done. There is no period of that ministry, from Damascus to Rome, into which they will fit.*
V. StyLe AND Diction. —The most formidable objection to the Pauline authorship of these Epistles is furnished by their style and diction, which present a marked contrast with those of the Pauline letters. That the three Pastorals con- tain 148 words which appear nowhere else in the N. T., and 304 which are not found in Paul’s writings, are facts which, by themselves, must not be allowed too much weight. Hap- axlegomena are numerous in the several Pauline Epistles. Second Corinthians has about 90: Romans and 1st Corin- thians each over a hundred: Ephesians about 40. That words like voAvteA7js and ofxovpyds appear in the Pastorals and not in Paul, counts for no more than that oroteArjs occurs only in 1st Thessalonians, and a@Bapys only in 2d Corinthians.
But we are not dealing with individual letters, but with a group of letters, nearly, if not absolutely, contemporaneous. It 7s a striking fact that this entire group, closely allied in all its three parts in vocabulary and style, presents, as a whole, such marked variations in these particulars from the accepted Pauline letters. In their lexical peculiarities the Pastorals form a class by themselves.
One who is thoroughly steeped in Paul’s style and diction, and who reads these letters out of hand, is at once impressed with the difference from Paul. He feels that he isin astrange rhetorical atmosphere. The sentences have not the familiar ring. The thought does not move with the accustomed rush. : The verve of Corinthians and Galatians, the dialectic vigour of Romans, the majesty of Ephesians, are alike wanting. The association of ideas is loose, the construction is not compact, the movement is slow and clumsy. We miss the heavily-
* This is succinctly shown by Edwin Hatch, in his article ‘‘ Pastoral Epis- tles,’’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; and more in detail by von Soden, in his introduction to the Pastorals in the Hand-Commentar. 'The most recent defence of the opposite view is by J. Vernon Bartlett, The Apostolic Age, 1899,