 4:9) and the good confession (1Ti 6:13) involves a measure of fixed creed, or at least of traditional formulae, which seems alien to the originality of Pauls mind. Possibly also the words of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Ti 6:3) were logia such as Luke and the other Evangelists used.

(b) 2 Timothy.-The affinities are much closer than in 1 Timothy.

Romans: Rom 8:15 and 2Ti 1:7; Rom 1:16 and 2Ti 1:8; 2Ti 1:12; Rom 16:26 and 2Ti 1:9-10; Rom 6:17 and 2Ti 1:13; Rom 1:3 and 2Ti 2:8; Rom 1:29-30 and 2Ti 3:2-4; Rom 2:20 and 2Ti 3:5; Rom 4:23-24; Rom 15:4 and 2Ti 3:16.

1 Corinthians: similar relationship of Paul to Timothy: 1Co 4:17; 1Co 16:10-11 and 2Ti 1:2-6; 2Ti 2:1-2; 2Ti 3:10-11;1Co 9:7; 1Co 9:25-26 and 2Ti 2:4-5; 2Ti 3:12; 1Co 8:3 and 2Ti 2:19; 1Co 9:9-10 and 2Ti 3:16.

2 Corinthians: the idea of the ministry in 2Co 3:16-18; 2Co 4:1-2 is similar to that in 2 Tim., though in the latter it is less powerfully expressed; cf. 2Co 4:11-12 and 2Ti 2:10.

Ephesians: Eph 3:3; Eph 5:5;and 2Ti 1:9-10;Eph 1:19-20 and 2Ti 2:8; 2Ti 3:1;Eph 3:13 and 2Ti 2:9; Eph 4:11 and 2Ti 4:5; Eph 6:21 and 2Ti 4:12.

Philippians affords the closest parallels: Php 3:5 and 2Ti 1:3; Php 1:29-30; Php 2:19; Php 2:22; Php 3:10-11; Php 3:17; Php 4:9 and 2Ti 1:8-13; Php 3:10-14; Php 1:20 and 2Ti 1:12; Php 3:10 and 2Ti 2:8; Php 1:12-14; Php 2:17 and 2Ti 2:9-10; Php 2:17; Php 3:14 and 2Ti 4:6-8.

There are no passages in 1 Tim. that ring so truly Pauline as 2Ti 1:3-5; 2Ti 1:8-12; 2Ti 2:1-13; 2Ti 3:1-5; 2Ti 3:10-12; 2Ti 4:1-2; 2Ti 4:5-8. But even in these sections non-Pauline words such as , () occur, and their style and language conform in general to 1 Timothy, though this alone would not cast a serious suspicion upon 2 Timothy were it separated from its companion Epistles. Its vigour and personal references show that it takes its rise near the source of the Pauline stream. The form of the letter also resembles the earlier Pauline Epistles more than 1 Tim. or Tit. does. After the address comes a thanksgiving, as in Rom., Cor., Phil.; at the close a doxology, greetings, and blessing, which is very Pauline. See Wendland, op. cit., p. 413 ff.

(c) Titus.-There are here, as in the other Epistles, affinities in detail and in general.

Romans: Rom 16:25-26 and Tit 1:1-4; Rom and Tit 2:13; Rom 13:1 ff. and Tit 3:1; Rom 8:24 and Tit 3:7; Rom 16:17-18 and Tit 3:10.

1Corinthians: 1Co 4:1 and Tit 1:7; 1Co 1:7 and Tit 2:13; 1Co 6:11 and Tit 3:3.

Ephesians: in Eph 4:11-14; Eph 5:25-27 and Tit 1:5-11 there are similar ideas as to the necessity of the ministry in order to maintain the purity of the Church against false doctrine: cf. also Eph 1:9-10 and Tit 1:1-4; Tit 1:7; Tit 1:14; Eph 5:2; Eph 5:25-27 and Tit 2:14; Tit 2:2;Eph 5:8 and Tit 3:3; Tit 2:8-9; Eph 5:26-27 and Tit 3:5.

Philippians: Php 3:20 and Tit 2:13; Php 4:5 and Tit 3:2; Php 3:9 and Tit 3:5; Tit 3:7.

Pauline doctrine is found in 1Ti 1:1-3; 1Ti 2:11-14; 1Ti 3:1-8, though there is an inworking of non-Pauline ideas and language similar to that of 1 Timothy. Christianity is a recognizable form of piety to be adorned, observed, and taught (1Ti 2:10). Titus stands midway between 1 and 2 Timothy; it is more personal than the former, and is more closely related to the latter in its parallels to the Pauline letters and in its emphasis on the evangelical doctrines, but in Tit 1:5-9; Tit 2:1-10; Tit 3:9-10 it is connected more closely with 1 Timothy (1Ti 3:2 ff; 1Ti 3:11; 1Ti 5:1 ff; 1Ti 6:1; 1Ti 6:3-5).

(ii.) Hebrews.-Several expressions and a few turns of thought, not found in Paul, are common to the Pastorals and Hebrews-the conception of the death of Christ, and the use of the term mediator, Heb 8:6; Heb 9:15; Heb 12:24 and 1Ti 2:5; Heb 2:14 and 2Ti 1:10;Heb 12:2 and 2Ti 2:8.

(iii.) 1 Peter.-This Epistle affords even more close resemblances than Hebrews: 1Pe 3:1-6 and 1Ti 2:9-11, Tit 2:3-5; 1Pe 5:1-4 and 1Ti 3:2-7, Tit 1:5-9; 1Pe 3:18; 1Pe 3:22 and 1Ti 3:16; 1Pe 4:5 and 2Ti 4:1; 1Pe 2:13-15 and Tit 2:8; Tit 3:1-2; 1Pe 3:13 and Tit 2:14.

(iv.) The Lucan Writings.-There are remarkable points of contact between the Pastoral Epistles and the Gospel of Luke, and especially the Book of Acts. The attributes applied to God-King of kings and Lord of lords (1Ti 6:15), Saviour (3 times in 1 Tim., once in 2 Tim., 6 times in Tit.), His (Tit 3:4) and (cf. Luk 1:15; Luk 1:32; Luk 9:43, Act 8:10; Act 19:27-28, Tit 2:13)-show a striking similarity to the religious terminology current in Hellenistic Judaism and in Hellenistic cults (see Wendland, op. cit., p. 221; Dibelius on Tit 2:14). In this respect the language of Luke and Acts is much more akin to contemporary Hellenistic usage than is that of Paul. The Gospel of Luke opens with a promise of what is really an of the Most High (Luk 1:32; Luk 1:35; Luk 1:76; Luk 1:79). The term is frequent in contemporary religious language and occurs 5 times in these Epistles. Act 14:16-17; Act 17:24-26 are a partial comment on the Divine . Jesus is the Saviour of sinners (Luk 2:11, Act 5:31; Act 13:23); Christ is Redeemer (, 1Ti 2:8, Tit 2:14; cf. Luk 1:68; Luk 24:21, Act 7:35), Judge (2Ti 4:1, Act 10:42; Act 17:31). Cf. the gift of the Spirit (2Ti 1:6, Act 13:2-3; Act 18:25); similar conceptions of the relation of the New to the Old Covenant and of Paul to Judaism (2Ti 1:3; 2Ti 1:5, Act 24:14-16; Act 26:6; Act 26:22); hostility to the gospel traced to ignorance (1Ti 1:13; cf. Act 3:17; Act 17:23; Act 17:30); the Church the family of God, and its relation to the household (1Ti 3:5; 1Ti 3:15, 2Ti 2:20, Act 10:2; Act 11:14; Act 16:31; Act 18:8); recognition of the widow (1Ti 5:3 ff., Luk 2:37; Luk 18:3-6, Act 6:1); evil effect of riches (1Ti 6:9-10; 1Ti 6:17, Luk 8:14; Luk 12:16-21; Luk 16:9); frequent use of good (or other adj.) conscience (6 times in Pastorals, Act 23:1; Act 24:16, common in Hellenistic usage); similar use of for proper conduct (1Ti 6:11, Act 10:35; Act 13:10; Act 24:25). Acts, like the Pastorals, exhibits the influence of teaching in the spread of the gospel, and also of the favourable disposition of rulers upon the growth of the Church, which, indeed, may be said to be one of its minor motives. Prayer for those in authority was in the synagogues of the Jews an equivalent for worship of the Emperor and a proof of loyalty (see Dibelius on 1Ti 2:2). For lesser parallels see 2Ti 1:12, Luk 23:46, Act 7:59; 2Ti 2:19, Luk 13:27; 2Ti 3:14, Luk 1:4. Very close resemblances are found between the address of Paul to the elders at Miletus (Act 20:17-38) and the Pastorals, especially in the closing scene in 2 Timothy. Paul reminds them of his blameless career (cf. 2Ti 1:13-14; 2Ti 3:10-11; 2Ti 4:7). The joy of finishing his course makes his own life of small account since he is fulfilling the commission of Jesus Christ (Act 20:24, 2Ti 1:11-12; 2Ti 4:6-8). In spite of dangers that the preaching of the gospel brought upon him, he has been faithful, serving the Church without gain, and his example will strengthen his successors in the troublous days that are ahead (Act 20:29-30; Act 20:33-35, 1Ti 6:5-10, 2Ti 1:8; 2Ti 2:4; 2Ti 3:10-11; 2Ti 3:14, Tit 1:11). The impending visitation of evil teachers creates the necessity of elders maintaining discipline and oversight (Act 20:17; Act 20:28-30, 1Ti 3:15; 1Ti 4:1; 1Ti 6:5, 2Ti 3:1; 2Ti 3:6, Tit 1:5; Tit 1:11; Tit 3:11 [; cf. Act 20:30]). Cf. Act 20:35 ( ) and 1Ti 6:3. The quotation (1Ti 5:18, Luk 10:7) is given in the exact words of Luke, whereas in other cases, e.g. 1Co 9:14, Paul does not use the Gospel Sayings of Jesus (cf. 1Ti 5:21 with Luk 9:26).

