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  • From: "Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Disputed Pauline letters
  • Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 17:55:47 -0400

I don't want to get into an extended debate about Pauline authorship at this point either; but I strongly doubt that anyone can write on 2 Timothy or any of the other apparently pseudopauline letters and remain non-committal about their authorship for long.  By the way, I am aware of Michael Prior's work on 2 Timothy (published in JSNTSup) and do think that there might possibly be a better case for its Pauline authorship than for 1 Timothy or Titus.

My experience has shown that authorship is usually the central interpretive issue in the disputed Pauline letters.  Wolfgang Trilling certainly showed this to be correct for 2 Thessalonians in his 1972 monograph Untersuchungen zum 2. Thessalonicherbrief.  I think if you are committed to historical-critical methods this will be the case.  If, for example, 1 Timothy is an authentic letter by Paul, it has a completely different historical provenance and completely different rhetorical situation than if it is a pseudopauline letter.  One problem that you will find is that if you give up Pauline authorship for the disputed letters, you also give up anything approaching a firm date for such letters.  The fact that there is no evidence of any other Christian writer quoting them until the early second century (compared with 1 Clement's quotes of the authentic Pauline letters plus Hebrews) should give one pause to ponder.

Frank W. Hughes
Lecturer in NT Studies
Codrington College



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