Footnotes
Footnotes
1.50 Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles (London: Tyndale, 1957), p. 11.
2.This view is part of a sustained effort in recent scholarship to construct a definite and believable background to all three Pastoral epistles, taken together. It is forcefully presented (though from very different perspectives) by, among others, David C. Verner, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles, SBLDS 71 (Chico, Calif.: SP, 1983); Gordon D. Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, GNC (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984); and Philip Towner, The Goal of Our Instruction: The Structure of Theology and Ethics in the Pastoral Epistles, JSNTSupp 34 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989).
3.Johnson, p. 382.
4.P. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), pp. 20ff. Harrison’s argument is refined and strengthened by K.
Grayston and G. Herdan, who use an improved statistical method ("The Authorship of the Pastorals in the Light of Statistical Studies,” NTS 6 [1959-60]: 1-15). More recently, A. Q. Morton and some of his colleagues have deployed statistical analyses of such features as the closing word in Pauline sentences, the length of sentences, the spread of different types of conjunction, and the like. This work is admirably assessed by Anthony Kenny, A Stylometric Study of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986).
5.Harrison, Problem, p. 70.
6.50 Donald Guthrie (The Pastoral Epistles and the Mind of Paul [London: Tyndale, 1956], p. 9), citing among others F. R. M. Hitchcock, "Tests for the Pastorals,” JTS 30 (1928-29): 272-79; idem, "Philo and the Pastorals,” Hermatheua 56 (1940): 113-35.
7.Harrison, Problem, pp. 137-39. There are 75 words in 1 Timothy and not elsewhere in the New Testament, plus 52 in 1 Timothy and the non-Pauline New Testament books. For 2 Timothy the figures are 48 + 33 and for Titus 30 + 15.
8.Harrison, Problem, pp. 36-37..
9.Ibid., p. 35 (Harrison’s italics).
10.Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles and the Mind of Paul, p. 13.
11.J. C. Beker, "Pastoral Letters” in IDB, 3:670.
12.It is, of course, possible that some of the style may be due to a secretary. C. F. D. Moule suggests "that Luke wrote all three Pastoral epistles. But he wrote them during Paul’s lifetime, at Paul’s behest, and, in part (but only in part), at Paul’s dictation”
("The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles: A Reappraisal,” BJRL 47 [1965]: 434).
Harrison is another to favor the use of Luke as secretary, and he lists linguistic features common to Luke and the Pastorals (p. 363). The strength of this position is the very large number of words in the Pastorals that are found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Luke. See the list in S. G. Wilson, Luke and the Pastoral Epistles (London: SPCK, 1979), pp. 5-11. Wilson thinks that these epistles may have been planned as the third volume of a trilogy of which Luke-Acts were the first two volumes (pp. 139-40).
13.A number of writers have suggested ways in which in the information in the Pastorals can be fitted into what we know of Paul’s movements from other sources.
See e.g., J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), pp. 67-85, and the literature there cited. See esp. C. Spicq, Les epftres Pastorales, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Gabalda, 1969), and S. de Lestapis, L’enigme des Pastorales de Saint Paul (Paris: Gabalda, 1976).
14.Kummel says that the heresy opposed in these letters is "quite conceivable in the lifetime of Paul” (p. 267)
15.Bo Reicke draws attention to the mebaqqer of the Qumran scrolls, who exercised superintendency functions not unlike those of the Christian bishop. This is "not a question of taking over a specific office or particular functions, but rather an example of similar types of internal development” (in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. Krister Stendahl [London: SCM, 1958], p. 155). The mebaqqer shows that in Jewish circles a functionary like the bishop could appear quite early. It is nonsense to say it demands a late date.
16.Moule, "Problem,” p. 432.
17.Zahn 2:121. Zahn also comments, "Nowhere in these Epistles do we find sentences that sound so ‘un-Pauline’ as 1 Cor. vii.19, and which can be so readily mistaken as a fusion of genuine Pauline teaching with its opposite, as Gal. v.6” (ibid.).
18.Kummel, p. 270. This unimaginative view of the contents has been drawn into an argument for the authenticity of these letters. Would someone imaginative enough to produce pseudonymous letters produce this kind of writing?
19.This raises the whole question of "early catholicism,” for which see chap. 4, above, the section Luke in Recent Study. See also Moises Silva, "The Place of Historical Reconstruction in New Testament Criticism,” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), pp. 105-33, 383-88.
20.Harrison, Problem, pp. 115-27. Harrison later modified his theory to include only three fragments. Others have looked for genuine pieces of Pauline writing embedded in the letters. But none of them seems to agree with any of the others, which makes the whole endeavor seems suspect and subjective.
21.Childs, pp. 382-83. It should be added that Childs is very sympathetic toward a pseudonymous understanding of these letters.
22.From another point of view, Johnson comments, "Even those who like myself are not absolutely convinced that they come directly from Paul, think some of the reasons given for assigning their composition to a pseudepigrapher unconvincing” (p. 381) Johnson also points to the differences between the letters as a problem. "Why would three such letters be produced, each of which was directed to a situation that was internally consistent yet very difficult to make consistent with the situations the other two were directed to? Here we would have a forger able subtly to create the verisimilitude of an established church (in Ephesus) and a new church (in Crete), together with the appropriate sort of directions to each, and yet not able to imitate more convincingly the Pauline samples available to him” (pp. 388-89).