It is just possible that the Book of Tobit may serve as a link between the Pastorals and the Lucan writings. Cf. especially Tob 4:9 and 1Ti 6:19; Tob 4:21 and 1Ti 6:8; Tob 13:6 and 1Ti 1:17 (see R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Oxford, 1913).

If Rendel Harris is correct in his view that the words of Act 17:28, In him we live, and move, and have our being, are taken from Epimenides, the Cretan poet, who is evidently the author of the hexameter verse in Tit 1:12, there is another subtle connexion between the Pastorals and Luke (Expositor . 7th ser., ii. [1906] 305).

The hymn quoted in 1Ti 3:16 seems to follow the themes of the Gospel of Luke and of the Acts-the Incarnation, Baptism, Temptation, Transfiguration and other angelic manifestations, Mission of Seventy, the carrying of the gospel to Gentiles (in Acts), the foundation of the Church, and the Ascent through death into glory. See also under 6.

In regard to the character of Timothy, A. Jlicher says: It is the Timothy of the Acts of the Apostles somewhat flattened out and diminished that the Pastoral Epistles show us (PRE [Note: RE Realencyklopdie fr protestantische Theologie und Kirche.] 3 xix. 786); cf. Wendland: Many ecclesiastical customs and regulations bring [the author of Acts] into the neighbourhood of the Pastoral Epistles (op. cit., p. 333).

8. References in post-apostolic literature.-While the witness of the earliest non-canonical writers is not so strong for the Pastorals as for Romans and Corinthians, it compares favourably with that for Galatians and Philippians, and is much better than that for 1 and 2 Thessalonians. The fact that they were addressed not to churches but to private persons may account for the silence.

Clement.-There is a fair degree of probability that the Pastorals, especially Titus, were known to Clement: Clem. ad Cor. i. 3 and Tit 2:4-5, ii. 7 and Tit 3:1 being the closest parallels; but cf. xxix. 1 with 1Ti 2:8; xxxii. 3, 4 with 2Ti 1:9, Tit 3:5-7; xlv. 7 with 2Ti 1:3, 1Ti 3:9; lx. 3, 4, lxi. with 1Ti 6:15; 1Ti 2:2, Tit 3:1.

Ignatius contains, it is highly probable, frequent reminiscences of 1 and 2 Timothy. Cf. Eph. xiv. 1, xx. 1, Magn. viii. 1 with 1Ti 1:3-5; Polyc. iii. 1 with 1Ti 1:3; 1Ti 6:3, iv. 3 with 1Ti 6:2, vi. 2 with 2Ti 2:3-4; Rom. ii. 2 with 2Ti 4:6, ix. 2 with 1Ti 1:13; Smyrn. iv. 2 with 1Ti 1:12, 2Ti 2:11 ff. For Titus: cf. Magn. vi. 2 with Tit 2:7, viii. 1 with Tit 1:14; Tit 3:9; Polyc. vi. 1 with Tit 1:7. The evidence for Titus is weaker than for the others. Zahn asserts that scarcely a single chapter of the three Pastorals is without more or less marked parallels with Ignatius; Jlicher also admits that they are used in Ignatius and Polycarp.

Barnabas seldom, and with less probability, has traces of the Epistles (cf. Ep. Barn. i. 4 with Tit 1:2, v. 6 with 1Ti 3:16); but Polycarp is undoubtedly indebted to them. Cf. Polyc. ad Phil. iv. 1 with 1Ti 6:7; 1Ti 6:10; iv. 3 with 1Ti 5:5; v. 2 with 2Ti 2:12, Tit 3:8; ix. 2 with 2Ti 4:10; xi. 2 with 1Ti 3:2-5; xi. 4 with 2Ti 2:25; xii. 1 with 2Ti 3:14-15 : xii. 3 with 1Ti 2:1-2; 1Ti 4:15.

Justin, the Gnostic Acts of Paul, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria know these Epistles. They are regarded as Pauline and canonical in the Muratorian Fragment, though, strangely, Marcion omits them from his Pauline group, probably on his own doctrinal grounds. Marcion had written a book with the title , and in 1Ti 6:20 the readers are warned against . It may be also that he rejected them because they were not addressed to churches, for Tertullian seems to see an inconsistency in his admitting Philemon. The silence of Marcion is difficult to explain clearly, but is insufficient for Jlichers theory that the Epistles were not known before his time as Pauline and could not have appeared before a.d. 100.

9. Language of the Pastoral Epistles.-(a) The three letters are related to one another by the use of a large common vocabulary. Among the most distinctive words and phrases are and cognates, and cognates, often with or ( elsewhere in Paul only 16 times and then usually as a predicate, but in the Pastorals 24 times and as a rule attributively), , or , , , , and . Some 170 words are found nowhere else in the NT, 70 occur only in 1 Tim., 40 in 2 Tim., and 25 in Titus.* [Note: Most of these, Wendland thinks, belong to the literary stratum of the Koine, and the influence of the LXX is small (op. cit., p. 364, note 5).] 1 Tim. and Tit. are more nearly related to each other than either is to 2 Timothy.

(b) At the same time there is a fundamentally Pauline vocabulary, though some of the most distinctively Pauline words and particles are not found, e.g. , , , , , , , , , , , . The absence from the Pastorals of the rhetorical expressions ; ; ; , which occur in the greater Epistles, is not so remarkable, because they are found rarely in the Epistles of the Captivity; but the style has become less vigorous than that of these later letters. It never bursts its bounds or swirls aside into parentheses, though the intenser note of 2 Tim. seems to indicate a recent experience.

(c) Many words of these Epistles, while occurring occasionally in the Pauline letters, are more frequent in Luke and Acts, [Note: The language of Luke and Acts also has more affinities with the literary Koine than that of any book of the NT but Hebrews.] e.g. , , (), , , , , (Hebrews, not in Paul), , , (in Paul absolutely), .

(d) Many other words are found elsewhere in the NT only or mainly in Luke and Acts, or occasionally in non-Pauline books, e.g. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , (cf. Act 11:23 with 1Ti 1:3), , , , .

Further parallels with Lucan language are the use of , 2Ti 1:7 (found also in Rom 8:15), Luk 8:55; Luk 13:11, Act 6:10; Act 7:59; Act 17:18; , relative of indefinite reference (1Ti 3:15, Luk 8:26); (2Ti 2:16; 2Ti 3:9, Act 4:17; Act 20:9 f., Act 24:4); with (1Ti 2:14, 2Ti 1:17, Act 13:5; Act 22:17); with , a rare construction (1Ti 4:15, Luk 2:49).

(e) Other words are common with Hebrews, e.g. , , (except once in 2 Pet.), , .

