Study the authorship of one book in the bible.

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

The Pastoral epistles are the letters of 1 Tim, 2 Tim, and Titus, which contain instructions and advice. These epistles are traditionally associated with the apostle Paul, however the authenticity of this authorship was brought into question in 1807 when scholars, such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and J.G. Eichhorn, began to point out the differences in style. Which suggested that Paul, was not in fact the author of the Pastoral Epistles.

The Pastoral Epistles present a striking difference from the other epistles attributed to Paul. The epistles are addressed to Pauline delegates, giving instructions to them for when Paul is absent. These epistles present a very different authorial style than any other of Paul’s epistles; this raises the question were the Pauline epistles written by Paul? The Deblius - Conzelmann commentary states that the language of 1 Tim, 2 Tim and Titus is a higher form of Hellenic Greek than the rest of the New Testament. The difference in language raises questions. Another issue that needs addressing is that the events portrayed in the pastorals do not directly correspond with the accounts of Paul’s life in Acts. In addition all of Paul’s writings are to congregations whereas the pastorals are to individuals; this seems unusual for the writing of Paul.

Paul was a persecutor called Saul who actively opposed the new Christian religion. However Paul had a conversion experience and immediately changed his ways, he became a crusader for the Christian faith and suffered greatly for it. Paul became a missionary and travelled for fifteen years through the eastern part of the Roman Empire. A substantial amount of information is known about these travels through the writings of Luke who is thought to have gone with him. Paul suffered greatly for his support of Christianity, and died as a result of it in 64CE. The ample amount of knowledge of Paul’s life immediately poses questions surrounding the pastorals, as they are inconsistent with the events in Acts. For example in 1 Timothy it appears that Paul is “hoping he may be with (Timothy) soon” in Ephesus. However according to Acts Timothy had already left Epheus by the time that Paul arrives (19.22)

“He sent to helpers, ahead of him to Macedonia, while he remained for a time in Asia”

There is an explanation for this; they may have just missed each other hence the discrepancies in the Pastorals. Another justification is that the events of the Pastoral Epistles were after the occurrences of acts. Nonetheless, the differences do presents doubts of the authorship when added to the differences in style and language.

Some scholars would dismiss the claim that the Pastoral Epistles were not written by Paul. They claim that the reasons for the differences, which they feel hold no significance, are that Paul’s amanuenses (secretaries) were given greater freedom. This greater freedom meant that linguistically the Pastoral Epistles may have differed but the actual message was that of Paul.

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Roller (1933) suggested that Paul drafted the Pastoral Epistles from a series of original, dictated notes. As Paul was imprisoned and hence in chains, this lack of freedom being was the context of much his letters, Paul had to verbalise the letters to his secretary – whom some scholars have even named. The letter was written and then approved by Paul before the final draft was written. This would account for the linguistic differences apparent in the epistles if the secretary amended his language.

Since the nineteenth century, the language and style of the Pastoral Epistles has been ...

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Since the nineteenth century, the language and style of the Pastoral Epistles has been subject to much discussion and the letters have typically Pauline clauses, sentences, and short paragraphs which suggest the letters are genuinely Pauline. In addition to this the letters are similar in length to other Pauline letters and have the same opening and closing formulae. However despite these resemblance’s there are also striking differences. Firstly the vocabulary is full of surprises and the author seems to lack vigour and variety. Although the writer has a smooth writing style, there are monotonous sentences replacing parenthesis and anacoulotha common in other Pauline texts. In fact the style of writing resembles that of second century writing. It is these differences that make it difficult to attribute the pastorals to Paul.

One possible reason for the inconsistency of the Pastoral Epistles is "fragmentation". P.N Harrison argued that there are general Pauline ideas in the writings of the Pastoral Epistles - however they are only in fragments. These fragments are contained in: Tit 3.12 – 15, 2Tim 4.9-15, 20,21a, 22b and 2 Tim 1.16ff; 3.10f; 4.1, 2a, 5b, 6ff, 16-19, 21b, 22a (1955/56: 80f and 1964: chXII)

In 1921 Harrison presented his argument through graphs and statistics which won widespread support for his views. P.N. Harrsion’s main argument was that linguistically the Pastoral Epistles have a higher number of hapax legomena than any other Pauline works. Of the 848 words in the Pastorals 306 words do not occur in any other Pauline works and 175 are not apparent in the New Testament. The absence of 112 Pauline prepositions, particles, pronouns and so on again highlight the stylistic variances. The 77 particles that are heavily used in all the other books of the New Testament suggesting an unoriginal writing style. The noticeable differences present “nothing less than a radical peculiarity of style”

J.N.D Kelly also states that the dialectic tension that is apparent in Paul’s letters is significantly absent from II Tim. The author of II Tim uses much more assertion and exhortation than presented in other Pauline letters. In II Tim there is a striking absence of a host of particles, prepositions, and pronouns that are common feature in the acknowledged Pauline letters. There are no examples of Paul’s commonly used adverb or conjunction hõs (= as, how, so, that, when, etc). In addition to this the average size of a word is 5.50 letters whereas in the majority of the Pauline letters follow a 4.82 letter structure.

“Paul is dynamic, even volcanic, while the author of the pastorals is sober, didactic, static, conscientious and domesticated”

Michael Prior CM suggests that the Pastoral Epistles are possibly the most authentic of all Paul’s works. He claims that the majority of Paul’s letters were written with other people hence those that were written on their own are in fact the most genuine, such as the Pastoral Epistles. The table below illustrates Paul’s joint authorship:

Prior argued that because Paul mainly wrote letters with others hence it is perfectly feasible to suggest that the Pastoral Epistles are the most truthful to Paul’s penmanship, as the others may have been affected by the influence of Paul’s writing companions.

