1 Timothy
INTRODUCTION
1 TIMOTHY, 2 TIMOTHY & TITUS
LEON MORRIS
These three writings are known in modern times by the collective title the “Pastoral Epistles.” They contain material useful to pastors and are concerned with the immediate practical problems confronting Christians in a pastoral situation. As they stand, they give guidance to Timothy and Titus, two of Paul’s assistants, as to how they should handle the problems involved in their oversight of churches. These men were, of course, not pastors of individual groups of Christians, but rather superintendents of pastors whose sphere was much wider.
Nowhere in antiquity is there any indication that the general character of these letters was doubted. It was accepted that they were genuine letters of Paul and that they were written to the two recipients mentioned. But in modern times both conclusions are often doubted. It is held by some that the letters were written, probably early in the second century, by some orthodox believer, keen to perpetuate Paul’s teaching as he understood it, and only conventionally addressed to Timothy and Titus. The principal reasons for holding such views are first, linguistic (the language of these three letters is held to be so different from that of the ten “genuine” Pauline letters that they must come from a different author) and secondly, doctrinal (these letters are said to be concerned with doctrines which were of no concern to Paul while, conversely, characteristic Pauline doctrines are passed over).
It may be significant that few critics care to commit themselves to the view that there is nothing Pauline about our three letters. They usually hold that there are some genuine Pauline fragments which a later writer has taken and written up. It may be accepted that there is something Pauline about them. And a number of competent critics are convinced that the objections to Paul’s authorship of the whole will not stand up to critical examination.
In these studies we will treat the letters as genuine letters written by Paul with a desire to convey to his younger assistants guidance for the oversight of the churches.
As to their date, the biographical details which emerge incidentally make it impossible in the judgment of most scholars to fit them into the period covered by Acts. It seems that Paul was released from the imprisonment mentioned at the end of that book and engaged in further missionary activity. These letters belong to this late period.