Loading...In this series providing summaries of each book of the New Testament “in a nutshell” I have dealt with three of the letters that claim to be written by Paul but probably were not: Colossians, Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians. We now come to the three letters that are grouped together and called the “Pastoral Epistles,” 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.
For reasons we will see, there is a wide scholarly consensus that these books were not actually written by Paul. Before addressing the issue of authorship, I’d like to note the ostensible distinctive themes and emphases of these books, both as a group (since most scholars are reasonably certain that they all came from the same pen) and individually.
The three letters are grouped together as Pastoral epistles because each claims to be written by Paul to a person he has appointed to lead one of his churches: Timothy, his young companion left to minister among the Christians in Ephesus, and Titus, his companion left on the island of Crete. Moreover, these epistles contain pastoral advice, that is, advice from the apostle to his appointed representatives concerning how they should tend their Christian flocks.
Each of the books presupposes a slightly different situation, but the overarching issues are the same. The problems involve (a) false teachers who are creating problems for the congregations and (b) the internal organization of the communities and their leaders. “Paul” urges his representatives to take charge, to run a tight ship, to keep everyone in line, and above all to silence those who promote ideas that conflict with the teachings that he himself has endorsed.
In this post I deal with 1 Timothy. I begin by giving a one-sentence fifty-word description.
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Forgive me if you have addressed this in a previous post. But did the addressees of these Pauline letters that were forgeries, know they weren’t from Paul? In other words, were they fooled? Or did they know someone else had written the letter. If the addressees knew they were forgeries, why did they accept them?
A couple of points to stress: it is never necessarily the case that those who are *said* to be the addressees were actdually the ones who recieved the letters, but on the contrary almost certainly were not. That’s part of the fiction. You forge a letter to the Laodiceans but show it first to someone who lives in Athens. They’d have no way of knowing it wasn’t originally sent to Laodicea. So yes, most people reading these letters thought they were by Paul and sent to the alleged addressees.
Dear Dr Ehrman-May I ask if you would recommend any calm, academically literate books or essays regarding the Johannine concept of the Holy Spirit/Paraclete ? As you may know, the Spirit-Paraclete of John is often the topic of inter-religious polemic, yet would I be correct that, in your academic opinion, you view it as being clearly the Holy Spirit ?
I’m not really up on those debates, and so didn’t realize there is a strong push to suggest that the Paraklete/Spirit of John is not to be understood as the “Holy Spirit” since it is, after all, the Spirit who comes as a Comforter/Advocate (Paraclete) in Jesus’s stead. Both Gerald Hawthorne and Gordon Fee (the former my teacher and the latter my co-author and firend) have written large books on the Holy Spirit. Maybe other readers of the blog have better suggestions?
Dear Dr Ehrman-Thank you very much for your kind reply. If I may ask a final question, would you deem John 16:15 as original text? If so, why?
It is missing in our oldest manuscript, P66, and one of our other best ones, Codex Sinaiticus. These two are closely related genealogically and often share readings that are variant in other mss. The questoin is whether the verse was more likely added or deleted. It’s in all the other Greek mss, and was corrected in Sinaiticus by a corrector. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of reason for a scribe to add it, but there’s a good reason for thinking it wsa deleted. The previous sentence ends with the words “and he will declare it to you,” and so does this sentence of v. 16, “and he will declare it to you.” In Greek (with English letters and no spaces as in old manuscripts, it is) KAIANAGGELEIUMIN. It is usually thought that a scribes skipped from the end of the previous sentence to the end of this one, and he kept writing from that point, not realizing he had left out a sentence. That is supported by the fact that the vocabulary, writing style, and idea are entirely consistent with the author of John itself. So it looks like it was omitted accidentally by an eyeskip from the words ending one line to the same words ending the next, a phenomenon known as “parablepsis [eyeskip] occasoined by homoeoteleuton [lines having the same ending]. Now THAT’S something I didn’t learn in Sunday School!
Dear Dr Ehrman-Thank you very much four kindness in replying, and I apologize for bothering you once more. I am currently writing my MA thesis at Kings College London, and am focusing upon the distinctive Pneumatology of John’s Gospel. In summery, would you state that John 16:15 is original to the Gospel ? Once again, thank you, and have a lovely day.
Ah, I thought I answered that! But maybe I answered it before you wrote your follow up!
Hi Toby:
Check out Father Raymond Brown’s books, especially his writings on John.
Does the author of 1 Timothy appear to be familiar with the Gospel of Luke, based on the quotation of “scripture” in 1 Timothy 5:18?
Apparently!
Does the fact that 1 Clement (circa 95 AD) appears to quote 1 Timothy 5:21 in 1 Clement 21, and 1 Timothy likely quotes the Gospel of Luke, provide strong evidence for dating the Gospel of Luke to no later than the early 90s?
That’s when I date it, sometime before the early 90s, but I’m not sure how strong this argument for it is. I’m afraid I’m overseas and away from my books just now and can’t check, but I don’t recall an explicit quotation of 1 Timothy 5:21 in 1 Clement 21. Do you mean that have a sentence that sounds similar in some ways? That wouldn’t be the same as a quotation. What’s the quotatoin you have in mind?
Concerning the “myths and endless genealogies” warned against in 1 Timothy 1:4, I had read that some think it could refer to the developing virgin birth stories and accompanying genealogies, which the author is warning against as speculations and distractions. Do you think that’s possible?
No, don’t think so. Human genealogies were never presented as a problem in early Christianity or Judaism. And there’s no opposition to the virgin birth anywhere we look in proto-orthodox Xty.
Is there any way to examine whether the people spreading the doctrines the letter author opposes were women? Perhaps the themes are unified, and demoting women in the church was partly motivated by the things certain women were teaching? This is not necessarily in conflict with the idea of church growth leading to a more public presence and thus moving from the “women’s sphere” of the home to the “men’s sphere” of public life, as it may be one of the doctrinal disagreements used to justify the transition.
He doesn’t make the connectoin himself and since he likes to find all sorts of things to blame women for, most scholars don’t think he’s probalby talking about women as the propunders of these false doctrines. But maybe!