hatsoff

I tend to initially defer to secular scholarship when it comes to Biblical issues, but there comes a time when I investigate the individual matters for myself, and attempt to confirm or challenge the scholarly consensus. The Pastoral Epistles are universally regarded as doubtful, and I do agree this is the proper perspective. However, I have a few concerns about scholars' tendency to discount (as opposed to simply doubt) the Pastorals' authenticity.

1. The appeal to vocabulary is not to my knowledge tempered with control samples. That is, when two works differ considerably in their vocabulary, we tend to expect them to have been written by different authors. Yet how solid is that tendency? Just how unlikely is it for a single author to have altered or developed his vocabulary between two bodies of work? Without knowing the answers to those questions, I'm not inclined to weigh this evidence very strongly.

2. It seems circular to me that we should doubt the Pastorals' authenticity based on their focuses on church structure and tradition. While I understand that lack of corroborative evidence doesn't help the issue, I also disagree that such matters could not or should not have been discussed in Paul's time--especially if it was late in his life.

3. I look on the dissent of ancient witnesses Marcion, Tatian and Basilides as flags for attention, but not strong evidence against authenticity. It is unknown from whence this anti-Pastorals tradition sprang, so any inference based thereupon must be considered tenuous.

Collectively, the evidence does justify doubt of the Pastorals, I certainly agree--but how much doubt? The lack of hard evidence leads me to remain very much open to the possibility that the Pastorals were indeed authentic. If I were to put a number on it, I'd have to give it an even chance.

What are your thoughts?

--hatsoff

DCHindley

Yes,

WRT #1, the biggest problem is related to the fact that the pastorals (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and yes even Philemon) represent a different genre than the instructive epistles (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians). What I think someone has to do is establish whether there is or is not a measurable, statistically significant, difference in vocabulary in individual ancient Greek authors, between genres of this type.

WRT #2, I am not sure what you mean by "circular"? However, I am troubled by the fact that assumptions about church organization are based to a certain extent on the idea that Christianity started out as a scattered disorganized movement that organized over time. The pastoral Paulines suggest that the communities he dealt with had structure from day one. However, we may be dealing with Apples (the Jesus movement coming out of agrarian oriented Coele Syria as it recovered from a devastating war - or two) and Oranges (the Paul movement moving in urban environments where organizational structures like synagogues and household cults were already strongly established).

WRT #3, Marcion may have had access to an edition of the Paulines that did not yet include the pastorals, or he simply did not see them as necessary to spread his version of Good News and thus left them out (making the Pauline corpus a leaner, meaner, doctrine-spreading machine). Tatian and Basilides, for their part, may have objected to the organizational structure they reflected (Gnostic ideas tended to grow outside of house church settings, although they also affected them as well), or again, they didn't reflect an instructive kind of genre and were thus not worthy of "serious" attention.

There is one kind of circularity I object to. That is where we state "The big 4, because they are closest to one another in subject matter and theology, *must* represent the genuine Paul, and those that differ in these matters, *must not* therefore be genuine Paulines. Isn't that assuming what must be proved?

DCH

Vivisector

1. The Pastorals have been the subject of several stylometric analyses. The method of analysis has produced some noteworthy failures, but also (especially in more recent times, with refined techniques) some noteworthy successes. I think there's something to it. In this specific instance, the Pastorals stand apart from the undisputed epistles in several regards - not only in terms of a relatively large number of hapax legomena, but also in terms of using words and phrases that are much more characteristic of 2nd CE than first. There's also the issue of responding in the Pastorals to challenges that aren't considered to have existed in a significant way until later. So, as I understand it, it's more than vocabulary, per se, it's an issue of whether some of the questionable words/phrases are anachronistic.

2. My take on this is that in the undisputed epistles, Paul expects the game to be over soon - any day now. He does appear to moderate his tone somewhat in some of his writings, but in many places, there is a sense of urgency and immediacy. If that was, in fact, Paul's mindset, then it strikes me as being at odds with designing a formal church structure, along the lines of the Pastorals, that has survived for nearly two millenia.

3. I think the Pastorals' non-inclusion in P-46, the canon of Marcion, and similar facts are corroborative rather than decisive. They are consistent with a hypothesis of non-Pauline authorship, rather than indicating it alone.

Combining 1 & 2, for Paul to have authored the Pastorals, it seems that he would have had to (a) profoundly altered his expectation of an imminent return of Jesus, and (b) altered his writing style dramatically; additionally, (c) challenges alluded to in the Pastorals would have had to arise considerably sooner than most people have supposed. For me, then, it's a cumulative argument, and I'd put the odds at much less than even that Paul personally wrote or dictated them. Maybe 10%, if that.

Cheers,

V.

Doug Shaver

What lack of hard evidence? The scholars who challenge their authenticity seem to think they have plenty of evidence. I think a cogent challenge to their consensus would have to come from someone well trained in NT Greek.

aa5874

You statement is confusing and appear contradictory. First you say, " Collectively, the evidence does justify doubt of the Pastorals..."

Then immediately, in the very next sentence, you claim there is a lack of evidence.

This is strange, evidence makes you doubt authenticity and lack of evidence makes you doubt evidence.

hatsoff

"Hard evidence" was perhaps a misleading term to use, so I'm sorry for the miscommunication. What I mean to convey is that the evidence presented against authenticity is sufficient to justify doubt, but insufficient to prove the case entirely. In other words, as far as I can tell, compelling, decisive evidence is lacking. Yet in most discussions of the Pastorals which I have seen, inauthenticity is assumed with no regard for their potential authenticity. This troubles me.

hatsoff

I'm not arguing that the distinctive vocabulary isn't as different as analysis shows, but rather that it does not (as far as I can tell) constitute weighty evidence against authenticity. That is, I see insufficient reason to deny that Paul should have altered or developed his writing between the Pastorals and the remaining Pauline epistles.

aa5874

Well, once you doubt their authenticity because of the collective evidence, then it is reasonable to reject them until further evidence can remove your doubts.
I fail to see how such a reasonable and logical position could trouble you, unless of course you are looking for trouble.

Doug Shaver

I don't know what would constitute sufficient reason in your judgment.

I have not seen the specific data on which the analysis is based. And, since I don't know Greek, I doubt that I would be competent to evaluate it myself even if I did see it.

Being a writer myself, though, I do have some idea about what it takes to make a writer significantly change his style. If the differences between the pastorals and the undisputed Pauline writings are great enough to make some experts doubt their common authorship, then I think anyone who questions the experts is obliged to come up with a specific creidlble explanation for why Paul did change his style to the extent that it looks like somebody other than he wrote the pastorals. "We can't prove he didn't" isn't going to cut it.