772 TIMOTHY, FIKST EPISTLE TO
TIMOTHY, FIRST EPISTLE TO
objects of charity, and who devote their time to prayei (5*''), and active widows who are church workers, whose names are entered on a cliurcli list, after careful examination of their antecedents (59. loj 'I'lm distinction is not, however, clearly marked. See also art. Widow.
[Cf. Gore, The Church and tlie Ministry, ch. v.; Moberly, Ministerial Priesthuocl, ch. v. ; Hort, Christian Ecdcsia, chs. xi. xii.; J. H. Bernard in Camh. Gr. Test. pp. Ivi-lxxiv ; Weiss, § 4 ; Zahn, Einl. i. 459-466].
V. Authorship.— Tlie Epistle claims to be by St. Paul, and is directly attributed to liim by Irena-us (Pra^f. II. .\iv. 7, IV. xvi. 3), Tertulli.m (rfe Prcesnr. c. 25), Clement Alex. {Strom, ii. p. 457, iii. p. 534), and the Muratorian Canon ; it was included in tlie Latin and Syriac versions, and this implies an acceptance of its Pauline claim. It was known to Marcion (c. 140) ; there are many parallels to its regulations in the earliest documents that underlie the Apostolic Constitu- tions (cf. Harnack, TU II. v. pp. 50-52, or Chron. i. p. 483) : these may be due to independent treat- ment of some earlier list of regulations, but the more prob. view is that the Apost. Const, give a later and fuller adaptation of 1 Timothy ; and there are parallelisms to its language in the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons (Eus. v. 1), Hege- sippus (Eus. iii. 22), Justin Martyr {Dial. vii. 1", XXXV. 3 {?)), and above all in Polycarp (cc. 4. 5. 8. 9. 12), Ignatius {ad Trail., Inscr. ad Magji. 8, adPnlijc. 3), and Clement of Rome (7. 21. 54. 61), which make it probable that it was known to all these writers, and well known in Asia Minor before A.D. 115, and perhaps at Rome before A.D. 95. For an instructive comparison of the Pastoral Epistles with Ignatius, cf. von der Goltz in TU iLlI. iii. pp. 107-118, 186-194.
On the other hand, it was rejected with 2 Tim. by Tatian (Jerome, Prol. ad Titum), by ' certain heretics' (Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 11), and with both 2 Tim. and Titus by Marcion (Tertull. adv. Marcionem, v. 21) and Basilides (Jerome, I.e.). TertuUian implies that the reason of the rejection was that they were private letters ; but it may have been due to a dislike of their teaching, or, if thej' were not Pauline, to a real knowledge of their origin. Tlie external evidence is as strong in church writers as for any Epistle ; but it is met by a persistent rejection ou the part of some heretics.
The internal evidence permits two alternatives. Either the author is Paul, or he is some later writer anxious to support Christian morality and orthodox teaching against glowing heretical ten- dencies, and for tliis purpose composing the letter, possibly with the help of some genuine Pauline fragments, and certainly with a deliberate use of the Pauline letters. In deciding between these two alternatives it ia not pos.sible to appeal to points of similarity with Pauline language or with St. Paul's character, as they are assumed on both sides ; on the other hand, dill'erences from the known facts of St. Paul's life are as much an argument against the second alternative as against the tirst.
(1) The historical situation cannot be fitted into the account of St. Paul's life in the Acts. This is true in spite of recent attempts to place it at the time of Ac 20^ (Bartlct, Apostolic Age, pp. 17'J- 182, 511-515; Bowen, The Dates of the I'listural Epistles, London, 1900) ; yet the Acts is incomplete even over the ground which it traverses, e.g. it makes no mention of the intricate circumstances coimected with the mission of Titus to Corinth, i.e. it helps us to understand 2 Cor. as little as this Epistle. Further, it confessedly ends before the death of St. Paul. There are other grounds
for believing in a release of St. Paul after Ac 28 (cf. art. Paul), and the situation implied here may easily fall in the interval between that re- lease and his deatli, about the same time as Titus but before 2 Tim., as this Epistle gives no trace of the danger of persecution.
(2) The style is unlike St. Paul's more argu- mentative passages, but it resembles that of the more practical sections of the earlier Epistles, e.g. 1 Th 5, Ro 12-16, 1 Co 16, 2 Co 8. 9. The general structure, the quick passage from practice to doctrinal basis, the personal interludes (1'* 2'), the frequent repetition of a word and its cognate forms {irhns, V^'" ; ttos, 2'-'; ttXoStos, 6"- '«), the fondness for sharp antithesis (5' 5" 6' 6"), the use of the language of the OT and of Greek proverbs, are subtle points that miglit escajie an imitator. But two points of difficulty remain. (a) The vocabulary is largely dillerent. The averajre of a;rat Xiybfud/a is one for every verse and a lialf : a large group of words (34 in the three Pastoral Letters) is not found elsewliere in St. Paul, but is found in St. Luke's writings ; and many cliar- acteristically Pauline words are absent (cf. Holtz- mann, Einl. pp. 318, 319, Past. Brief e, p. 100; W. H. Simcox in Expositor, 1888, p. 180).
But the argument from the mere use of words la always precarious (cf. an illustration from Shakes- peare in the Expos. Times, June 1896, p. 418, and from Dante in Butler's ' Paradise,' p. xi) ; St. Paul's language elsewhere shows great variation, even within the compass of one letter (cf. 2 Co 8. 9 with 10-13) ; the proportion of fin-a^ Xcydfieva is —