Carefully elaborated as this part of Baur's attack has been, it is, perhaps, tlie weakest and most capricious of
all. The false teachers of the Pastoral Epistles are pre- dominantly Jewish, voiioctdciaK-aXoi (1 Tim. i, 7j, be- longing altogether to a different school from that of Marcion, giving heed to "Jewish fal)les" (Tit. i, 4) and " disputes connected with the law" (iii, 9). Of all mon- strosities of exegesis few are more wilful and fantastic than that which finds in I'DfioSidaaKciXvi Antinomian teachers, and in nox"^ vojiikoi Antinomian doctrine (Baur, p. 17). The natural suggestion that in Acts xx, 30,31 Paul contemplates the rise and progress of a like perverse teaching; that in Col. ii, 8-23 we have tlie same combination of Judaism and a self-styled ynZcrK; (1 Tim. vi, 20) or (pi\o9o<pia (Col. ii. 8), leading to a like false asceticism, is set aside summarily by tlie rejection both of the speech and the epistle as spurious. Even the denial of the resurrection, we may remark, belongs as naturally to the mingling of a Sadducwan element with an Eastern mysticism as to the teaching of Mar- cion. The self-contradictory hypothesis that tlie writ- er of 1 Tim. is at once the strongest opponent of the Gnostics, and that he adopts their language, need hard- ly be refuted. The whole line of argument, indeed, first misrepresents the language of Paul in these epis- tles and elsewhere, and then assumes the entire absence from the 1st century of even the germs of the teaching which characterized the 2d (comp. Neander, PJlanz. und Leit. i, 401 ; Heydenreich, p. G4).
(II.) Specidl Objections to the First Epistle. — The most prominent of these are the following: 1. That it presents Timothy in a light in which it is inconsistent with other notices of him in Paul's epistles to regard him. Here he appears as little better than a novice, needing instruction as to the simplest affairs of ecclesi- astical order; whereas in the First Epistle to the Corin- thians, written earlier than this, we find him (iv. 17) described by Paul as "My beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of mj' wa3's which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in ev- ery Church ;" and in 1 Thess. i, 1-3 we are told that the apostle had sent him to Thessalonica to establish the believers there, and to comfort them concerning their faith. If Timothy was so well able to regulate the churches at Corinth and Thessalonica, how, it is asked, can it be supposed that a short while afterwards he should require such minute instructions for his con- duct as this epistle contains? To this it may be re- plied, (1) that in visiting Corinth and Thessalonica Timothy acted as the apostle's delegate, and had, doubt- less, received from him minute instructions as to how- he should proceed among those to whom he was sent; so that the alleged difference in the circumstances of Timothy when sent to Corinth and when left in Ephesus disappears; (2) that it does not necessarily follow from the injunctions given to Timothy in this epistle that the writer regarded him as a novice, for they rather respect the application of general principles to peculiar local circumstances than set forth instructions such as a novice would require ; and (3) it is not to be forgotten that the apostle designed through Timothy to present to the Church at large a body of instruction which should be useful to it in all ages of its existence.
2. It is objected that after the Church at Ephesus had enjoyed the apostle's instructions and presidency for three years it could not have been, at the time this epistle is supposed to have been written by Paul, in such ignorance of ecclesiastical arrangements as the in- junctions here given would lead us to suppose. But what is there in the epistle that necessitates such a supposition? It contains many directions to Timothy how he should conduct himself in a church, some <if which are certainly of an elementary character, but there is nothing that leads to the conclusion that they were all intended for the benefit of the Church at Eph- esus, or that the state of that Church was such as to re- quire that injunctions of this kind should be given for its sake alone. Timothy's sphere of evangelistic effort extended greatly beyond Ephesus; and this epistle was
TIMOTHY, FIRST EPISTLE TO 420 TIMOTHY, FIRST EPISTLE TO
designed at once to guide him as to what he was to rio in the churches whirh he might be called to reg- ulate, and to sup|)ly his authority for so doing, he- sides, does it not naturally occmr that such minute in- junctions are just sucli as a person forging this eiiistle at a later period in I'aul's name would be most likely to avoid '?
3. The absence of allusions to events in Timothy's history has been allege<l against the Pauline origin of this epistle. A strange objection— and as untenable as strange ! This may be seen by a reference to the fol- lowing passages: i, 18; iv, 14; v, "23 ; vi, 12.
4. It is alleged that the writer of this epistle has made such a I'.Mstake as Paul could not have made when he classes .\lexander with Hymena?us {i Tim. i, 20) as a false Christian, whereas we know from 2 Tim. iv, 14 that he was not a Christian at all. But where is the shadow of evidence that the Alexander mentioned in 1 Tim. i. 20 is the same person with the Alexander men- tioned in 2 Tim. iv, 14 V Was this name so uncnnimon in Ejihesus that we must needs suppose a blunder where a writer sjieaks of one so called as a heretic simply be- cause, in other passages, mention is made of one so call- ed who was not a lieretic? Nothing can be more obvi- ous than that there were two Alexanders, just as there might have been twenty, known to the apostle and Timothy; and tliat of these two one was a heretic and troubler of the Church at Ephesus, and the other prob- ably a heatlien and an enemy of the apostle.