2. A nachronism. — It has been urged (chiefly by Eich- \wrn, Eiideit.\).Z\b) against therecepfion of the Pastoral Epistles that they cannot be fitted into the records of Paul's life in the Acts. To this there is a threefold an- swer. (1.) The difficulty has been enormously exagger- ated. If the dates assigned to them must, to some ex- tent, be conjectural, there are, at least, two hypotheses in each case (infra) which rest on reasonably good grounds. (2.) If the difficulty were as great as it is said to be, the mere fact that we cannot fix the precise date of three letters in the life of one of whose ceaseless la- bors and joumeyings we have, after all, but fragmen- tary records, ought not to be a stumbling-block. The hypothesis of a release from the imprisonment with which the history of the Acts ends removes all difficul- ties; and if this be rejected (Baur, p. 67), as itself not resting on sufficient evidence, there is, in any case, a wide gap of wliich we know nothing. It ma\' at least claim to be a theory which explains phenomena. (3.) Here, as before, the repl\' is obvious, that a man com- posing counterfeit epistles would have been likely to make them square with the acknowledged records of the life.
3. Ecclesiasticism. — The three epistles present, it is said, a more developed state of Church organization and doctrine than that belonging to the lifetime of Paul. (1.) The rule that the bishop is to be "the husband of
TIMOTHY, Fin ST EPISTLE TO 419 TIMOTHY, FIRST EPISTLE TO
one wife" (1 Tim. iii, 2; Tit. i, G) indicates the strong opposition to second marriages wliich characterized the 2d century (Baur, p. 113-120). (2.) The '■ younger wid- ows" of 1 Tim. V, 1 1 cannot possihly be literally widows. If they were, Paul, in advising them to marry, would be excluding them, according to the rule of I Tim. v, 9, from all chance of sharing in the Church's bounty. It follows, therefore, that the word x^P"^ '^ used, as it was in the 2d century, in a wider sense, as denoting a conse- crated life (Baur, p. 42-49). (3.) The rules affecting the relation of the bishops and elders indicate a hierarchic development characteristic of the I'etrine element, which became dominant in the Church of Rome in the post- apostcilic period, but foreign altogether to the genuine epistles of Paul (Baur, p. 80-89). (4.) The term oipj n- Koc is used in its later sense, and a formal procedure against the heretic is recognised, which belongs to the 2d century rather than the tirst. (5.) The upward prog- ress from the ollice of deacon to that of presbyter, im- plied in 1 Tim. iii, 13. belongs to a later period (Baur, loc. cit.'). (0.) On 2 Tim. i, (5 ; ii, 2, see below.
It is not difficult to meet objections which contain so large an element of mere arbitrary assumption. (1.) Admitting Baur's interpretation of 1 Tim. iii, 2 to be the right one, the rule w^hich makes monogam)' a con- dition of the episcopal office is very far removed from the harsh, sweeping censures of all second marriages which we tind in Athenagoras and TertuUian. (2.) There is not a shadow of proof that the "younger wid- ows" were not literally such. The x//pflt of the Pastor- al Epistles are, like those of Acts vi, 1 ; ix, 39, women dependent on the alms of the Church, not necessarily deaconesses, or engaged in active labors. The rule fix- ing the age of sixty for admission is all but conclusive against Baur's hypothesis. (3.) The use of iirirKOTZoi and irpinj-ivTtpoi in the Pastoral F^pistles as equivalent (Tit. i, 5, 7), and the absence of any intermediate order between the bishops and deacons (1 Tim. iii, 1-8), are quite unlike what we find in the Ignatian Epistles and other writings of the 2d century. They are in entire agreement with the language of Paul (Acts xx, 17,28; IMiil. i, 1). Few features of these epistles are more strik- ing than the absence of any high hierarchic system. (4.) The word nipE-iKi'if has its counterpart in the n'lp't- atiQ of 1 Cor. xi, 19. The sentence upon Hvmenasus and Alexander (1 Tim. i, 20) has a precedent in that of 1 Cor. V, 5. (5.) The best interpreters do not see in 1 Tim. iii, 13 the transition from one oiBce to another (comp. Ellicott, ad loc, and see Deacon). If it is there, the assumption that such a change is foreign to the apostolic age is entirely an arbitrary one.
4. Jleresiolofiii. — Still greater stress is laid on the in- dications of a later date in the descriptions of the false teachers noticed in the Pastoral Epistles. These point, it is said, unmistakably to Marcion and his followers. In the ch'Ti^kaHi; t>]q tl/enSojvv/Jov yvwauoQ (1 Tim. vi, 20) there is a direct reference to the treatise which he wrote under the title of 'AmS'fo-fic, setting forth tlie contradiction between the Old and New Test. (Baur, p. 2G). The "genealogies" of 1 Tim. i, 4; Tit. iii, 9 in like manner point to the teons of the Yalentinians and Ophites (ihkl. p. 12). The "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats," fits in to Marcion's system, not to that of the Judaizing teachers of Paul's time {ibid. p. 24). The assertion that " the law is good" (1 Tim. i, 8) implies a denial, like that of Marcion, of its divine authority. The doctrine that the "resurrec- tion was past already" (2 Tim. ii, 18) was thoroughly Gnostic in its character. In his eagerness to find to- kens of a later date everywhere, Baur sees in the writer of these epistles not merely an opponent of Gnosticism, but one in part infected with their teaching, and appeals to the diixologies of 1 Tim. i, 17 ; vi, 15, and their Ciiris- tology throughout, as having a Gnostic stamp on them (p. 28-33).