10. Situation of Paul as given in these Epistles.-Attempts have been made to find a place for these Epistles within the record of the life of Paul as it is given in the Book of Acts, but without success; and, if they are from his hand, they must be assigned to a later period, after his acquittal at the trial impending at the close of Acts. That he was acquitted seems probable to the present writer, but this solution of the question does not necessarily carry with it the authenticity of the Pastorals. 2 Timothy alone affords chronological data. Paul is now a prisoner in Rome. Active profession of Christianity brings one into a danger-zone. Suffering accompanies service-not that it is the acute result of systematic persecution, though in 2 Timothy this hovers on the horizon (2Ti 2:3)-and it has been sufficiently severe to cause wholesale defections in Asia and in Rome (2Ti 1:15, 2Ti 4:16-18), and to cheek the energy of a timid heart (2Ti 1:7-8). The author compares Timothys sufferings with his own in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra (2Ti 3:10-11). It is, however, not hazardous for Timothy and Titus to visit Paul at Rome, good friends like Onesiphorus, who had helped him in Ephesus, having apparently of late sought out the Apostle there (2Ti 1:16-17), which might imply that he was in concealment, though 2Ti 4:21 shows that he kept in touch with the Christians of the city, even if, as may be inferred from 2Ti 4:10-11, the Apostle had his own small intimate circle apart from the larger church of Rome. It is for Ephesus and its environment, the churches of his earlier years, that he is most anxious, as the signs point to a gathering storm (2Ti 2:16, 2Ti 3:1 ff.). When Paul wrote Philippians and Colossians he was expecting an immediate and favourable decision of his case, and, if this was the result, during the interval that elapsed between Philippians and 2 Timothy he paid a visit to Ephesus, possibly also to Crete (Tit 1:5). When he wrote Philippians and Colossians, he had with him Timothy (whom he hopes to send to Philippi, and in fact he may have sent him away before the close of the first trial), apparently Epaphroditus, Tychicus (who with Onesimus has just been sent to Colossae), Aristarchus a fellow-prisoner, Mark (who is soon to go to Colossae), Justus, Epaphras, Luke, and Demas. At the time of 2 Timothy, Demas has forsaken Paul and gone to Thessalonica, perhaps on worldly business, and Luke only is with him. He asks Timothy to bring Mark, which he has made possible by sending Tychicus to Ephesus. He seems to have been in prison for some time, and the first defence most likely refers to a preliminary trial which involved danger to his disciples. Alexander the coppersmith, who may have led in the great defection from the Apostle (2Ti 1:15), possibly the same person as Alexander the Jew of Acts 19, may have followed him to Rome and brought against him some specious charge, which told powerfully before the Imperial court, now suspicious of the new sect, which was evidently different from and hated by Judaism. Apparently Paul is sending Timothy late news about Ephesus, whither he may be about to come, possibly from Macedonia, or, as Zahn suggests, from his old home in Lystra, where he may have been when Paul was last in Ephesus. The natural inference is that Erastus remained behind in his own home at Corinth when Paul came on to Rome, and that Trophimus had been left not long before at Miletus (2Ti 4:20). This Trophimus, an Ephesian, had been a fellow-worker with Timothy before and was evidently known to Luke (Act 20:4; Act 21:29).

11. Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles.-Of all the letters which profess to have come from the apostle Paul these are the most disputed. A formidable account is laid against them, to wit-(a) the false doctrine which is said to be Gnostic teaching of the end of the 1st cent.; (b) the emphasis placed upon the Church, its organization and worship, in which are traced the beginnings of the monarchical episcopate, a clergy in due succession from the apostles with a higher standard of morality than the laity, liturgical forms and creeds; (c) fundamental changes from earlier Pauline doctrine both in emphasis and in conception-orthodoxy having supplanted faith, some indeed discovering the germ of the doctrine quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; good works as the outcome of moralism having taken the place of the fruit of the Spirit; justification by faith being no longer vital as against legalism; and the eschatology of the earlier days having lost its vividness; (d) a marked change of language and style, the original language coined by Paul for the expression of the facts of salvation having been displaced to a great extent by terms drawn from the current Jewish-Hellenistic religious terminology, and the old vigour having yielded to smooth or loose commonplace; (e) the fact that Paul, speaking in old age, addresses Timothy as though he were not yet a fully matured man; (f) the extreme difficulty of finding a place for these letters in the recorded life of Paul. As a result, many scholars suppose that they were written about the end of the 1st century.* [Note: The Pastorals sprang from the need of fixing in literary form the church ordinances which had grown up spontaneously and organically and thereby setting forth fixed statutes for the individual life of the church. The attempt is made to bring these rules under the authority of St. Paul and so to provide them with a more general validity (Wendland, op. cit., p. 365).]

It has, however, been shown that the false doctrine of these letters is most easily explained as the result of tendencies both Jewish and pagan which were at work towards the end of Pauls life, and that it does not distinctively resemble what is called Gnosticism, such as was prevalent at the end of the 1st century. The ecclesiastical order is not unlike that found in Philippians and Acts; there is no evidence of a clergy practising a higher morality and enjoying a distinctive privilege by transmission from the apostles. The view of the Church itself also and of its sacraments is very similar to that which is found in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Acts. The Epistles, therefore, fit a period quite as early as Acts, and do not inherently need to be put later than a.d. 70 or 80.

There is, however, as we have seen, much force in the arguments urged against their authenticity which are drawn from the changes in the emphasis and formulation of doctrine, as well as from the remarkable differences between the early Pauline Epistles and these in style and language. Perhaps also the attitude of an old man to a youth assumed by Paul to Timothy, especially in the First Epistle, is somewhat artificial, though it may be justified by the Apostles relation to him as given in 1Co 4:17; 1Co 16:10-11, Php 2:20-22. These difficulties are most obvious in 1 Tim., less so in Tit., and many of them disappear from 2 Timothy. As has been already remarked, if 2 Tim. had stood alone, its authenticity would probably not have been questioned.

Attempts have been made to discover Pauline fragments in these Epistles, but without much success, e.g. a genuine letter written towards the close of the Roman captivity, in 2Ti 1:3-5; 2Ti 1:7 f., 2Ti 1:15-18; 2Ti 4:6-19; 2Ti 4:21-22 and in Tit 1:1; Tit 1:4; Tit 3:12-15 (see especially Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., p. 403 f.); but, as Jlicher remarks, the impression of unity given by the whole, especially of the close connexion originally existing between all the parts referring to the discipline of the Church, outweighs arguments in favour of division of material among several authors (Introd. to the NT, Eng. translation , p. 199). There seem to be, however, in 1 Tim. and possibly in Tit. some interpolated passages (see under 2).

The remarkable similarities in language and ideas, religious and ecclesiastical, that exist between these Epistles and the writings of Luke, combined with their Pauline substance, may be best explained by supposing that Luke had a large share in their composition. He was alone with Paul at the time of his approaching death, and may have composed the second Epistle to Timothy in such circumstances during the imprisonment of Paul that it was a reproduction of his ideas and even of his language rather than the work of an amanuensis. In that case, it may be called Pauline. It was almost certainly the earliest of the three.

Some years after the Apostles death Luke, or one of his circle, may have put together, from his notes or reminiscences and from Pauline material, the first letter to Timothy and that to Titus almost simultaneously. His purpose in doing so was to strengthen the authority of Timothy and Titus in the face of a widespread and increasing invasion of the error referred to in 2 Tim., which was undermining the churches of Ephesus and Crete. Such a theory would account for most of the features of these Epistles, as, e.g., the disorder and lack of logical development of themes in 1 Tim., which may be due to a substratum of refractory materials. If Luke had written a free composition, it would have been a better literary product.

Literature.-(1) Commentaries: J. H. Bernard, Cambridge Greek Testament, The Pastoral Epistles, Cambridge, 1899; N. J. D. White, in Expositors Greek Testament iv. [London, 1910]; B. Weiss, Die Briefe Pauli an Timotheus und Titus7 [H. A. W. Meyer, Kommentar, xi.], Gttingen, 1902; H. v. Soden, in Handkommentar zum NT, iii.2 [Freiburg, 1911]; F. Khler, in Die Schriften des NT [Gttingen, 1908]; G. Wohlenberg, in T. Zahns Kommentar, xiii.2 [Leipzig, 1911]; M. Dibelius, in H. Lietzmanns Handbuch zum NT [Tbingen, 1913].

(2) Introduction: In addition to treatment in above Commentaries, see H. J. Holtzmann, Einleitung in das NT2, Freiburg, 1886; C. v. Weizscker, Apostolic Age2 Eng. translation , London, 1897-99; A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, do., 1891, Essay by G. G. Findlay, p. 343 ff.; F. J. A. Hort, Judaistic Christianity, Cambridge, 1894, and The Christian Ecclesia, do., 1897; T. M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, do., 1902; A. Harnack, Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur, i. [Leipzig, 1897]; A. Jlicher, An Introduction to the NT, Eng. translation , London, 1904; W. Lock, in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. s.vv.; T. Zahn, Introduction to the NT3, Eng. translation , 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1909; J. Moffatt, The Historical NT2, do., 1901, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., do., 1911; W. M. Ramsay, in Expositor , 7th ser., viii. [1909], ix. [1910], 8th ser., i. [1911]; P. Wendland, Die hellenistisch-rmische Kultur und die urchristlichen Literature formen3, Tbingen, 1912.

