Defense of Pauline Authorship of the Pastorals

You wrote on Jul 6, 2007 at 6:19 AM.
You replied to Bradley's post on Jul 4, 2007 at 7:32 AM
Bradley,

By the way, Happy 4th.

I did some research on the Pastorals when I took a New Testament class a few semesters ago.

I found that the "contemporary scholars'" views of these epistles are, quite frankly, ludicrous.

Let's take a look.

You gave some rather common arguments against Pauline authorship of these letters and in favor of late dating. Well, here is a list of my own:

1.) Theological objections
2.) Conflicts with Acts
3.) Method of dealing with false teachers
4.) Church organization
5.) Lack of reference to the Pastorals
6.) Miscellaneous objections
7.) Objections based on writing style and vocabulary

I'd be more than happy to look into all of these with you.

1.)

It's often argued that Paul refers to faith as something personal, and it has "become" a loyalty to a tradition in the Pastorals.

No.

It's of a very "credal" nature in Romans 4:12, 1 Cor 16:13, 2 Cor 13:5, Gal. 1:23, 3:23, etc.

Another objection is that they lack Pauline mysticism - but they are personal letters, so why would Paul do that? Once again, contemporary scholars are turning Paul into a cardboard cutout, a caricature of a person, without any dynamic nature to his personality or expression. They stereotype him, based upon the undisputed letters - why? Because it's always EASIER to go by a stereotype. And that's horrible, absolutely horrible, for a historian to do.

I'll skip #2 for now.

3.)

This objection is that the author of the Pastorals deals with false teachers "differently" - more hierarchically, it would seem - and that Paul in the Pastors wasn't engaging in debate

Paul was speaking to a long-term associate who didn't NEED instruction on fundamentals.

Additionally, there are numerous similarities between the heresy in the Pastorals and that found in 1 Corinthians. I don't see how the Pastorals CAN'T be matched up, in terms of issues, with the undisputed letters.

4.)

This one is the biggie - the argument that the Church organizational structure is "too advanced" in the Pastorals.

Bogus.

This is huge presumption. WHY couldn't the churches have developed so far?

The organizational developments are indeed indicated in other NT works. Philippians speaks of elders/presbyters and deacons. Well, there's TWO-THIRDS of your organization. Acts 14:23 and 20:17 speak of elders/presbyters as well.

It appears to be the case that elders and overseers - presbyters and bishops - were not necessarily specific offices at the very beginning, and that there was more a state of flux.

In every city, you would initially start out with a "house-church." Eventually, you'd have to have more than just ONE house-church, because the number of converts would grow.

A presbyter would be in charge of each house church. Whether they were ORIGINALLY different from bishops is irrelevant, in my opinion. Once a city had gained several house-churches, consolidation and organizational unity would be required, at which point, we'd see the rise of the monarchical bishops for each city as a whole, with presbyters in charge of each house-church.

This "development" could EASILY have taken place in the 20 or so years that Paul preached. He joined the Church BEFORE it accepted Gentiles, and was still rather small. By the time he wrote the Pastorals, probably late in his ministry, it appears, the idea of presbyters being in charge of house-churches and bishops in charge of city-churches could come to fruition.

There is NO need to assume that the Church remained a decentralized MESS for 50 or so more years, except the desire of historians to either affirm the Protestant structure system, or attempt to decentralize early Christianity in order to delegitimize its authenticity as a movement.

We cannot forget good old Ignatius of Antioch, who seemed rather comfortable with his role as an extremely monarchical bishop.

The arguments in favor of an extremely decentralized early Church pass over all institutional references in the Gospels and Paul's undisputed epistles, and therefore, are extremely flimsy.

5.)

It's argued that the Pastorals were simply not referenced early on. Marcion, for example, did not include them. And they are not in our earliest collection - P46, I believe.

However, I would argue that 1 Clement contains evidence of the Pastorals, as well as the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp (which, if substantiated, would push the dates BACK). I am definitely up for looking through their letters with you and seeing just how much validity my claim has.

Additionally, P46 does not contain Philemon, an undisputed epistle. So it is silly to use it as evidence to reject 3 other letters. And the P32 Papyrus, around the same time, contains Titus.

6.)

There are also some other cheesy arguments, such as 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy containing contradictory instructions.

If you are aware of any OTHER arguments I'd like to hear them.

7.)

You touched upon this one - objections based upon writing style, arguments, and vocabulary. Sorry to say, these objections are, ultimately, worthless.

Talk to some literary scholars, and you will realize that samples as large as Ten THOUSAND words are needed to make semi-authoritative determinations of authorship. The Pastorals are quite simply not LONG enough for you to take the writing style and vocabulary and insist Paul could not have written them. The fact that Paul could have used a secretary at times ALONE means that arguments based on vocabulary and grammar and so forth should be thrown out the window.

Luke and Acts share words with the Pastorals - 37 to be exact, I believe - that are not found in the rest of the NT. So why couldn't Luke be Paul's scribe? Didn't Rudolph Hess write down Mein Kampf as Hitler dictated it to him? He had to polish up the language, clear up the errors, and correct things such as run-ons. So for Paul to be standing in the room while someone like Luke wrote down his thoughts - that's NOT a possibility that you are free to exclude, and therefore, arguing on the basis of language, grammar, etc. gets you absolutely nowhere, my friend.

A trusted scribe would shape vocabulary, style, and composition - in proportion, direct proportion, to the extent of the trust the author had in them. Luke certainly would fit the bill. And if you argue that that is just vain speculation, well, I'm sure Paul was close with SOME people that he could have used as scribes.

Plato's later works show a much broader vocabulary. Hamlet is Shakespeare's most unique play. Are you going to argue that either man COULDN'T be the author?

Ironically, to argue that the Pastorals could not have been written by Paul on the basis that you are giving me would similarly mean that Shakespeare DEFINITELY did not write Hamlet. I suggest you abandon such reasoning, unless you provide good reason for continuing with it.

I'd also like to point out that while the Pastorals are a higher type of Koine greek, who are they written to? SMARTER PEOPLE. Timothy and Titus were well-educated bishops, and not the laity.

Another argument is that 211 out of 306 words in the Pastorals are part of the vocabulary of second century writers, and that 20 of those words were unknown before 90 AD.

I think that foolishly thinks that we are justified in deciding when words were first used based on our amazingly SMALL sample of ancient literature.

The hapax legomena, words found in only the Pastorals out of the NT, 153 out of 175 ARE found in other Greek documents - notably, documents written before 50 AD.

Additionally, there are many stylistic similarities between the Undisputed and Duetero-Pauline and the Pastorals.

Some examples:

1 Tim 4:2 - Phil 3:2, 2 Cor 11:13
1 Tim 1:9-10 - 1 Cor 5:10-11, Rom 1:29-30
1 Tim 1:5-16 - 2 Cor 11:12

There's only 306 words in the Pastorals, Bradley - not enough to make the assertion that you have made.

That takes care of argument 1. And I didn't extensively address your second point, but I'd like to see a more extensive argument from you about the issues that COULDN'T have existed during Paul's lifetime.

And as for your argument for a rather unestablished, decentralized Church, I believe I have explained how it doesn't really pass muster. Feel free to explain why it still does, given the argument I presented.

As for me, I date the Pastorals to between the end of Paul's first Roman imprisonment (Acts 28:16) and his execution under Nero in about 63-67 AD.

- Sean