23.As far as apocalyptic writings are concerned, the problem of pseudonymity is discussed in Leon Morris, Apocalyptic, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), pp. 51-54.
24.M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926), p. 476.
He mentions also two other letters apparently not worth printing.
25.Philip Carrington observes, "There seems to be no evidence at all that such missives were freely composed in the names of contemporary persons who had recently died” (The Early Christian Church, 2 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957], 1:259; cited also in Harrison, p. 332).
26.Tertullian, On Baptism, 17.
27.The text is given in Hennecke 2:131-32.
28.Knopf-KrQger, cited in Hennecke 2:129.
29.Cited from J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius (London: SPCK, 1963), p. 146. These letters are both heretical, which may be in mind in the comparison between gall and honey, but "forged” applies strictly to pseudepigraphy, and the canon roundly condemns it.
30.Cited from Eusebius, H.E. 6.12.3.
31.Harrison, Problem, p. 12.
32.David G. Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).
33.But Meade assumes pseudonymity rather than proves it. In a review of Meade’s book, Dan G. McCarney comments: "It simply remains unproven that biblical writers actually found pseudonymity acceptable and therefore employed it. Meade has only argued for its acceptability by biblical writers on the grounds of the a priori assumption that pseudonymity not only existed (which of course it does, outside the canon) but was knowingly accepted into the canon. This is arguing in a circle. On the other hand there is direct evidence that suggests the biblical writers took a dim view of someone else writing in their name (2 Thess. 2:2)” (WTJ 51 [1989]: 171).
34.Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon, p. 133.
35.Meade has many statements such as this: "Attribution in the pseudonymous Pauline and Petrine epistles must be regarded primarily as an assertion of authoritative tradition, not of literary origin” (ibid., p. 193). But that is to be proved; strong assertion without evidence is not enough. Perhaps we should notice that Meade speaks of 1 Enoch 91-103 as "The Epistle of Enoch” (p. 96), but there is nothing in that document like the epistolary forms with which we are familiar in the New Testament. It begins with, "Now, my son Methuselah, (please) summon all your brothers” and when they come, continues with, "Then he (Enoch) spoke to all of them” (1 Enoch 91:1, 3). Pseudonymous epistles are not as widespread as Meade would have us think.
36.As Johnson points out, "The first generations of Christians...were very much concerned with the sources of spiritual teaching and with distinguishing between true and false teachers; they did not live in a charismatic fog (see only 1 Cor. 7:10-12;
14:29; 2 Cor. 11:13-15; 2 Thess. 2:2)” (p. 357). He agrees that pseudonymity was practiced in antiquity, but these words should give us pause when we are considering the practices of the early Christians.
37.Even Meade agrees that this last passage "illustrates the difficulty of affirming the truth of Paul’s authority and teaching by using a technique that involves deception” (Pseudonymity and Canon, p. 121). If the technique involves deception, what becomes of the assertion that pseudonymity was a transparent device in which readers recognized what was being done?
38.Important articles on pseudepigraphy have been written by K. Aland ("The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries,” JTS 12 [1961]: 39-49 and Bruce M. Metzger ("Literary Forgeries and Canonical
Pseudepigrapha,” JBL 91 [1972]): 3-24). But neither of them produces evidence that the early church accepted letters that it knew to be pseudonymous.
39.Robinson, Redating, pp. 82-83
40.Kummel, p. 272.
41. Marxsen, p. 215.
42. Metzger, pp. 639-44.
43.Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.21.
44.J. B. Lightfoot’s classic dissertation on "The Christian Ministry” still merits careful attention and has much to say about the teaching in the Pastorals (in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians [London: Macmillan, 1885], pp. 181-259). See also Leon Morris, Ministers of God (London: IVP, 1964).
45.Robinson maintains that the letter was written from Caesarea (Redating, pp. 67-82). But he has to argue that Luke has confused Tychicus with Trophimus p. 76), for which there is no evidence.
46.Clement of Rome says that Paul came "to the limit of the West” (1 Clement 5:7), which to a Roman would probably mean Spain, a trip that cannot be fitted into the Acts narrative. If Clement is referring to Spain his comment is evidence for Pauline missionary activity after the imprisonment described in Acts 28. As Clement wrote no more than about thirty years after Paul’s death, this is important evidence. The Muratorian Canon speaks of "the departure of Paul from the City on his journey to Spain” (Stevenson, New Eusebius, p. 145; "the City” means Rome). Eusebius says that according to tradition, Paul defended himself after his two years in Rome and engaged in "the ministry of preaching” before being arrested again and suffering martyrdom under Nero; he specifically says that Paul wrote 2 Timothy during this imprisonment (H.E. 2.22.2).
47.WH, p. 135.
48. The Australian Church Record for June 8, 1987, citing David Barrett.
49.Robinson, Redating, pp.81-82.