R. A. Falconer.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

Timothy and Titus, Epistles to

(THE PASTORALS)

STS. TIMOTHY AND TITUS

Saints Timothy and Titus were two of the most beloved and trusted disciples of St. Paul, whom they accompanied in many of his journeys. Timothy is mentioned in

Acts, xvi, 1; xvii, 14, 15, 1; xviii, 5; xix, 22; xx, 4; Rom., xvi, 21; I Cor., iv, 17; II Cor., i, 1, 19; Phil., i, 1; ii, 19; Col., i, 1; I Thess., i, 1; iii, 2, 6; II Thess., i, 1; I Tim., i, 2, 18; vi, 20; II Tim., i, 2; Philem., i, 1; Heb., xiii, 23;

and Titus in

II Cor., ii, 13; vii, 6, 13, 14; viii, 6, 16, 23; xii, 18; Gal., ii, 1, 3; II Tim., iv, 10; Tit., i, 4.

St. Timothy has been regarded by some as the “angel of the church of Ephesus”, Apoc., ii, 1-17. According to the ancient Roman martyrology he died Bishop of Ephesus. The Bollandists (24 Jan.) give two lives of St. Timothy, one ascribed to Polycrates (an early Bishop of Ephesus, and a contemporary of St. Irenæus) and the other by Metaphrastes, which is merely an expansion of the former. The first states that during the Neronian persecution St. John arrived at Ephesus, where he lived with St. Timothy until he was exiled to Patmos under Domitian. Timothy, who was unmarried, continued Bishop of Ephesus until, when he was over eighty years of age, he was mortally beaten by the pagans. According to early tradition Titus continued after St. Paul’s death as Archbishop of Crete, and died there when he was over ninety.

EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY AND TITUS — AUTHENTICITY

I. Internal Evidence

The remainder of this article will be devoted to the important question of authenticity, which would really require a volume for discussion. Catholics know from the universal tradition and infallible teaching of the Church that these Epistles are inspired, and from this follows their Pauline authorship as they all claim to have been written by the Apostle. There was no real doubt on this question until the beginning of the nineteenth century; but since that time they have been most bitterly attacked by German and other writers. Their objections are principally based on internal evidence and the alleged difficulty of finding a place for them in the lifetime of St. Paul.

A. Objection from the absence of Pauline vocabulary

Moffatt, a representative writer of this school, writes (Ency. Bib., IV): “Favourite Pauline phrases and words are totally wanting. . . . The extent and significance of this change in vocabulary cannot adequately be explained even when one assigns the fullest possible weight to such factors as change of amanuensis, situation or topic, lapse of time, literary fertility, or senile weakness.” Let us examine this writer’s list of favourite Pauline words of the absence of which so very much is made:

Adikos (unjust). — This is found in Rom., iii, 5; I Cor., vi, 1, 9, but not in any of the other Pauline epistles, admitted to be genuine by this writer. If its absence be fatal to the Pastorals, why not also to I and II Thess., II Cor., Gal., Philip., Col., and Philem.? Moreover, the noun adikia is found in the Pastorals, II Tim., ii, 19.

Akatharsia (uncleanness) does not occur in I Cor., Phil., II Thess., and Philem. If that does not tell against these Epistles why is it quoted against the Pastorals?

Ouiothesia (adoption). — This word is three times in Rom., once in Gal., but it does not occur at all in I and II Cor., I and II Thess., Phil., Col., and Philem. Why its omission should be used against the Pastorals is not easy to understand.

Patre hemon (Our Father). — Two expressions, God “our Father” and God “the Father” are found in St. Paul’s Epistles. The former is frequent in his earlier Epistles, viz., seven times in Thess., while the latter expression is not used. But in Romans “God our Father” appears but once, and “the Father” once. In I Cor. we read God “our Father” once, and “the Father” twice; and the same has to be said of II Cor. In Gal. we have “our Father” once and “the Father” three times. In Phil. the former occurs twice and the latter once; in Col. the former only once, and the latter three times. “The Father” occurs once in each of the Pastoral Epistles, and from the above it is evident that it is just as characteristic of St. Paul as “our Father”, which is found but once in each of the Epistles to the Romans, I and II Cor., Gal., and Col., and it would be absurd to conclude from this that all the remaining chapters were spurious.

Diatheke (covenant) occurs twice in Rom., once in I Cor., twice in II Cor., thrice in Gal., and not at all in I and II Thess., Phil., Col., and Philem., admitted to be genuine by Moffatt.

Apokalyptein (reveal), a word not found in II Cor., I Thess., Col., and Philem., and only once in Phil.

Eleutheros (free), is not in I and II Thess., II Cor., Phil., and Philem., so it is no test of Pauline authorship. Its compounds are not met in I and II Thess., Phil., Col., or Philem., and, with the exception of Gal., in the others sparingly.

Energein (to be operative) is seen but once in each of Rom., Phil., Col., I and II Thess.; and no one would conclude from its absence from the remaining portions of these Epistles, which are longer than the Pastorals, that they were not written by St. Paul.

Katergazesthai (perform), though several times in Rom. and II Cor., and once in I Cor. and in Phil. is wanting in I and II Thess., Gal., Col., and Philem., which are genuine without it.

Kauchasthai (boast), only once in Phil., and in II Thess., and not at all in I Thess., Coloss., and Philem.

Moria (folly) is five times in I Cor., and nowhere else in St. Paul’s Epistles.

But we need not weary the reader by going through the entire list. We have carefully examined every word with the like results. With perhaps a single exception, every word is absent from several of St. Paul’s genuine Epistles, and the exceptional word occurs but once in some of them. The examination shows that this list does not afford the slightest argument against the Pastorals, and that St. Paul wrote a great deal without using such words. The compilation of such lists is likely to leave an erroneous impression on the mind of the unguarded reader. By a similar process, with the aid of a concordance, it could be proved that every Epistle of St. Paul has an appearance of spuriousness. It could be shown that Galatians, for instance, does not contain many words that are found in some of the other Epistles. A method of reasoning which leads to such erroneous conclusions should be discredited; and when writers make very positive statements on the strength of such misleading lists in order to get rid of whole books of Scripture, their other assertions should not be readily taken for granted.

B. Objection from the use of particles

Certain particles and prepositions are wanting. Jülicher in his “Introd. to the New Test.”, p. 181, writes: “The fact that brings conviction [against the Pastorals] is that many words which were indispensable to Paul are absent from the Pastoral Epistles, e.g. ara, dio, dioti.” But, as Jacquier points out, nothing can be concluded from the absence of particles, because St. Paul’s employment of them is not uniform, and several of them are not found in his unquestioned Epistles. Dr. Headlam, an Anglican writer, pointed out in a paper read at the Church Congress, in 1904, that ara occurs twenty-six times in the four Epistles of the second group, only three times in all the others, but not at all in Col., Phil., or Philem. Dio occurs eighteen times in Rom., Gal. and Cor., but not at all in Col. or II Thess. The word disti does not occur in II Thess., II Cor., Eph., Col., or Philem. We find that epeita does not appear at all in Rom., II Cor., Phil., Col., II Thess., and Philem., nor eti in I Thess., Col., and Philem. It is unnecessary to go through the entire catalogue usually given by opponents, for the same phenomenon is discovered throughout. Particles were required in the argumentative portions of St. Paul’s Epistles, but they are used very sparingly in the practical parts, which resemble the Pastorals. Their employment, too, depended greatly on the character of the amanuensis.

C. Objection from Hapax Legomena

The great objection to the Pastorals is the admittedly large number of hapax legomena found in them. Workman (Expository Times, VII, 418) taking the term “hapax legomenon” to mean any word used in a particular Epistle and not again occurring in the New Testament, found from Grimm-Thayer’s “Lexicon” the following numbers of hapax legomena: Rom. 113, I Cor. 110, II Cor. 99, Gal. 34, Eph. 43 Phil. 41, Col. 38, I Thess. 23, II Thess. 11, Philem. 5, i Tim. 82, II Tim. 53, Titus 33. The numbers have to he somewhat reduced as they contain words from variant readings. These figures would suggest to most people, as they did to Dean Farrar, that the number of peculiar words in the Pastorals does not call for any special explanation. Mr. Workman, however, thinks that for scientific purposes the proportionate length of the Epistles should he taken into account. He calculated the average number of hapax legomena occurring on a page of Westcott and Hort’s text with the following results: II Thessalonians 3-6, Philemon 4, Galatians 4.1, I Thessalonians 4.2, Romans 4.3, I Corinthians 4.6, Ephesians 4.9, II Corinthians 6.10, Colossians 6-3, Philippians 6-8, II Timothy 11, Titus and I Timothy 13. The proportion of hapax legomena in the Pastorals is large, but when compared with Phil., it is not larger than that between II Cor, and II Thess. It has to be noted that these increase in the order of time.

