Corpus-Paul

[Christopher Hutson <crhutson AT salisbury.net>]

>From: "Stephen Nelson" <stephen_nelson AT hotmail.com>
>
>In his last few postings, Jim West has boldly asserted (perhaps on
one 
>occasion with toungue-in-cheek) that the Pastoral Epistles are 
>non-Pauline, secondary, pseudenonemous or whatever predicate comes to

>hand.
>
>It seems to me that the balance of evidence need not necessarily lead

>to this conclusion.
>
>Perhaps Jim would be so kind as to provide some compelling reasons
for 
>doubting their Pauline authorship?
>


Stephen,

A couple of weeks ago James Harding asked pretty much the same
question, and I offered my own explanation in a semi-lengthy post.  No
one responded then, so I'll try again.  I do not hereby intend to
preempt Jim West's response to your question.  I'm sure he'll offer
additional considerations.

Although when I began my research on the Pastorals I was careful to
remain noncommital on authorship--always supposing both ways--in the
end I was forced to concluded that the PE are pseudonymous.  Here's
why:


For me, the kicker with the PE was the way the letters are oriented
toward "youthful" readers.  The author says to "flee youthful lusts"
(2 Tim 2:22) and "let no one despise your youth" (1 Tim 4:12).  These
are the most explicit passages, but in a variety of ways, the author
identifies the addressees as "youthful."  These are manifestly letters
from an older mentor to younger proteges.  

But now let us suppose that the historical Paul wrote these letters to
the historical Timothy and Titus?  Where in Paul's career would you
locate them?  early or late?  In my dissertation I lay out why I think
Prior is wrong, but suppose for the sake of argument that Paul did
write 2 Tim from a Roman prison in the mid 60s.  How old would the
historical Timothy have been at that point?  How young do you think
Timothy was when he was converted about AD 49 and left home to travel
with Paul (according to Acts)?  How old was he when he stayed behind
in Thessalonica to help smooth things out in a start-up church after
Paul was run out of town on a rail (1 Thess 1-3, more or less
corroborated by Acts 17)?  Was he a teenager then?  Was he 20? 
Whatever age you think is plausible, add 12-15 years of close work as
Paul's trusted assistant, handling ticklish situations, say in
Corinth, on Paul's behalf.  Consider also that the NT gives no
indication that Titus was "young" outside of the impression you get
from the letter to Titus.  Titus also was Paul's longtime, trusted
associate, his test case on circumcision in Jerusalem (Gal 2) and also
sent to handle ticklish situations in Corinth.  Then ask yourself why
Paul would write the PE to THESE guys as if they were greenhorns?  Why
would he address them as "young" when they are perhaps 35 or so when 
Paul wrote to them from his Roman prison?  Why would he give them
such elementary advice on church leadership, when they have already
seen it all, working closely with Paul for so many years?  

When I consider the PE this way, I have to say that something fishy is
going on here.  Now that doesn't necessarily mean that Paul didn't
write the letters.  After all, Seneca wrote to Lucilius as if he were
a "young" beginning philosophy student, even when he was a senior
politician near retirement.  But Lucilius WAS in fact a beginning
philosophy student.  The point is that Seneca wrote not only TO
Lucilius but THROUGH him to address a wider secondary audience of
beginning philosophy students, the majority of whom were young.  So it
is conceivable, at least in theory, that Paul was writing THROUGH
Timothy and Titus, using them as vehicles to address a wider
secondary audience of young church leaders.  In other words, even if
the author is historical, he has to a great extent fictionalized his
addressees.

But did Paul write that way?  Hmmm.  Why wouldn't it be just as
likely, even more likely, for a follower of Paul in a later generation
to write the sorts of things Paul would have said to his young
proteges, as a vehicle for the actual author to address young church
leaders in the later generation?  Consider that 2 Tim 2:2 envisions a
tradition already looking toward its fourth generation:  "what you
heard from me through many witnesses, commit to faithful people who
will be able to teach others also."  Here the author is looking ahead
to the fourth generation of teachers.  Could this reflect the
historical location of the actual author?

It is interesting that even Michael Prior and Luke Johnson put most of
their authenticity eggs in the 2 Tim basket.  It is still very
difficult to place 1 Tim and Titus anywhere in Paul's known career. 
So arguments for authenticity must rely on very tenuous assumptions
that Paul got out of prison and conducted further evangelism "in the
west" after Acts ends.  But this only compounds the problem.  Not
only is the evidence for a further Pauline mission tenuous, but also
 1 Tim and Titus are located in the east, not in the "west," as 1
Clement suggests.  Furthermore, a later date for these letters only
compounds the problem of why Timothy and Titus are addressed as if
they were "young."  If we push the dates of these letters up into the 
late 60s, then the older Timothy and Titus get, the greater the
problem of explaining these letters as simple, actual correspondence
to the historical Paul and his historical proteges.

Finally, let us hear nothing about how "young" in antiquity meant
anyone under 40.  Hokum.  Sure, "young" is a relative term in any
language, including Greek, where it CAN be applied quite broadly. But
what was normal usage?  The vocabulary and contents of the PE imply
that the addressees are in their early twenties, and, more important, 
that they were beginners in their teaching careers.  The "youth" of 
T & T in these letters must be at the least a literary fiction (if you
maintain that Paul wrote the letters).  But it is likely also a 
historical fiction (created by a pseudonymous author).

My dissertation includes a
detailed survey of usage of the vocabulary of youth (chapter 2), but
since that is not readily available, you might check out:

Emiel Eyben, _Restless Youth in Ancient Rome_ trans. P. Daly (London &
NY:  Routledge, 1993).

Jean-Pierre Neraudau, _La Jeunesse dans la Litterature et les
Institutions de la Rome Republicaine_ (Paris:  Belles Lettres, 1979.

R. Garland, _The Greek Way of Life_  (Ithaca:  Cornell UP, 1990).

In short, ancients knew the difference between a "youth" and a mature
adult.  The addressess of the PE are tenderfeet, but that could not be
said of the historical Timothy and Titus.

Finally, on the historical Timothy, you might be interested in my
article, "Was Timothy Timid?  The Rhetoric of Fearlessness (1
Corinthians 16:10-11) and Cowardice (2 Timothy 1:7)," in _Biblical
Research_ 42 (1997), 58-73.

So that is how I approach the PE.  Notice that my argument
does not turn on matters of language and style but focuses on the main
thrust of the letters themselves.  I ask not just, "Could the
historical Paul have written these?" but also, "Could they be
addressed to the historical Timothy and Titus?"  In the end,
pseudonomy is the easier explanation, and at that point considerations
of language, style and so on tend to fall into place behind the main
argument.

Does that make sense to you?  


XPIC

------------------------------------
Christopher R. Hutson
          Hood Theological Seminary
          Salisbury, NC  28144
crhutson AT salisbury.net
------------------------------------