The Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles

by ThiChi 45 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Narkissos

  Leolaia: it seems you hold a very early date for Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians...

  Cf. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/polycarp.html

  Interestingly, a recent trend in Catholic scholarship (as appears in the French 1998 edition of the Jerusalem Bible) has 2 Timothy as (partly? mostly?) Pauline (because of the apparent autobiographical material) but 1 Timothy and Titus as pseudepigraphical.

  Onacruse: Hebrews, as a very original piece of Alexandrine theology, is definitely out of the Pauline (and postpauline) picture, notwithstanding the conclusion which tries to make it look pauline (especially with the mention of Timothy in 13:23).
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  badboy

  i UNDERSTAND THAT HEBREWS MAY NOT B WRITTEN BY PAUL,BUT barbaBBAS WROTE IT
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos....I was referring to P. N. Harrison's generally accepted thesis that Polycarp's letter comprises two letters: a brief one (ch. 13-14) that was written at the time of Ignatius (i.e. A.D. 115-117) and a second one, containing the Pastoral allusions, written around A.D. 135. Michael Holmes notes that more recent discussion on the date of Polycarp's letter has moved the date of the second letter closer to the time of Ignatius.

  Leolaia
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  Leolaia

  Hebrews is anonymous. The suggestion that Paul or Barnabas wrote it is based on pure guesswork, nothing else. The surest sign of its authorship is the Philo-esque style of typological argumentation. This might suggest an origin in Alexandria or with someone from Alexandria. The Epistle of Barnabas is closest to Hebrews in this regard, which probably explains the connection to Barnabas. But the Epistle of Barnabas, despite its traditional name, is also anonymous and thus is too shaky a ground to establish a claim of authorship for Hebrews. Tertullian believed that Barnabas was the author of Hebrews, so the tradition was quite early and the familiarity with the tabernacle and priesthood would fit a Levite like Barnabas. However, Barnabas himself was not from Alexandria and the explicit statement in Hebrews 2:3 that the author is not of the apostles who saw Jesus would seem to rule out Barnabas who was one of the earliest apostles outside of the Twelve (regarded by some as one of the Seventy). Apollos, "a native of Alexandria" who was an associate of Paul (Acts 18:24) and a prominent figure in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:4-5), though probably not a direct witness to Christ, is thus a better candidate. Martin Luther, Tyndale, and other prominent Protestants took this view. The association of Apollos to Paul would explain both the Pauline echoes (e.g. Hebrews 13:19=1 Corinthians 16:10-12) and the Alexandrine flavor of the homily, but this is still a guess. Against it is the silence of the entire patristic tradition, who attributed the book variously to Paul, Luke, Barnabas, and Clement of Rome.
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  ThiChi

  There are marked divergences from the Pauline writings in vocabulary and in other linguistic features. For a detailed study of these divergences, see Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles. Most of these divergences could be accounted for by the character of the subject matter and by Paul's increasing age.

  "....see Harrison"

  The contention of Harrison that the author of the Pastorals speaks the language of the second century, based largely on his investigation of the occurrence of the Hapaxes during that period, cannot be maintained for the following reasons. (1) Nearly all the words in question were known in Greek literature by the middle of the first century. (2) Nearly half of them occur in the LXX, with which it may reasonably be supposed Paul was very acquainted. (3) Many of the Hapaxes occurring in the apostolic Fathers and apologists occur only in those writings and cannot fairly be claimed as evidence of current usage. (4) The appeal to the writers of the second century including secular writers, to suggest the literary provenance of the Pastoral Epistles is not valid unless it can be shown that the words could not have been used in the first century, but this cannot be established. The Hapaxes do not, in fact, offer any substantial grounds for maintaining that the author speaks the language of the second century any more than the first.
  

  There are also a considerable number of words which the Pastorals share with the other New Testament books but which are not found elsewhere in Paul. Harrison applies the same methods and suggests that these too support his contention that the Pastorals' language is second century, because of the frequency of their occurrence in second-century writings. But the fact that they occur in other New Testament books show that they were current also in the first century, and the only real difficulty (if such it is) is to find a reason for Paul's failure to use them elsewhere in his writings. But the difficulty vanishes altogether when once the notion that confines Paul's vocabulary to that used in the ten other Epistles is abandoned. Certainly these non-Pauline words shared with other New Testament writers can contribute nothing to the theory that the Pastorals' language is second century on the ground that the majority of them occur in the ecclesiastical writings of the second century, since the same line of argument would show that all the Pauline Epistles belonged to the same period. The only conclusion to which these considerations can lead is that the language for the most part is of both the first and second centuries.