Another solution is that the Pastoral Epistles were written pseudo-graphically. It is thought that the writer of the Pastoral Epistles wrote them with the requirements of the church in his day, and devised three forged letters giving advice to his aides. The author used several literary devices to create the impression that Paul was writing: firstly ensuring it was normal Pauline letter writing, this includes the address, greeting and personal details. Secondly he created such texts as II Tim 4.13, 1.4 to add appeal to Paul’s everyday needs and to strengthen the fiction. He also rooted the church offices of his own day to the personal bond between Timothy and Paul.

H.J Holtzmann gave “the most serious assault on the authenticity of the pastorals”. He commented upon the discrepancies of events in the Pastorals in relation to other biblical information, the testimony of Eusebius over Paul’s second Roman imprisonment, a mission to Spain, which was suggested by Clement, and the situation of events in the Pastorals in relation to history. Holtzmanns claim was that the opposition of heretics in the pastorals were not due to “Judaizers of Paul’s lifetime, but Gnostic’s of the second century”. The references in the epistles do imply that Gnosticism was the threat.

“…. Have nothing to do with the pointless philosophical discussions and antagonistic beliefs of the ‘knowledge’ which is not knowledge at all.”

Holtzmann states that the actual writer of the pastorals was a ‘pedisequus’ of Paul and in a bid to halt the problems encountered in his own day decided to imitate Paul, by implying to the readers that Paul had experienced similar heretic views in his day. By doing so the creator was trying to “derive Pauline authority for the closed presbyteral government within the church” and make his parishioners fight the spread of Gnosticism. It is clear that Holtzmann had little sympathy for such a group, however Robert J. Kerris follows a similar argument about Gnosticism, claiming that as Paul was a highly influential person, people would have followed his advice. This was the incentive for the author to write under Paul’s name, to give his views more credibility. The writer was clearly trying to appeal to people to save Christianity and hence needed to use Paul’s name, as Kerris points out that Paul was human and like us sinned, the author of the pastoral epistles should not be condemned for his actions.

Hoffmann argues that the author of the pastorals was most likely to be part of an Ephesians circle. Polycarp is named as the most likely author, as it has been suggested that the heresy is due to Marcionism and was executed to back up Marcion’s Paulism.

However there are weaknesses in the pseudo-graphic argument. It rests on assumptions, firstly that the early Christians practised pseudo-graphic, and that it was ethically acceptable. It is known that the practice was common with Greek’s and Jews, however only two Jewish works take an epistolary form, neither could be called a letter and we know of no pseudo-graphical Aramaic letters. Despite it being common there is no evidence for pseudo-graphical works, yet even with the sparse evidence the view still is feasible.

In respect to whether it was ethical, P.N Harrison insisted that the author was not conscious of misrepresenting the apostle in any way. Harrison suggests that the author was a devout paulist who thought the greatest gift he could give was to issue Paul’s farewell letter to the church of his day. Since the author was so pious it has been accepted rather than declared that the author was a forger. Zmijewski too insists that the pastorals were not a fraud or cheats, as the points made were relevant to the modern church and so the message of the Pastoral Epistles is more important than the authorship.

There are many questions raised about the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles and whether they are pseudo graphic – mainly why would the author break the chain of writing to communities? Also why would they compose I Tim as II Tim and Titus contains much of the same ground? One would expect a pseudo graphic writer to operate on a higher level and to find no discrepancies. It is impossible to prove that pseudo-graphic writing took place, but it does answer some of the queries surrounding the authorship.

Although the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles is not a pressing strain upon the church today or its followers, it undoubtedly still has importance for Christianity in present society. Many people, particularly non-believers question the authenticity of the bible as a whole, the elaborate stories of the Old Testament and the miracles of the New Testament seem unreal to us in our present world. Therefore the idea that any biblical passage could be inauthentic, regardless of whether is portrays mere advice rather than significant stories of God or Jesus, does cause further questioning of the bible as a whole. If three letters can be passed off as Paul and still traditionally remain associated with him, could this have happened with all the books? The authorship of the pastorals does allow doubt of the bible in its entirety, which can be used, in a secular light. However the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, if counterfeit, does offer a commendable story of faith to modern day believers. If the author was using the writing to stop heretical teachings or to enforce stronger faith, they went to great pains to do so. The writer may have been just trying to put across beliefs that needed more acknowledgement and commendation. In today’s society such extreme measures of faith are rapidly diminishing, and thus theists can take encouragement from the authors actions to practice their faith more. Perhaps the author was trying to implement some of the older teachings into the church at his time. The bible is becoming more and more inaccessible as time moves on, and although taking Paul’s name was unwise, it may have been the only way that followers would have listened and understood their faith in relation to the operation of the church. If we know that it is inauthentic then this may encourage the church now to relate bible stories in a more modern context as well; this may open the beliefs of Christianity to more people, as the stories are more understandable. It is also important in our understanding of the formation of the church in terms of structure and preaching. If Paul were not the author of the Pastoral Epistles then the way in which Christians practice faith does not have to be so rigid with the ways set out in the bible. The authorship of the Pastoral Epistles does matter – Christianity has its foundations in the word of the bible and hence must be sure of all its origins today, meaning the questionable authorship of 1Tim, 2 Tim, and Titus is still worthy of valid debate in present times.