Date
Date
If Paul was released from his imprisonment in Rome and wrote this letter during the course of his subsequent missionary activities, we should date it during the 60s, probably the early 60s. It has traditionally been held that the apostle was martyred under Nero (who died in 68). The chronology of his life is not absolutely certain, but it is usually thought that he arrived in Rome, as narrated in Acts, in about 59-61. Allowing for the couple of years of his imprisonment there (Acts 28:30), he would have been released in about 62. His letter to the Romans shows that he wanted to go to Spain, and he may have done this immediately on release and gone to Macedonia later. Or he may have gone immediately to the East and left a trip to Spain until a later time. Many modern scholars think that we should place his death at the height of the Neronian persecution, say in 64, in which case 1 Timothy will be a year or two earlier. Eusebius says Paul died in 67; if this is correct, we could put the writing of the letter at 65 or even 66.
Another suggestion is that we should take the reference to Paul’s departure for Macedonia (1 Tim. 1:3) to be that mentioned in Acts 20:1, after the riot in Ephesus. Timothy was with Paul again in Acts 20:4, but evidently Acts 20:2 covers quite an interval of time, and there could have been a letter between Acts 20:1 and 20:4. J. A. T. Robinson thinks 1 Timothy may contain the gist of the charge Paul gave when he gathered the disciples and exhorted them (Acts 20:1). He dates the letter in the autumn of A.D. 55, when Timothy was quite a young man (cf. 1 Cor. 16:10-11, which Robinson thinks was written in the same year) and in need of the kind of directions Paul gives in this letter. 39 Not many have been convinced by this argument (the date seems to most students to be far too early), but it must remain a possibility.
Those who see the letter as pseudonymous generally locate it some time during the second century. Kummel thinks of a time "just after the turn of the second century,” for a later date is opposed by the strong Pauline teaching and what he sees as "the rudimentary character of the Gnosticism which is resisted.” 40 Marxsen, however, makes it somewhat later. He dates all three Pastorals at "a time well into the second century.”
3If we remove this letter from the lifetime of Paul, there is clearly nothing very definite on which to fix our date. Everything then depends on our subjective estimate of the situation presupposed in the letter, and various second-century dates are suggested.
On the whole, it seems that there is most to be said for the first suggestion, that the letter was written somewhere in the middle 60s. We should at least bear in mind the possibility of Robinson’s suggestion; if we see a situation in Paul’s earlier ministry, this is as good a suggestion as any.