Ti:^[OTIIY, FIRST EPISTLE TO 418 TIMOTHY, FIRST EPISTLE TO
tion to the aiithorsliip of Ecclcsiastes. If the Pastoral Epistles are not Pauline, the writer clearly meant them to pass as such, and the (iiiiintis (kcijrif-mU wonlil be there in its most tiagrant form. They would have to take their place with tlie Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, or the Pscudo-liinatian Kpistles. Wliere we now see the traces, full of life and interest, of the character of " Paul the ased," Hrm, tender, zealous, loving, wc should have to reco<;nise only the tricks, sometimes skilful, sometimes clumsy, of some unknown and dishonest con- troversialist. Consequences such as these ought not, it is true, to lead us to suppress or distort one iota of evi- dence. They may well make us cautious, ho\v'ever,in ex- amining the evidence, not to admit conclusions that are wider than the premises, nor to take the premises them- selves for granted. The task of examining is rendered in some measure easier by the fact that, in the judgment of most critics, hostile as well as friendly, the three Pas- toral Epistles stand on the same ground. The interme- diate hypotheses of Sclileiermacher (supra) and Cred- ner {Eiiikit. ins .V. 7'.), who looks on Titus as genuine. 2 Tim. as made up out of two genuine letters, and 1 Tim. as altogether spurious, may be dismissed as individual eccentricities, hartliy requiring a separate notice. In dealing with objections which take a wider range, we are meeting those also which are confined to one or two out of the three epistles.
(I.) Objcclioiis to these Epistles in General. — The chief elements of the alleged eviilence of spuriousness in the three Pastoral Epistles may be arranged as follows ;
1. Lamptafie. — The style, it is urged, is different from that of the acknowledged Pauline Epistles. There is less logical continuity, a want of order and plan, snlijects brought up, one after the other, abruptl^y (Schleiermach- cr). Not less than fifty words, most of them striking and characteristic, are found in these epistles which are not found in Paul's writings (see the list in Conybeare and Howson, App. I, and Huther, Einkit.). The for- mula of salutation ()(^r'ipig, tXeog, vpqvrf), half-technical words and phrases like iv(Jijiiia and its cognates (1 Tim. ii, 2; iii, Ifj; vi, 6 et riL), TrapciKciTaBi)icr] (i, 18; vi, 20; 2 Tim. i, 12, 14, ii, 2), the fre(juently recurring TrtfTT-ofdXoyoc (ITim. i, 15; iii, 1 ; iv, 9; 2 Tim. ii, 11), the use of vymtrovaa as the distinctive epithet of a true teaching — these and others like them appear here for the first time (Sclileiermacher and Baur). Some of these words, it is urged, (pavipovv, tTTKpavua, awTi'jp, (pi^ig awpoaiTov, belong to the Gnostic terminology of the 2d century.
On the other side it may be said (1) that there is no test so uncertain as that of language and style thus ap- ])lied; how uncertain we may judge from the fact that Schlciermacher and Neander find no stumbling-blocks ill 2 Tim. and Titus, while they detect an un-Pauliue character in 1 Tim. A difTerence like that which marks the speech of men divided from each other by a century may be conclusive against the identity of authorship; but, short of that, there is hardly any conceivable diver- gency which may not coexist with it. The style of one man is stereotyped, formed early, and enduring long. The sentences move after an unvarying rhythm; the same words recur. That of another changes, more or less, from year to year. As his thoughts expand, they call for a new vocabulary. The last works of such a writer, as those of Bacon and of Burke, may be florid, redundant, figurative, while the earlier were almost mea- gre in their sitnplicity. In proportion as the man is a Solitary thinker, or a strong assertor of his own will, will he tend to the former state. In proportion to his power of receiving impressions from without, of sympathizing with others, will be his tendency to the latter. Apart from all knowledge of Paul's character, the alleged pe- culiarities are but of little weight in the adverse scale. With that knowledge we may see in them the natural result of the intercourse with men in many lands, of that readiness to become all things to all men, which could hardly fail to show itself in speech as well as in
action. Each group of his epistles has, in like manner, its characteristic words and phrases. (2.) If this is true generally, it is so yet more emphatically when the cir- cumstances of authorship are diffiTcnt. The language of a bishop's charge is not that of his letters to his pri- vate friends. The epistles which Paul wrote to the churches as societies might well differ from those which he wrote, in the full freedom of open speech, to a famil- iar friend, to his own " true son." It is not strange that we should find in the latter a Luther-like vehemence of expression (e. g. K(Kav(7Ti]pia(Tfiiiuoi\ 1 Tim. iv, 2 ; Sia- TrapaTpij^al Citcfi^api^diHoi' ai'Bponriov rov voin\ vi, 5; aeTiopH'i.ni'a u^iapTunc. 2 Tim. iii, (i), mixed sometimes willi words that imply that which few great men have been without, a keen sense of humor, and the capacity, at least, for satire (e. g. jpaiiicuc /.ivBovg. 1 Tim. iv, 7 ; (pXvapoi Kai Trepifoyot, v, 13; Ttrvcpwrai, vi, 4; yacrri- |0f C npyt'i Tit. i. 12 ). (3.) Other letters, again, were dic- tated to an amanuensis. These have every appearance of having been written with his own hand, and this can hardly have been without its influence on their style, rendering it less diffuse, the transitions more abrupt, the treatment of each subject more concise. In this re- spect it may be compared with the other two autograph epistles, those to the Galatians and Philetnon. A list of words given by Alford (vol. iii, Prolei/. eh. vii) shows a considerable resemblance between the first of these two and the Pastoral Epistles. (4.) It may be added that to whatever extent a forger of spurious epistles would be likely to form his style after the pattern of the rec- ognised ones, so that men might not be able to distin- guish the counterfeit from the true, to that extent the diversity which has been dwelt on is, within tlie limits that have been above stated, not against, but for, the genuineness of these epistles. (5.) Lastly, there is the positive argument that there is a large common ele- ment, both of thoughts and words, shared by these epis- tles and the others. The grounds of faith, the law of life, the tendency to digress and go off at a word, the personal, individualizing affection, the free reference to his own sufferings for the truth, all these are in both, and by them we recognise the identity of the writer. The evidence can hardly be given within the limits of this article, but its weight will be felt by any careful student. The coincidences are precisely those, in most instances, which the forger of a document would have been unlikely to think of. and give but scanty support to the perverse ingenuity which sees in these resem- blances a proof of compilation, and therefore of spuri- ousness.