Corpus-Paul

["Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>]

Bravo to Christopher Hutson for an excellent and cogent new defense of the
pseudonymous authorship of the Pastorals.  Are you working on getting your
dissertation published?

All best,
Frank W. Hughes
Lecturer in New Testament Studies
Codrington College
Barbados, West Indies

Christopher Hutson wrote:

> >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
> ------------------------------------
>
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