  Other linguistic arguments brought by Harrison against the authenticity of the Pastorals: (1) the noticeable absence from the Pastorals of characteristic Pauline words and characteristic groups of words; and (2) the use of Pauline words with different meanings and the use of different words to express thoughts found in Paul. But the words that Harrison appeals to in section (1) are words frequently used in other parts of the New Testament and indeed in the second-century writers and are not expressions peculiar to the apostle Paul. A reasonable explanation of their absence from the Pastorals is that Paul had no occasion to use them. His subject-matter led him to other words. Little importance can be attached to objection (2) since Paul himself frequently used words with different meanings, in which case any change of expression can hardly be evidence of non-Pauline authorship.

  But many writers who are prepared to concede the possibility of changes in Paul's vocabulary are reluctant to do so for Paul's style. The large number of particles, pronouns and prepositions which can be collected from the other Pauline Epistles but are absent from the Pastorals (Harrison collates 112) seems to indicate a different hand. But this evidence is not quite as impressive as it at first seems, as Colossians and 2 Thessalonians have very few of them (less than twenty) and there is considerable variation within the other Pauline Epistles. Harrison not only uses this evidence to support non-Pauline authorship but he compares a similar tendency to dispense with them in the apostolic Fathers from whose writings 21 are missing. But unfortunately for his argument, the Captivity Epistles of Paul lack no less than 59 of the same words, which should indicate on the basis of Harrison's method of deduction an even greater tendency to dispense with them within the other ten Pauline Epistles. Moreover, there are a number of Pauline particles, pronouns and prepositions which are found in the Pastorals and when they are taken into consideration it can be shown that these Epistles are not very different from some of the other Paulines. It may seriously be challenged whether this method of assessing style is a valid one. Harrison mentioned also the absence from the Pastorals of many of Paul's characteristic uses of the article and of the particle hos, but these again are not uniform throughout his Epistles and it is evident that Paul's style was subject to considerable variation, no doubt owing to his mood of the moment. (Guthrie, pp. 596-610)
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  ThiChi

  Harrison has had as many critics as converts. Dr. BRUCE METZGER TOOK HIM TO TASK IN 1958 FOR IGNORING THE WORK OF BRITISH, GERMAN AND SWEDISH SCHOLARS WHO HAD QUESTIONED THE VALIDITY OF ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE BASED PURELY ON STATISTICAL STUDY OF LITERARY VOCABULARLY, AND WHICH ARE APPLIED TO ?RELATIVELY BRIEF TREATISES?. Similarly, Professor C.F.D. Moule has written that ?there is no cogent reason for denying Pauline authorship to a letter merely because its vocabulary and style mark it as different from others which are firmly established as genuine?. For there are several possible reasons for changes in Paul's language and style. Donald Guthrie summed these up as ?dissimilarity of subject matter?, ?advancing age?, ?change of environment? and ?difference in recipients?. Besides, as Harrison himself conceded, complete uniformity of vocabulary and style must not be expected in every author, ?least of all in one with a mind so versatile, pliable, original, fresh, impressionable and creative as the apostle?. SO SAYING, HE SEEMS TO CONTRADICT HIS OWN THESIS. As E. K. Simpson justly observed, ?great souls are not their own mimes?.
  

  There are two other possible explanations of the linguistic peculiarities of the Pastorals. The first is Paul's use of a secretary in his correspondence, to which I provided. The second is the surprising degree to which, especially 1 Timothy, Paul made use of ?pre-formed? material such as doxologies, credal confessions, and hymns, much of it introduced by tell-tale formula like ?this is a trustworthy saying? or ?knowing this?. Dr Earle Ellis, who has drawn attention to this phenomena, calculates that pre-formed material accounts for about 43% of 1 Timothy, 46% of Titus and 16% of 2 Timothy.

  PP:

  Apart from faulty presuppositions that does not allow for a NT author to quote from another NT book and/or which holds to a very low view of the NT writings, how does the Commentary you cite know that 1 Timothy is "scarcely referring to canonical Luke as recognized Scripture"? Why should other scholars readily recognize that 1 Timothy is in fact quoting Luke as Scripture be ignored and the New Jerome's be accepted? What evidence does the New Jerome present for the claim that Paul and Luke were quoting from a common source as opposed to Luke being the source of Paul's citation? They offer nothing but pure conjecture, which again demonstrates the utter shallowness of Bravo's sources. Claiming something is not the same as proving it. One must provide proof for these assertions, not simply quote sources that hold to the erroneous presuppositions which only demonstrate a critical bias against the NT documents.