The natural desire to take these writings for what they literally purport to be, i.e. letters written by Paul himself, is rendered impossible not merely by the positive evidence of their contents which has been already outlined, but also by two negative arguments of crucial importance. (a) The style, which is somewhat stiff and unelastic, is incompatible with the Pauline authorship. Even when allowance has been made for the difference between public and private letters, for the possible effect of age on Paul, and for the use of phrases caught up from fresh interests and controversies, the only fair verdict upon the anomalous grammar and diction of the pastoral epistles is unfavourable to their Pauline originality. Pauline elements of course occur, but the groundwork is radically different. Fresh groups of words are introduced (e.g. the compounds in a-privative, φιλο-, σωφρο-, διδάσκ-, οἶκο-), familiar Pauline expressions (“υἱοθεσία, God our Father”) are either dropped or (πίστις, δικαιοῦσθαι) modified, and out of almost nine hundred words one hundred and seventyone (one hundred and seventy-six) are åña§ λeyóμeva. The peculiarities of vocabulary and style point almost unmistakably to a writer who used Pauline phrases to help his own looser and less vigorous methods of expression. "Es fehlt durchweg die ernste, würdige und gedankenschwere Plerophorie der paul. Rede; es fehlen jene charakteristischen Dammbrüche, welche in Folge der schwellenden Gedankenfülle die Construction erleidet " (Holtzmann). Nor is it very probable that Paul would have met false teaching either by repeated and vague denunciation or by falling back upon a traditional crystallised faith, which forms the "sound" teaching of the organised church. Besides, the characteristically Pauline interests are obliterated. The question of the law, the rule of the Jews, adoption, redemption, life in the Spirit, these are no longer central. As even Weiss admits, strange prominence is given to such ideas as those of reward, a good conscience, the individual and social value of Christian morality rather than its religious character. Nor is it easy to satisfactorily explain, on the traditional hypothesis (Zahn, GK, i. p. 634 f.), the absence of these epistles from Marcion's canon. He may have rejected them on account of their teaching (e.g. on asceticism, doketism, and the OT), which in some points controverts his own principles; but at any rate it tells heavily against them as genuine reproductions of the Pauline spirit, that a Pauline enthusiast 2 ignored them in drawing up his list of epistles. That he omitted them because they were private letters, is refuted by the fact that they are private letters only in a most superficial sense,

1 "Nirgends eine Spur von dem Schwung des Paulus und seiner Energie, kaum je eine Anakoluthie, eine Inconcinnität, eine Dunkelheit infolge des Vorwärtsdrängen der Ideen; alles ist in Past regelmässig, leicht, aber auch ohne Wucht und Farbe. Viele Worte und wenige Gedanken: von P. dürfte genau das umgekehrte gelten " (Jülicher).

The standard discussion is Holtzmann's (Past. pp. 86-118). Prof. G. G. Findlay, in his careful appendix to Sabatier's Paul, has been able, like Ramsay (CRE, pp. 248-251), to correct a few of Holtzmann's more extreme statements on this and some other points. But while the latter's cumulative argument requires to be modified in one or two details, it remains an irresistible and lucid piece of historical and literary criticism, whose main conclusions are to be accepted as almost axiomatic. Instances have been collected (cp. "Pastoral Epistles," CGT, p. xxxix.) which indicate in the pastorals the use of 2 Maccabees, a book of which there is no trace in Paul's writings.

2"Un homme qui, malgré l'esprit d' a priori dogmatique qu'il porta souvent dans la correction des livres saints, eut souvent des éclairs de vrai critique" (Renan). A similar difficulty is occasioned by the fact that while Marcion's sheet-anchor was the third gospel, he omits Acts altogether from his canon.

and that Marcion had no hesitation in accepting Philemon, which is a genuinely private note.

(b) Even more fatal to the traditional hypothesis of the pastorals is! the fact (Holtzmann, Past. pp. 15–37) that they cannot be fitted into any reasonable scheme of Paul's life. Had they been written by him, they must have dated from a period during which he travelled widely and extended his mission-tours in the Eastern Mediterranean, for the attempts to fix all or any of the epistles previous to his first captivity are not to be seriously mentioned. But this period in Paul's life is a terra incognita. It is bound up with the hypothesis of his release from prison and of his second captivity and martyrdom, for which the evidence is decidedly scanty. In recent years, it is true, apart altogether from the question of the pastorals, attempts have been made to rehabilitate this hypothesis.2 But even were these more successful than they are, the pastorals would still be un-Pauline. Such a hypothesis, if proved, would make the traditional date of the pastorals possible, not by any means necessary. It would merely make room for them between 62 and 67, or, if the earlier chronology be accepted, between 59 and 64. But on other grounds the epistles refuse to meet this situation, and indeed the efforts to adapt them to it may be for the most part characterised as proofs of the ingenuity of exegetical despair rather than of historical investigation.

