Corpus-Paul

[Richard Fellows <rfellows AT intergate.bc.ca>]

Dave Hindley wrote:

>It seems to me that there is little difference between the motivation for 
>an "apostle of the devil" to alter epistles of living authors, than for a 
>dead one. It would probably be easier, seeing that the author is not able 
>to defend himself.

And if one is wanting to forge a letter in Paul's name, who would one pick
as an 'addressee'?  It would be inadvisable to pick a living individual, or
even an individual whose life is fresh in the collective memory, for you
would then run the risk of being exposed by those who knew that no such
letter had been written.  My point is this: if we take the pastoral
epistles to be forgeries we should not expect that 'Timothy' and 'Titus'
had a high profile in the community to which the author belonged.

If, on the other hand, the PE were written pseudonymously without any
deception, a similar argument can be applied:  The letters did become
accepted as genuine, and such a mistake is less likely if Timothy or
'Titus' or their close associates were available to refute the genuineness
of the letters.

So, while some commentators have assumed from the PE that Titus and Timothy
must have had a high profile at the turn of the century, this is far from
clear, and it can be argued both ways.

In short, we can not really use the PE as evidence that Titus and Timothy
were different people, for there is no difficulty in supposing that the
author was too far removed from the historical Titus-Timothy to realise
that the name 'Titus' in Gal or 2 Cor had been Timothy's informal name.

Any thoughts?

Richard Fellows
Vancouver
rfellows AT intergate.bc.ca