Workman gives a two-fold explanation. First, a writer as he advances in life uses more strange words and involved constructions, as is seen on comparing Carlyle’s “Latter-Day Pamphlets” and his “Heroes and Hero-Worship”. Secondly, the number of unusual words in any author is a variable quantity. He has found the average number of hapax legomena per page of Irving’s one-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays to be as follows: “Love’s Labour Lost” 7.6, “Comedy of Errors” 4.5, “Two Gentlemen of Verona” 3.4, “Romeo and Juliet” 5.7, “Henry VI, pt. 3” 3.5, “Taming of the Shrew” 5.1, “Midsummer Night’s Dream” 6.8, “Richard II” 4.6, “Richard III” 4.4, “King John” 5.4, “Merchant of Venice” 5.6, “Henry IV, pt. I” 9.3, “pt. II” 8, “Henry V” 8.3, “Merry Wives of Windsor” 6.9, “Much Ado About Nothing” 4.7, “As You Like It” 6.4, “Twelfth Night” 7.5, “All’s Well” 6.9, “Julius Cæsar” 3.4, “Measure for Measure” 7, “Troilus and Cressida” 10.1, “Macbeth” 9.7, “Othello” 7.3, “Anthony and Cleopatra” 7.4, “Coriolanus” 6.8, “King Lear” 9.7, “Timon” 6.2, “Cymbeline” 6.7, “The Tempest” 9.3, “Titus Andronicus” 4.9, “Winter’s Tale” 8, “Hamlet” 10.4, “Henry VIII” 4.3, “Pericles” 5.2. For a similar argument on Dante see Butler’s “Paradise”, XI. The totals of hapax legomena for some of the plays are: “Julius Cæsar” 93, “Comedy of Errors” 88, “Macbeth” 245, “Othello” 264, “King Lear” 358, “Cymbeline” 252, “Hamlet” 426, “The Merchant of Venice” 148. This scrutiny of the words peculiar to each play throws light on another difficulty in the Pastorals, viz, the recurrence of such expressions as “a faithful saying”, “sound words”, etc. “Moon-calf” occurs five times in “The Tempest”, and nowhere else; “pulpit” six times in one scene of “Julius Cæsar” and never elsewhere; “hovel” five times in “King Lear”; “mountaineer” four times in “Cymbeline”, etc. Compare, “God forbid”, me genoito of Gal., Rom., once in I Cor. — not in the other Epistles of St. Paul. “Sound words” was used by Philo before St. Paul, in whom it may be due to intercourse with St. Luke. (See Plumptre’s list of words common to St. Luke and St. Paul, quoted in Farrar’s “St. Paul”, I, 481.)

Mr. Workman has overlooked one point in his very useful article. The hapax legomena are not evenly distributed over the Epistles; they occur in groups. Thus, more than half of those in Col. are found in the second chapter, where a new subject is dealt with (see Abbott, “Crit. . . . Comment. on Ep. to the Ephes. and to the Coloss.” in “Internat. Crit. Comment.”). This is as high a proportion as in any chapter of the Pastorals. Something similar is observable in II Cor., Thess., etc. Over sixty out of the seventy-five hapax legomena in I Tim. occur in forty-four verses, where the words, for the most part, naturally arise out of the new subjects treated of. The remaining two-thirds of the Epistle have as few hapax legomena as any other portion of St. Paul’s writings. Compounds of phil-, oiko-, didask-, often objected to, are also found in his other Epistles.

The “Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles” was discussed in “The Church Quarterly” in October, 1906, and January, 1907. In the first the writer pointed out that the anti-Pauline hypothesis presented more difficulties than the Pauline; and in the second he made a detailed examination of the hapax legomena. Seventy-three of these are found in the Septuagint, of which St. Paul was a diligent student, and any of them might just as well have been used by him as by an imitator. Ten of the remainder are suggested by Septuagint words, e. g. anexikakos II Tim., ii, 24, anexikakia Wisd., ii, 9; antithesis I Tim., vi, 20, antithetos Job, xxxii, 3; authentein I Tim., ii, 12, authentes Wisd., xii, 6; genealogia I Tim., i, 4, Tit., iii, 9; geneealogein I Par., v, 1; paroinos I Tim., iii, 3, Tit., i, 7, paroinein Is., xli, 12, etc. Twenty-eight of the words now left are found in the classics, and thirteen more in Aristotle and Polybius. Strabo, born in 66 B. C., enables us to eliminate graodes. All these words formed part of the Greek language current up to St. Paul’s time and as well known to him as to anybody at the end of the first century. Any word used by an author contemporary with St. Paul may reasonably be supposed to have been as well known to himself as to a subsequent imitator. In this way we may deduct eight of the remaining words, which are common to the Pastorals and Philo, an elder contemporary of St. Paul. In dealing with the fifty remaining words we must recall the obvious fact that a new subject requires a new vocabulary. If this be neglected, it would be easy to prove that Plato did not write the Timæus. Organization and the conduct of practical life, etc., cannot be dealt with in the same words in which points of doctrine are discussed. This fairly accounts for eight words, such as xenodochein, oikodespotein, teknogonein, philandros, heterodidaskalein, etc., used by the author. His detestation of the errorists doubtless called forth kenophonia, logomachein, logomachia, metaiologia, metaiologos, several of which were probably coined for the occasion. The element of pure chance in language accounts for “parchments”, “cloak”, and “stomach”: he had no occasion to speak about such things previously, nor of a pagan “prophet”. Seven of the remaining words are dealt with on the modest principle that words formed from composition or derivation from admittedly Pauline words may more reasonably be supposed to come from St. Paul himself than from a purely hypothetical imitator, e.g. airetikos, adj., Tit., iii, 10; airesis, I Cor., xi, 19; Gal., v, 20; dioktes, I Tim., i, 13; diokein, Rom., xii, 14, etc.; episoreuein, II Tim., iv, 3; soreuein epi Rom., xii, 20; LXX, etc. Five other words are derived from Biblical words and would as easily have occurred to St. Paul as to a later writer. The remaining words, about twenty, are disposed of separately.

Epiphaneia instead of parousia, for the second coming of Christ, is not against the Pastorals, because St. Paul’s usage in this matter is not uniform. We have he memera kyriou in I Thess., v, 2, 1 Cor., i, 8, v, 5; he apokalypsis in II Thess., i, 17; and he epiphaneia tes parousias autou in II Thess., ii, 8. Lilley (“Pastoral Epistles”, Edinburgh, 1901, p. 48) states that out of the 897 words contained in the Pastorals 726 are common to them and the other books of the New Testament, and two-thirds of the entire vocabulary are found in the other Epistles of St. Paul; and this is the proportion of common words found in Galatians and Romans. The same writer, in his complete list of 171 hapax legomena in the Pastorals, points out that 113 of these are classical words, that is, belonging to the vocabulary of one well acquainted with Greek; and it is not surprising that so many are found in these Epistles which were addressed to two disciples well educated in the Greek language. Another point much insisted upon by objectors is a certain limited literary or verbal affinity connecting the Pastorals with Luke and Acts and therefore, it is asserted, pointing to a late date. But in reality this connexion is in their favour, as there is a strong tendency of modern criticism to acknowledge the Lucan authorship of these two books, and Harnack has written two volumes to prove it (see LUKE, GOSPEL OF SAINT). He has now added a third to show that they were written by St. Luke before A. D. 64. When the Pastorals were written, St. Luke was the constant companion of St. Paul, and may have acted as his amanuensis. This intercourse would doubtless have influenced St. Paul’s vocabulary, and would account for such expressions as agathoergein of I Tim., vi, 18, agathopoein of Luke, vi, 9, agathourgein, contracted from agathoergein, Acts, xiv, 17. St. Paul has ergazomeno to agathon Rom., ii, 10. — From all that has been said, it is not surprising that Thayer, in his translation of Grimm’s “Lexicon”, wrote: “The monumental misjudgments committed by some who have made questions of authorship turn on vocabulary alone, will deter students, it is to be hoped, from misusing the lists exhibiting the peculiarities of the several books.”

