Titus, and, apparently, of Tychicus and Artemaa likewise, is strongly indioative of the third quarter of the first century, and was not at all likely to occur tl) a writer of the latter part of the second century. As far as appears from the pastoral Epistles, bishops with settled dioceses did not exist at the time when they were written. The apostles exercised full episcopal powers themselves; and appear to have bad in their train a oertain number of missionary bishops, whom they sent for a time to take the oversight of particular Churches, as they were needed, and then passed on to superintend other Churches. Bishops with a fixed diocese arose from these, but did not become the rule till the apostles who appointed them had passed away. A further indication of the time when these Epistles were written may also be found in their style, which does belong to the latter part of the first century, and does not belong to the latter part of the second. Frequent resemblances in style and matter to the Epistle to the Hebrews, to the First Epistle of Peter, to the Epistle of Ja.mes, as well as to the diction of Philo, Josephus, the later Books of the Maccabees, Plutarch, and to the sentiments of Seneca, indicate a. writer of the Neronian age, and not one at the time of the Antonines. But, as hinted above, there a.re feat~res in the literary style of the pastoral Epistles whioh are very peculiar, and which, if taken alone, would be suggestive of a different authorship from that of St. Paul's other Epistles. In the Appendix to this Introduction will be found a list of a hundred and eighty-seven words, of which one hundred and sixty-five are found only in the pastoral Epistles,1 eleven only in the pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and eleven only in the pastoral Epistles, Hebrews, St. James, St. Peter, St. Luke, and the Acts of the Apostles. Of these, a.bout forty-four are found in the LXX., but in some instances very rarely, so that the LXX. cannot be the quarry from which St. Paul dug these new additions to his vocabulary. But they are almost all good classical words; and it is further remarkable, with regard to other words which are found in other parts of Holy Scripture, that in the pastoral Epistles they follow the classical rather than the Hellenistic usage. The natural inferences from the above facts are (1) that these pastoral Epistles were written later than the other Epistles ; (2) that in the interval the writer had enlarged his acquaintance with Greek classics; (3) that, as his two correspondents were Greeks, he wrote tu them in the purest Greek he could oommand. It is remarkable that the theory which assigns the pastoral Epistles to the time after St. Paul's return from Spain fully agrees with the first two of the above inferences. It places an interval of two or three years between the latest of St. Paul's other Epistles and these Epistles to Timothy and Titus, and it also indicates a space of two years (Acts u:viii. 3 I). during whioh he may well have had leisure to increase largely his acqnainrauc:e 1 One of these (f~XP1JO"-ros) li found alao once iu the Epiatle to Phileruon. -.Ill INTRODUOTION TO
with Greek cl&S!lioa.1 litera.tnre. If a.mong those that "ea.me in unto him" at his own hired house (Acts xxviii. 30) were any men like Seneca, or the elder Pliny, or Sergius Paulus, St. Paul may well have thought it useful to read Greek classical writers-Aristotle, Polybius, Plutarch, Demosthenes, and others-with the view of increasing his influence with men of culture a.nd learning in the great capital of the world. And the fruit of such studies would be seen in the enlarged vocabulary of the pastoral Epistles. It is curious that this conjecture is somewhat strengthened by the cir- cumsta.noe that St. Paul appears to have ma.de his residence in Crete the occasion of reading the poems of the great Cretan prophet and poet Epimenides (Titus i. 12). It may also be added that the effect of fresh read- ing upon a person's style would be much greater in the case of an acquired la.ngua.ge, a.s Greek probably was to St. Paul, than in the oase of a person's mother-tongue. The variation in the vocabulary of the pastoral Epistles may, of course, also partly be accounted for by the difference in the matters treated of in them ; and by the books of the heretics, which St. Paul may have read with a view to refuting them. Such phrases as the d.vr,(Ucrm: 1"1]9 1/truOwvvp.ov yvwUEW!i (I Tim. vi. 20), and the allusion to the /3£/3~>..o, Kcvocf,wvw of the heretics, indicate some acquaintance with their writings. The conclusion, then, with regard to the internal marks of style, diction, sentiment, doctrine, incidental allusions to men, and things, and places, and institutions, is that they a.re in full accordance with the external testimony which assigns these Epistles undoubtingly to the apostle ~hose name they bear ; and that the pastoral Epistles a.re the authentic works of St. Paul. § 2. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE P.A.STORA!. EPISTLF& Our next task is to ascertain the chronology of these Epistles; their chronology (I) relatively to each other; (2) to the incidents in St. Paul's life ; (3) the absolute time of their composition. I. To begin with their chronology relatively to ea.eh other. Drawing our conclusions solely from the Epistles themselves, the order which naturally presents itself is the following: (1) the Epistle to Titus; (2) the First Epistle to Timothy; (3) the Second Epistle to 'l'imothy. And this order is founded upon the following reasons. All the internal marks of the Epistleis indicate, according to the almost unanimous opinion of com- mentators, that they were written at no long interval from one another. This is indicated, as regards Titus and 1 Timothy, by the close resemblance of matter and words, analogous to the resemblances of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Coloissians ; and, as regards 2 Timothy and the two other Epistles, partly by the same kind of resemblances (though less frequent), by the evidences of the same enemies and the same difficulties having to be encountered by Timothy at the time of the writing of the Second Epistle that existed at the time of writing the first; and further, by the route indicated in 2 Timothy as taken by St. Paul shortly before that Epistle was written, 11.greeing exactly with that which may be inferred from the Epistle to Titua THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. b