Substantially identical in texture and spirit as all three are, each has evidently its distinctive characteristics. These idiosyncrasies upon examination seem to give sufficient if not peremptory proof that 2 Tim was the earliest of the three, while 1 Tim was the latest, written to enforce or supplement its predecessors. The evidence for this position is led at length by von Soden and McGiffert, to whose works the reader is referred for a convincing statement of the case. The chief lines are (a) the preponderance of Pauline matter in 2 Tim. Most nearly of all the three it attaches to Paul's personality (particularly as that appears in Philippians and Romans), it is richest in references to his character and work, and includes direct reminiscences-perhaps even notes—of the

1 The demonstration of this is the special merit of Renan's discussion (S. Paul, pp. xxviii-xlviii). Cp. also von Soden, op. cit. pp. 159-163. Zahn's laboured attempt to construct a world for the epistles in the seventh decade, fails to produce any coherent results, and on the whole the same must be said of Bartlet's scholarly discussion (AA, p. 199 f.). Similar attempts up to 1880 are sufficiently exposed by Holtzmann (Past. pp. 37-53).

2 Cp. Spitta, Urc. i. pp. 1-108, and R. Steinmetz's monograph, "Die zweite römische Gefangenschaft des Apostels Paulus" (1897). Renan, Harnack, Blass, and Belser (TQ, 1894, p. 40 f.) accept the tradition: cp. also von Manen, Theol. Tijdschrift (1894), p. 214; J. Weiss, ThLz. (1893), 394 f.; and Hesse (Entstehung, p. 244 f.). At the same time it is even doubtful whether (i.) Paul died in the Neronian persecution, and (ii.) suffered martyrdom contemporaneously with Peter. The tradition is late and not always self-consistent. Erbes (TU, neue Folge, vierter Band, Heft 1, 1899) strongly opposes both ideas, and indeed the whole hypothesis of the second imprisonment. See above, p. 133.

3 Besides Weiss (-Meyer; AJT, i. pp. 393-403 and INT, i. pp. 374-420), Zahn (Einl. i. pp. 398-489), and Godet, a number of Anglican scholars are still able to accept the pastorals as totally Pauline, e.g. Salmon, Wace (Speaker's Comm.), Farrar, Plummer (Expos. Bible, 1888), Hort (Jud. Christianity, p. 130; Ecclesia, p. 171), and J. H. Bernard (CGT). The case for the authenticity has been also argued by Fr. Roos (Die Briefe des Apostels Paulus und die Reden des Herrn Jesu, pp. 156-202), G. H. Gilbert (Life of Paul, 1899, pp. 225-232), Ruegg (Aus Schrift und Geschichte (1898), "Theol. Abhandlungen u. Skizzen," pp. 59-108), and Bertrand (Essai critique sur l'auth. d. Epitres Past. 1888). Macpherson (AJT, 1900, pp. 23-48) gives up the second imprisonment, but holds to the authenticity of the pastorals.

apostle. One central feature of the writing is its steady adherence to the personality and teaching of Paul, e.g. 21. 2 310. A change upon this point can be noticed in Titus, and more so in 1 Tim. There the personality of Paul retires into the background, and church-organisation tends to become the supreme concern. The references to the apostle's individuality are neither so fresh nor so frequent, while at the same time the motives and appeals become more abstract. Correlative to this, however, and quite in the second-century manner of reliance upon the "apostolic" deposit, is the emphasis still laid on Paul's bare authority-in his person no less than in his teaching-with a view to preserve the traditional faith and safeguard the interests of conservative organisation. (b) In 2 Tim, again, the situation is less advanced. Titus and 1 Tim represent errors more sharply defined and vigorously combated; the ideas and circumstances are treated with much greater precision and detail. In 2 Tim, e.g., bishops are unmentioned, and Titus is silent upon deacons. In 1 Tim both are provided with official regulations, and other features of organisation abound. Evidently, when the writer came to compose Titus and 1 Tim, he had before him a more copious and advanced state of matters within the church (on which see some evidence from the inscriptions collected by Achelis, ZNW (1900), p. 93 f.). 1 Tim, in fact, of all the NT books, shows almost a preoccupation with ecclesiastical interests. (c) The supplementary argument from language urges, among other points, the fact that out of the anaέ λeyóμeva, while only forty-six occur in 2 Tim, twenty-eight are counted in Titus (a book half the size of the others), and no fewer than seventy-four in 1 Tim. In 2 Tim there is no clear instance of ioris = fides quae creditur, while this use does occur in the others. In 2 Tim σornp is used only of Christ, in Titus of Christ and God (as in Lk 147, Jud 25), in 1 Tim of God alone. Similar developments are noted in connection with the characteristic words, didaσkaλía and evσéßeia. Consequently, though the argument is cumulative, 2 Tim is to be regarded as prior-possibly by some years to the others, although there are no grounds for doubting that one author wrote all three. The impression of its superiority to the others has been widely felt, and in this case superiority implies a closer proximity to the apostolic tradition (Hilgenfeld, ZwTh, 1897, pp. 1-86). Thus Reuss (Les Épitres Paulin. vol. ii.) rejects the other two, but retains 2 Tim as actually genuine; while older critics like Usteri, Lücke, Bleek (§§ 183-187), Neander, and Ritschl found themselves quite unable to attribute at least 1 Tim to the apostle.