D. Objection from style

“The comparative absence of rugged fervour, the smoother flow, the heaping up of words, all point to another sign-manual than that of Paul” (Ency. Bib.) — Precisely the same thing could be urged against some of St. Paul’s other Epistles, and against large sections of the remainder. All critics admit that large portions of the Pastorals are so much like St. Paul’s writings that they actually maintain that they are taken from fragments of genuine letters of the Apostle (now lost). Various discordant attempts have been made to separate these portions from the rest, but with so little success that Jülicher confesses that the thing is impossible. On the other hand, it is the general opinion of the best scholars that all three Epistles are from the pen of one and the same writer. That being the case, and it being impossible to deny that portions indistinguishable from the rest are by St. Paul, it follows that the early and universal tradition ascribing the whole of them to the Apostle is correct.

As we pass from one to another of the four groups of St. Paul’s Epistles; (1) Thessalonians; (2) Galatians, Corinthians, Romans; (3) Captivity Epistles; (4) Pastorals

We observe considerable differences of style side by side with very marked and characteristic resemblances, and that is precisely what we find in the case of the Pastorals. There are some striking points of connexion between them and Phil., the Epistle probably nearest to them in date; but there are many resemblances in vocabulary, style, and ideas connecting them with portions of all the other Epistles, especially with the practical parts. There are, for instance, forty-two passages connecting I Tim. with the earlier Epistles. The terms are nearly identical, but display an amount of liberty denoting the working of the same independent mind, not a conscious imitation. The Pastorals show throughout the same marks of originality as are found in all the writings of the Apostle. There are similar anacolutha, incomplete sentences, play on words, long drawn periods, like comparisons, etc. The Pastorals are altogether practical, and therefore do not show the rugged fervour of style confined, for the most part, to the controversial and argumentative portions of his large epistles. (See the very valuable book by James, “Genuineness and Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles”, London, 1906; also Jacquier, and Lilley.) It may be well to note, in this connexion, that Van Steenkiste, professor at the Catholic Seminary of Bruges, asserted, as long ago as 1876, that the inspiration of the Pastorals and their Pauline authorship would be sufficiently safeguarded if we accepted the view that they were written in the name and with the authority of the Apostle by one of his companions, say St. Luke, to whom he distinctly explained what had to be written, or to whom he gave a written summary of the points to be developed, and that when the letters were finished, St. Paul read them through, approved them, and signed them. This, he thinks, was the way in which “Hebrews” also, was written (S. Pauli Epistolæ, II, 283).

E. Objection from the advanced state of church organization

This objection is adequately answered in the articles HIERARCHY OF THE EARLY CHURCH, BISHOP, etc. See also “The Establishment of the Episcopate” in Bishop Gore’s “Orders and Unity” (London, 1909), 115. The seven, St. Stephen, Philip, etc., were set aside for their ministry by the Apostles by prayer and the laying on of hands. Immediately after this we read that they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and preached with great success (Acts 6:7). From St. Luke’s usual method we may conclude that a similar ceremony was employed by the Apostles on other occasions when men were set aside to be deacons, presbyters, or bishops. We read of presbyters with the Apostles at an early date in Jerusalem (Acts 15:2) and according to the earliest tradition, St. James the Less was appointed bishop there on the dispersion of the Apostles, and succeeded by his cousin Simeon in A. D. 62. Sts. Paul and Barnabas ordained priests in every church at Derbe, Lystra, Antioch of Pisidia, etc. (Acts 14:22). Bishops and priests, or presbyters, are mentioned in St. Paul’s speech at Miletus (Acts 20:28). In his first Epistle (1 Thessalonians 5:12) St. Paul speaks of rulers who were over them in the Lord, — see also Rom., xii, 8; “governments” are referred to in I Cor., xii, 28, and “Pastors” in Eph., iv, 11. St. Paul wrote “to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons” (Phil., i, 1.

In Rom., xii, 6-8, 1 Cor., xii, 28, Eph., iv, 11, St. Paul is not giving a list of offices in the Church, but of charismatic gifts (for the meaning of which see HIERARCHY OF THE EARLY CHURCH). Those who were endowed with supernatural and transitory charismata were subject to the Apostles and presumably to their delegates. Side by side with the possessors of such gifts we read of “rulers”, “governors”, “pastors”, and in other places of “bishops”, “priests”, and “deacons”. These, we may lawfully assume, were appointed under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost by the Apostles, by prayer and laying on of hands. Amongst these so appointed before A. D. 64 there were certainly ordained deacons, priests, and possibly bishops also. If so they had bishop’s orders, but the limits of their jurisdiction were not as yet, perhaps, very clearly defined, and depended altogether on the will of the Apostles. it is assuredly in the highest degree likely that the Apostles, towards the end of their lives and as the Church extended more and more, ordained and delegated others to appoint such priests and deacons as they had been in the habit of appointing themselves. The earliest tradition shows that such a thing took place in Rome by A. D. 67; and there is nothing more advanced than this in the Pastorals. Timothy and Titus were consecrated delegates to rule with Apostolic authority and appoint deacons, priests, and bishops (probably synonymous in these Epistles).

But a further objection is raised as follows: “The distinctive element, however, i. e. the prominence assigned to Timothy and Titus is intelligible only on the supposition that the author had specially in view the ulterior end of vindicating the evangelic succession of contemporary episcopi and other office bearers where this was liable for various reasons to be challenged. . . . The craving (visible in Clem. Rom.) for continuity of succession as a guarantee of authority in doctrine (and therefore in discipline) underlies the efforts of this Paulinist to show that Timothy and Titus were genuine heirs of Paul” (Ency. Bib., IV). — If this craving is visible in St. Clement of Rome, who was a disciple of the Apostles there and wrote less than thirty years after their death, it is surely more likely that he was maintaining an organization established by them than that he was defending one of which they were ignorant. If these Epistles were written against people who challenged the authority of bishops and priests about A. D. 100, why is it that these opponents did not cry out against forgeries written to confute themselves? But of all this there is not the slightest shred of evidence.

F. Objection

No room for them in the life-time of St. Paul. — The writer in the “Ency. Bib.” is never tired of accusing the defenders of the Epistles of making gratuitous assumptions, though he allows himself considerable liberty in that respect throughout his article. It is a gratuitous assertion, for example, to state that St. Paul was put to death at the end of the first Roman captivity, A. D. 63 or 64. Christianity was not yet declared a reliqio illicita, and according to Roman law there was nothing deserving of death against him. He was arrested to save him from the Jewish mob in Jerusalem. The Jews did not appear against him during the two years he was kept in prison. Agrippa said he could have been delivered had he not appealed to Cæsar, so there was no real charge against him when he was brought before the emperor’s or his representative’s tribunal. The Epistles written during this Roman captivity show that he expected to be soon released (Philem., 22; Phil., ii, 24). Lightfoot, Harnack, and others, from the wards of Clem. Rom. and the Muratorian Fragment, think that he was not only released, but that he actually carried out his design of visiting Spain. During the years from 63-67 there was ample time to visit Crete and other places and write I Tim. and Titus. II Tim. was written from his second Roman prison soon before his death.

G. Objection from the errors condemned

It is said that the errors referred to in the Pastorals did not exist in St. Paul’s time, though the most advanced critics (Ency. Bib.) have now abandoned the theory (maintained with great confidence in the nineteenth century) that the Epistles were written against Marcion and other Gnostics about the middle of the second century. It is now conceded that they were known to Sts. Ignatius and Polycarp, and therefore written not later than the end of the first century or early part of the second. It requires a keen critical sense to detect at that time the existence of errors at the time of Ignatius, the seeds of which did not exist thirty or forty years earlier or of which St. Paul could not have foreseen the development. “The environment is marked by incipient phases of what afterwards blossomed out into the Gnosticism of the second century” (Ency. Bib.): — but the incipient phases of Gnosticism are now placed by competent scholars at a much earlier date than that indicated by this writer. No known system of Gnosticism corresponds with the errors mentioned in the Pastorals; in reply to this, however, it is said that the “errors are not given in detail to avoid undue anachronisms” (ibid.). Sometimes opponents of the authenticity unfairly attack the actual contents, but here the Epistles are condemned for “contents” which they do not contain. An amusing instance of the precariousness of the subjective method is seen in this same article (Ency. Bib.). The writer arguing against the Epistles on the subject of greetings says that “Philemon is the one private note of Paul extant”. We are suddenly brought up, however, by a note (editorial?) within square brackets: “compare, however, Philemon.” On turning to Philemon we find van Manen asserting, with equal confidence, that the Apostle had nothing whatsoever to do with that Epistle, and he supports his statement by the same kind of subjective arguments and assertions that we find running through the article on Timothy and Titus. He even throws out the absurd suggestion that Philemon was based on the letter of Pliny, which is given in full by Lightfoot in his edition of Philemon.

