Style
Style
P. N. Harrison makes a good deal of the fact that 112 particles, prepositions, and pronouns appear in the ten but not in the three. °He sees it as unlikely that "within a very few years we should find the same writer producing three epistles without once happening to use a single word in all that list—one or other of which has hitherto appeared on the average nine times to every page that Paul ever wrote.” 9Once again he has produced what seems to be a very cogent argument. But Guthrie points out that he has not taken into consideration all the evidence. There are another 93 particles, prepositions, and pronouns, all but 1 appearing in the Pastorals, and all but 7 in Paul.
He adds these to Harrison’s list and points out that of the 205 there are 92 occurrences in the Pastorals, which compares favorably with the 131 occurrences in Romans, 113 in
2 Corinthians, 86 in Philippians, and so forth. He concludes that "Dr. Harrison’s deductions from the connective tissue would seem to be invalid.” 10
On another level, the argument from style may be put this way: "One notes also that the dramatic vivacity of Pauline argumentation, with its emotional outbursts, its dialogue form of thought, its introduction of real or imaginary opponents and objections, and the use of metaphor and image, is replaced by a certain heaviness and repetitiousness of style.” 11Not everyone would put it in quite this way, but Beker draws attention to a very real difference. He has not, however, disposed of the fact that people use somewhat different styles in different circumstances. No one writes a business letter, for example, in the same style as a love letter. The question is whether the difference in style between the Pastorals and the ten Pauline letters is greater than the difference that might legitimately be expected between private letters to trusted fellow workers and public letters to churches usually addressing specific difficulties. So far this has not been shown. The arguments adduced have simply asserted either that Paul would not find it necessary to change style in moving from one type of letter to another or that Paul could not have written in the humdrum style of the Pastorals. But who has proven what the real Paul was capable of? 12