2

In writing 2 Tim, then, the author stood nearest to the Pauline tradition. Probably he had before him genuine notes or at least 1 They are variously enumerated, but the argument remains substantially unimpaired. Mr. W. P. Workman (Exp. Ti. vii. pp. 418, 419) gives 2 Tim=53, Tit=33, 1 Tim = 82. His parallel from Shakspere is rather vitiated by the obvious fact that an early Christian writer cannot be judged by the standards applicable to a literary artist, and particularly to a dramatist, to whom flexibility of expression is congenial.

2 Even Zahn, like Spitta (Urc. i. pp. 36-47) starts his discussion of their situation by analysing 2 Tim in preference to either of the others. Similarly Dr. Salmon (INT, pp. 397-413) admits the supremacy of 2 Tim, and allows that if the other two letters had come by themselves, the way in which both begin would excite suspicion.' As a detail, it may be noted that 2 Tim 217-20 has more point if it precedes, than if it follows, the remark of 1 Tim 120. Reminiscences of 2 Tim also recur (223=1 Tim 14 47, Tit 39; 111=1. 27; 31=1. 41). The superiority of 2 Tim chiefly lies in (a) the naturalness and vivid colouring of the personal references, (b) the greater coherence and balance of the arguments, and (c) the directness of the religious feeling.

authentic reminiscences of the apostle, which have been worked up into the epistle. Titus and 1 Tim were written later and for similar purposes, though in a slightly more developed state of affairs. The three represent together the historical climax of Paulinism within the NT. They are not Paul's but Pauline. Their author was an adherent of the apostle's, who reproduced his master's ideas to meet not only the rising interest in personal religion throughout the Empire, but also the need of protection against the current heresy and trouble within the churches. Hence the apparently incongruous combination of passages which have a thoroughly Pauline ring (II. 115-18 23-9 45-8. 16-18, Tit 311-14, 1. 112-16) with others like II. 16 226-39, Tit 110 f. 35 39f, I. 23-15 3, 41-3. 14 511-23 63-10. 20. 21; in these last-quoted verses it is impossible to miss the tone of semi-legalism, ecclesiastical formality,1 and anxiety, which begins to be heard in the sub-apostolic literature. To suppose that such utterances were due to Paul before 67 A.D., is not merely to violently contradict the apostle's self-revelation in his other epistles, but also to throw the whole development of early Christian ideas and institutions into gratuitous and inextricable confusion. Justice can only be done to the double element in these epistles by approaching them upon the lines of the criticism just indicated. And 2 Tim occupies a position of priority among the pastorals upon historical and exegetical grounds very similar to those which prove Mark to be the earliest of the synoptic gospels. We feel the original tradition vibrating most unmistakably within its pages. 1 Tim, again, gives us the impression of a book which is in many respects an expansion or free summary of ideas already put into circulation. The arguments for this order of the pastorals are not, it must be admitted, so transparently convincing as those for their general date; but they seem the most satisfactory solution of the problem. So, in the sense above explained, Lücke, Neander, and Ritschl, after Schleiermacher. Accepting the critical view of all three, Baur (Church Hist. (Eng. tr.), ii. pp. 30, 31), Pfleiderer (Paulinism, ii. p. 198 n.; Urc. p. 822 n.), Holtzmann (Past. pp. 253-256, “Die Reihenfolge der Briefe "), S. Davidson (INT, ii. pp. 21-76), Beyschlag (NTTh, ii. pp. 502, 503), M. A. Rovers (Nieuw-test. Letterkunde,2 1888, pp. 66-78), and Brückner (Chron. pp. 277-286) are the main advocates of this order, which is also accepted by von Soden, McGiffert, and Jülicher (Einl. pp. 126, 127).2