Hort in his “Judaistic Christianity” (London, 1898), 130-48, does not believe that the errors of the Pastorals had any connexion with Gnosticism, and he gives a very full reply to the objection with which we are dealing. With Weiss he clears the ground by making some important distinctions: (1) We must distinguish prophecies about future false teachers which imply that germs, to say the least, of the future evils are already perceptible (1 Timothy 4:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 4:3) from warnings about the present; (2) The perversities of individuals like Alexander, Hymenæus, and Philetus must not be taken as direct evidence of a general stream of false teaching; (3) Non-Christian teachers, the corrupters of Christian belief, must not be confounded with misguided Christians.

The errors which St. Paul easily foresaw would arise amongst false Christians and pagans cannot be urged against the Epistles as if they had already arisen. Hort makes out a good case that there is not the smallest trace of Gnosticism in the existing errors amongst the Ephesian and Cretan Christians, which are treated more as trivialities than serious errors. “The duty laid on Timothy and Titus is not that of refuting deadly errors, but of keeping themselves clear, and warning others to keep clear of mischievous trivialities usurping the office of religion.” He shows that all these errors have evident marks of Judaistic origin. The fact that St. Irenæus, Hegesippus, and others used the words of the Pastorals against the Gnostics of the second century is no proof that Gnosticism was in the mind of their author. Words of Scripture have been employed to confute heretics in every age. This, he says, is true of the expressions pseudonymos gnosis, aphthartos, aion, epiphaneia, which have to be taken in their ordinary sense. “There is not the faintest sign that such words have any reference to what we call Gnostic terms.”

Hort takes genealogiai in much the same sense in which it was employed by Polybius, IX, ii, 1, and Diodorus Siculus, IV, i, to mean stories, legends, myths of the founders of states. “Several of these early historians, or ‘logographers’ are known to have written books of this kind entitled Genealogiai, Genealogika (e. g. Hecatæus, Acusilanus, Simonides the Younger, who bore the title ho Genealogos, as did also Pherecydes)” (p. 136). Philo included under to genealogikon all primitive human history in the Pentateuch. A fortiori this term could be applied by St. Paul to the rank growth of legend respecting the Patriarchs, etc., such as we find in the “Book of Jubilees” and in the “Haggada”. This was condemned by him as trashy and unwholesome. The other contemporary errors are of a like Jewish character. Hort takes antithesis tes pseudonymou gnoseos to refer to the casuistry of the scribes such as we find in the “Halacha”, just as the mythoi, and genealogiai designate frivolities such as are contained in the Haggada.

But is it not possible that these (antitheseis tes pseudonymou gnoseos) refer to the system of interpretation developed later in the Kabbala, of which a convenient description is given in Gigot’s “General Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures”, p. 411? (see also “Kabbala” in “Jewish Encyclopedia” and Vigoroux, “Dict. de la Bible”). He who followed only the literal meaning of the text of the Hebrew Bible had no real knowledge, or gnosis, of the deep mysteries contained in the letters and words of Scripture. By notarikon words were constructed from the initials of several, or sentences formed by using the letters of a word as initials of words. By ghematria the numerical values of letters were used, and words of equal numerical value were substituted for each other and new combinations formed. By themura the alphabet was divided into two equal parts, and the letters of one half on being substituted for the corresponding letters of the other half, in the text, brought out the hidden sense of the Scripture. These systems date back to time immemorial. They were borrowed from the Jews by the Gnostics of the second century, and were known to some of the early Fathers, and were probably in use before Apostolic times. Now antithesis may mean not only opposition or contrast, but also the change or transposition of letters. In this way antithesis tes pseudonymou gnoseos would mean the falsely-called knowledge which consists in the interchange of letters just referred to.

Again, we read: “The mischievous feature about them was their presence within the churches and their combination of plausible errors with apparent, even ostentatious, fidelity to principles of the faith — a trouble elsewhere reflected Acts XX. 29f, in connexion with the Ephesian church towards the end of the first century” (Ency. Bib.). We do not admit that Acts, xx, was written towards the end of the first century. The best scholars hold it was written by St. Luke long before; and so the critics of the Epistles, having without proof dated the composition of a genuine early New-Testament book at the end of the first century, on the strength of that performance endeavour to discredit three whole books of Scripture.

H. Miscellaneous objections

We bring together under this heading a number of objections that are found scattered in the text, foot-notes, sub-foot-notes, of the article in the “Ency. Bib.” (1) “The concern to keep the widow class under the bishop’s control is thoroughly sub-apostolic (cp. Ign. ad Polycarp. iv. 5) “. — That would not prove that it was not Apostolic as well. On reading the only passage referring to widows (1 Timothy 5) we get a totally different impression from the one conveyed here. The great aim of the writer of the Epistle appears to be to prevent widows from becoming a burden on the Church, and to point out the duty of their relatives to support them. Thirty years before the death of St. Paul the Seven were appointed to look after the poor widows of Jerusalem; and it is absurd to suppose that during all that time no regulations were made as to who should receive support, and who not. Some few of those who were “widows indeed” probably held offices like deaconesses, of whom we read in Rom., xvi, 1, and who were doubtless under the direction of the Apostles and other ecclesiastical authorities. The supposition that nothing was “done in order”, but that everything was allowed to go at random, has no support in St. Paul’s earlier Epistles. (2) “The curious antipathy of the writer to second marriages on the part of the presbyters, episcopi, diaconi, and widows (cherai) is quite un-Pauline, but corresponds to the more general feeling prevalent in the second century throughout the churches.” — That state of feeling throughout the churches in the second century should make an objector pause. Its Apostolic origin is its best explanation, and there is nothing whatsoever to show that it was un-Pauline. It was St. Paul who wrote as follows at a much earlier date (1 Corinthians 7): “I would that all men were even as myself: . . . But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I . . . But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things of the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided . . . He that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well; and he that giveth her not, doth better.” It would be rash to suppose that St. Paul, who wrote thus to the Corinthians, in general, could not shortly before his death require that those who were to take the place of the Apostles and hold the highest offices in the Church should not have been married more than once. (3) “The distinctive element, however, i. e. the prominence assigned to Timothy and Titus, is intelligible only on the supposition that the author had specially in view the ulterior end of vindicating the legitimate evangelic succession of contemporary episcopi and other office-bearers in provinces where this was liable for various reasons to be challenged” (in the beginning of the second century). — Thousands have read these Epistles, from their very first appearance until now, without such a conclusion suggesting itself to them. If this objection means anything it means that the Apostles could not assign prominent positions to any of their disciples or delegates; which runs counter to what we read of Timothy and Titus in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul. (4) “The prominence given to ‘teaching’ qualities shows that one danger of the contemporary churches lay largely in the vagaries of unauthorized teachers (Did., xvi). The author’s cure is simple: Better let the episcopus himself teach! Better let those in authority be responsible for the instruction of the ordinary members! Evidently teaching was not originally or usually (1 Timothy 5:17) a function of presbyters, but abuses had led by this time, as the Didache proves, to a need of combining teaching with organised church authority.” — What a lot of meaning is read into half a dozen words of these Epistles! In the very first Epistle that St. Paul wrote we read: “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them who labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you: That you esteem them more abundantly in charity, for their work’s sake” (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13). The capacity for teaching was a gift, probably a natural one working through God’s grace for the good of the Church (see HIERARCHY OF THE EARLY CHURCH), and there was no reason why the Apostle, who attached so much importance to teaching when speaking of his own work, should not require that those who were selected to rule the Churches and carry on his work should be endowed with the aptitude for teaching. In Eph., iv, 11, we find that the same persons were “pastors and doctors”. The writer who makes this objection does not admit that real bishops and priests existed in Apostolic times; so this is what his assertion implies: When the Apostles died there were no bishops and priests. After some time they originated somewhere and somehow, and spread all over the Church. During a considerable time they did not teach. Then they began to monopolize teaching, and the practice spread everywhere, and finally the Pastorals were written to confirm this state of affairs, which had no sanction from the Apostles, though these bishops thought otherwise. And all this happened before St. Ignatius wrote, in a short period of thirty or forty years, a length of time spanned say from 1870 or 1880 till 1912 — a rapid state of development indeed, which has no documentary evidence to support it, and which must have taken place, for the most part, under the very eyes of the Apostles St. John and St. Philip, and of Timothy, Titus, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and other disciples of the Apostles. The early Christians had more respect for Apostolic traditions than that. (5) “Baptism is almost a sacrament of salvation (Tit., iii, 5).” — It is quite a sacrament of salvation, not only here, but in the teaching of Christ, in the Acts, and in St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, I Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians, and in I Pet., iii, 21. (6) “Faith is tending to become more than ever fides quœ creditur.” — But it appears as fides qua creditur in I Tim., i, 2, 4, 5, 14; ii, 7, 15; iii, 9, 13; iv, 6, 12; vi, 11; II Tim., i, 5, 13; ii, 18, 22; iii, 10, 15; Tit., ii, 2, etc., while it is used in the earlier Epistles not only subjectively but also objectively. See pistis in Preuschen, “Handwörterbuch zum griech. N. Testament.” Faith is fides quœ creditur only nine times out of thirty-three passages where pistis occurs in the Pastorals. (7) “The church to this unmystical author is no longer the bride or the body of Christ but God’s building or rather familia dei, quite in the neo-Catholic style.” There are several genuine Epistles of St. Paul in which the Church is neither called the body nor the bride of Christ, and in calling it a building he was only following his Master who said: “On this rock I will build my Church.” The idea of a spiritual building is quite Pauline. “For we know, if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven” (2 Corinthians 5:1); “And I have so preached this gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation” (Romans 15:20); “For if I build up again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator” (Galatians 2:18); “Let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:10); “You are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into a holy temple in the Lord. In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22); “You are God’s building. According to the grace of God that is given to me as a wise architect, I have laid the foundation. . . . Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (I Cor., iii, 9-17; compare I Pet., ii, 5; “Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house”; and I Pet., iv, 17: “For the time is, that judgment should begin at the house of God. And if first at us, what shall be the end of them that believe not the gospel of God?”) There is a development in St. Paul’s use of the comparisons body and bride, which is exactly paralleled by his use of the words building and temple. They are applied first to individuals, then to communities and finally to the whole Church (see Gayford in Hast., “Dict. of the Bibl.” s. v. Church). (8) “Items of the creed, now rapidly crystallizing in Rome and Asia Minor, are conveyed partly in hymnal fragments which like those in the Apocalypse of John, sprang from the cultus of the churches.” There are fragments of the Creed in I Cor. (see CORINTHIANS, EPISTLES TO THE, The First Epistle — Its teaching), and there were hymns in use several years before St. Paul’s death. He wrote to the Colossians (iii, 16): “Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles” (cf. Ephesians 5:19). The objections from the “Faithful Sayings” are fully answered in James, “The Genuineness of the Pastorals” (London, 1906), 132-6. (9) “No possible circumstances could make Paul oblivious (through three separate letters) of God’s fatherhood, of the believing man’s union with Jesus, of the power and witness of the Spirit, or of reconciliation.” These doctrines are not quite forgotten: I Tim., i, 15; ii, 6; II Tim., i, 2, 9; ii, 13; Tit., i, 4; iii, 4, 5, 7. There was no necessity to dwell upon them as he was writing to disciples well acquainted with his teaching, and the purpose of the Epistles was to meet new problems. Besides, this objection could be brought against large portions of the genuine Epistles.