The reversed order of the epistles in the canon can be very naturally explained, and does not constitute any valid objection to the critical theory of their origin. The titles of course formed no part of the original autographs. When the epistles came to be incorporated in the canon, as both were ex hypothesi Pauline, that one was numbered 2 which contained fuller and later references to the apostle's life, and thus appeared to form, with its rich personal contents, a climax to his career; the other, which lacked these intimate and farewell touches, was supposed to have been written previously. This inversion was unavoidable in an

1 On which cp. especially Renan, op. cit., and Holtzmann, Past. pp. 212f.

2 So evidently Mangold (Die Irrlehrer d. Pastoralbr.) and Schmiedel (EBi, i. pp. 49, 50). Cp. further on this point, Bourquin (op. cit. p. 67 f.), Clemen (Einheit. 1894, pp. 142-178), and Haupt (SK, 1895, p. 381).

The Latinisms and affinities with Clem. Rom., Luke, and Acts suggest Rome as the place where the pastorals were composed ("L'intention qui a dicté l'écrit, savoir le désir d'augmenter la force du principe hiérarchique et l'autorité de l'Église, en présentant un modèle de piété, de docilité, d'"esprit ecclésiastique" tracé par l'apôtre lui-même, est tout à fait en harmonie avec ce que nous savons du caractère de l'Église romaine dès le Ier siècle."-Renan). But Asia Minor is not impossible.

age which had no clue to guide it in the criticism of the epistles except the tradition of their Pauline origin. Upon the contrary, when the titles are provisionally set aside, and the writings examined upon their own merits, it becomes fairly evident (a) that their common atmosphere is to be found not earlier than the first quarter of the second century, and (b) also-though less conclusively--that the writing which has come down to us under the title of "2 Tim" really preceded its companions in the order of composition. The letters are addressed to Timotheus and Titus, in all likelihood, as these men were traditional companions of the apostle and figures of prominence in the earlier church. This choice of names would be specially seasonable if the author possessed already Pauline notes addressed to them. It is obvious from their character and contents that they can be termed "private" letters only in a very restricted sense. The author is writing with his eye on the community;1 he portrays, like the fourth evangelist, ideal types for all.

Finally, it need hardly be said that this view of the "pastorals does not rest on a presupposition that everything Paul wrote must needs have been upon the same level of thought and style. The admittedly genuine epistles prove this was not the case. In Galatians and 1 Corinthians themselves, there are passages far below the originality and conclusiveness of what is seen to be Paul's ordinary height at other times, and even in these very epistles. But what is urged, and urged forcibly, is that there are in the "pastorals" levels which are inexplicably different even from Paul's least excellent and characteristic moods. When criticism refuses 2 to accept these as Pauline, it is proceeding upon straightforward historical principles, and not necessarily upon the application of too rigid and uniform a standard of Paulinism.

On the question of pseudonymity raised by this solution of the problem, in addition to the remarks in the Appendix (cp. below), it is worth while to quote the following sentences from a moderate statement by Rev. W. H. Simcox :-"It is far likelier that the pastoral epistles, if written not by the apostle but by friends and disciples of his, were written without any fraudulent intent. To a writer of the period, it would appear as legitimate an artifice to compose a letter as to compose a speech in the name of a great man whose sentiments it was desired to reproduce and record; the question which seems so important

1 This slips through in the greetings (2 Tim 422, Tit 315, 1 Tim 621). But indeed the whole point of the writings is lost if they are taken as instructions for individuals— individuals, too, in a long and close friendship with the writer. How incredible that, after all that intimacy, they should still need direction for divers moral duties of life, and also information upon the elementary facts and ideas of their friend! Warnings against juvenile vices are hardly applicable to one who, like Timothy, must have been nearly twenty years a Christian minister and forty years of age.

the

2 In contrast to the timid and misleading statements which still continue to be made upon the subject, it is refreshing to find the later date of these epistles frankly recognised by so eminent a conservative leader as Beyschlag (NTTh, ii. pp. 3, 4; cp. p. 501 f.). "We must," he writes, "with as much certainty as in such things is possible, reject the pastoral epistles as records of Pauline teachings; account of their origin, which they contain, in itself untenable. They betray the conditions and motives of a later age, from which they can only be artifically and imperfectly transferred to the lifetime of the apostle, and except in a few phrases (which may have belonged to a genuine letter here embodied), they are as far apart as the poles from Paul's own modes of thinking and writing. Especially in the greatest [largest ?] of the three-the First Epistle to Timothy-we may confidently say: the man who is now able to ascribe it to the author of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians has never comprehended the literary peculiarity and greatness of the apostle."