There are several other objections but they are so flimsy that they cannot present any difficulty. What Sanday wrote in 1896 in his “Inspiration” (London) is still true: “It may be asserted without fear of contradiction that nothing really un-Pauline has been proved in any of the disputed epistles.”

II. External Evidence

The Pauline authorship of the Pastorals was never doubted by Catholics in early times. Eusebius, with his complete knowledge of early Christian literature, states that they were among the books universally recognized in the Church ta para pasin homologoumena (“Hist. eccl.”, II, xxii, III, iii; “Præp. evang.”, II, xiv, 7; xvi, 3). They are found in the early Latin and Syriac Versions. St. Clement of Alexandria speaks of them (Strom., II, III), and Tertullian expresses his astonishment that they were rejected by Marcion (Adv. Marcion, V, xxi), and says they were written by St. Paul to Timothy and Titus; evidently their rejection was a thing hitherto unheard of. They are ascribed to St. Paul in the Muratorian Fragment, and Theophilus of Antioch (about 181) quotes from them and calls them the “Divine word” (theios logos). The Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons (about 180) were acquainted with them; and their bishop, Pothinus, who was born about A. D. 87 and martyred in 177 at the age of ninety, takes us back to a very early date. His successor, St. Irenæus, who was born in Asia Minor and had heard St. Polycarp preach, makes frequent use of the Epistles and quotes them as St. Paul’s. He was arguing against heretics, so there could be no doubt on either side. The Epistles were also admitted by Heracleon (about 165), Hegesippus (about 170), St. Justin Martyr, and the writer of the “Second Epistle of Clement” (about 140). In the short letter which St. Polycarp wrote (about 117) he shows that he was thoroughly acquainted with them. Polycarp was born only a few years after the death of Saints Peter and Paul, and as Timothy and Titus, according to the most ancient traditions, lived to be very old, he was their contemporary for many years. He was Bishop of Smyrna. only forty miles from Ephesus, where Timothy resided. St. Ignatius, the second successor of St. Peter at Antioch, was acquainted with Apostles and disciples of the Apostles, and shows his knowledge of the Epistles in the letters which he wrote about A. D. 110. Critics now admit that Ignatius and Polycarp knew the Pastorals (von Soden in Holtzmann’s “Hand-Kommentar”, III, 155; “Ency. Bib.”, IV); and there is a very strong probability that they were known also to Clement of Rome, when he wrote to the Corinthians about A. D. 96.

In judging of the early evidence it should be borne in mind that all three Epistles claim to be by St. Paul. So when an early writer shows his familiarity with them, quotes them as authoritative and as evidently well known to his readers, it may be taken as a proof not only of the existence and widespread knowledge of the Epistles, but that the writer took them for what they claim to be, genuine Epistles of St. Paul; and if the writer lived in the time of Apostles, of Apostolic men, of disciples of Apostles, and of Timothy and Titus (as did Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement) we may be sure that he was correct in doing so. The evidence of these writers is, however, very unceremoniously brushed aside. The heretic Marcion, about A. D. 150, is held to be of much more weight than all of them put together. “Marcion’s omission of the pastorals from his canon tells heavily against their origin as preserved in tradition. Philemon was accepted by him, though far more of a private note than any of the pastorals; and the presence of elements antagonistic to his own views need not have made him exclude them, since he could have easily excised these passages in this as in other cases” (Ency. Bib., IV). Marcion rejected the whole of the Old Testament, all the Gospels except St. Luke’s, which he grossly mutilated, and all the rest of the New Testament, except ten Epistles of St. Paul, texts of which he changed to suit his purposes. Philemon escaped on account of its brevity and contents. If he crossed out all that was objectionable to him in the Pastorals there would be little left worth preserving. Again, the testimony of all these early writers is regarded as of no more value than the opinion of Aristotle on the authorship of the Homeric poems (ibid.). But in the one case we have the chain of evidence going back to the times of the writer, of his disciples, and of the persons addressed; while Aristotle lived several hundred years after the time of Homer. “The early Christian attitude towards ‘Hebrews’ is abundant evidence of how loose that judgment [on authorship] could be” (ibid.). The extreme care and hesitancy, in some quarters, about admitting the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews (q. v.) when contrasted with the universal and undoubting acceptance of the Pastorals tells strongly in favour of the latter.

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JAMES, Genuineness and Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles (London, 1906); JACQUIER, Hist. du Nouveau Test., I (Paris, 1906; tr. DUGGAN, London); Introductions to N. Test, by CORNELY, SALMON, and other Scriptural scholars; HEADLAM in Church Congress Reports (London, 1904); The Church Quart. Rev, (October, 1906; January, 1907); BISPING, Erklärung der drei Past. (Münster, 1866); WEISS, Tim. und Tit. (Göttingen, 1902); BERNARD, The Pastoral Epistles (Cambridge, 1899); LILLEY, The Pastoral Epistles (Edinburgh, 1901); GORE, Orders and Unity (London, 1909); WORKMAN, The hapax Legomena of St. Paul in Expository Times, VII (1896), 418 HORT, Judaistic Christianity (London, 1898); BELSER. Die Briefe des Apostels Paulus an Timoth. u. Titus (Freiburg); KNOWLING has a good defence of the Pastorals in The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ; see also his article in the Critical Review (July, 1896); RAMSEY. Expositor (1910).

C. AHERNE Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia