First and Second Timothy and Titus are apparently not written by Paul(?)Why are they still included in the Canon? Are there things that are definitely in conflict with Paul's other writings?Anything to be wary of?
The disputed Pastoral Letters?
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All three, I Timothy, II Timothy, and Titus, are letters of Paul. So called higher critics would have you think otherwise, but these are the letters of Paul. There is nothing to be wary of in any book that is canonized in the Bible.
Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus by the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. He never was able to see to the same degree there are many clues to this in his letters... one place he says hs will sign in big letters so you will know he wrote it himself... Luke is one who is know to be a scibe or a writer for Paul... in Pauls day you could hire a scribe to write a letter to any one for you... as many did not know how to read or write, Paul knew how, so we take clues from his writings to draw conclusions these are not spelled out in plain words and so must be called as speculation...but make sense... Pauls words were in Timoothy and Titus, both were written from a true Roman jail cell, not the home jail he'd had earlier in Rome... Titus is to help a runaway slave return to his master...and Timothy is a passing fo the baton, so to speak, Paul knows he is facing death at Nero's hand...they were more than likley penned by another but from the mouth of Paul...
THanks....I'm using the NRSV for study, and it has several sidebars explaining that these aforementioned letters are "universally accepted as not being written by Paul"...I thought that was kind of strange that it was part of the canon.When did this perspective or theory, that these letters were not authored by Paul, first come around?
I wouldn't say universal by any stretch of the imagination. There are scholars out there that believe Paul wrote them. As for why...so called higher critics have come around and they approach the Bible from a completely "logical" and "scientific" way of thinking. They say that this does not hinder or harm religion, but I'm not quite so sure from my own studies. In a nutshell, the Bible is looked at from a completely human perspective meaning all of the miraculous events are explained by normal phenomena. Higher critics have taken it on themselves to propose that the majority of the OT was written mostly by four sources - J, E, D, and P and that the NT is a collection merely attributed to certain figures but written anonymously. The JEDP mainly deals with the Pentateuch (first five books). These theories are mostly from the past 50-60 years and much younger in other cases. They rely on using the events that were described and basically what amount to guesses on the language used. For example, if the Bible speaks prophetically about an event, that event would have happened and only then been written about. As you can see, that presents issues for someone who believes in the validity of the Bible.
(Savate;9874)
THanks....I'm using the NRSV for study, and it has several sidebars explaining that these aforementioned letters are "universally accepted as not being written by Paul"...I thought that was kind of strange that it was part of the canon.When did this perspective or theory, that these letters were not authored by Paul, first come around?
Likely the questions started to arise after the 19th century. They begin by thinking to themselves, could Paul have written this before he died? They see complex church organization or structure that they figure couldn't have been present in 63-67 AD (when they think he died). But not all scholars are of this mind. Some think those structures are quite possible at that time. Other scholars like to suggest that a secretary wrote the letters for Paul, or composed them from fragments of real Pauline letters. You are in no way obliged to believe these scholars. They also tend to make their assessments by saying the language is not Pauline enough to have been written by him. They say the pastoral letters use vocabulary that he would not have used. I find this line of argument especially annoying, for some reason.Scholars can be inscrutable. And footnotes and appendices and sidebars of bibles are only as good as, well, okay, sometimes they are very helpful, but let the buyer beware.SwampFox is quite right that when some scholars date the books of the New Testament, they use the fact that a book predicts the fall of the temple in Jerusalem as proof that it had to be written after said fall. I assume this is because they can't wrap their mind around the idea that Jesus could have predicted the fall of the temple in advance. Sigh. I don't think this is their line of reasoning for the pastoral letters, though.
THanks....I'm using the NRSV for study, and it has several sidebars explaining that these aforementioned letters are "universally accepted as not being written by Paul"...I thought that was kind of strange that it was part of the canon.When did this perspective or theory, that these letters were not authored by Paul, first come around?
Likely the questions started to arise after the 19th century. They begin by thinking to themselves, could Paul have written this before he died? They see complex church organization or structure that they figure couldn't have been present in 63-67 AD (when they think he died). But not all scholars are of this mind. Some think those structures are quite possible at that time. Other scholars like to suggest that a secretary wrote the letters for Paul, or composed them from fragments of real Pauline letters. You are in no way obliged to believe these scholars. They also tend to make their assessments by saying the language is not Pauline enough to have been written by him. They say the pastoral letters use vocabulary that he would not have used. I find this line of argument especially annoying, for some reason.Scholars can be inscrutable. And footnotes and appendices and sidebars of bibles are only as good as, well, okay, sometimes they are very helpful, but let the buyer beware.SwampFox is quite right that when some scholars date the books of the New Testament, they use the fact that a book predicts the fall of the temple in Jerusalem as proof that it had to be written after said fall. I assume this is because they can't wrap their mind around the idea that Jesus could have predicted the fall of the temple in advance. Sigh. I don't think this is their line of reasoning for the pastoral letters, though.
Thanks..I've learned a lot.I'm glad I posted this...in my continued reading of NSRV I now see that apparently Hebrew's Pauline authorship is also called into question (actually, the wording is more to the effect that it is "obviously not written by Paul"..nothing about it being "in question")
I'm definitely in agreement with what B'Midbar. I think you'll discover that with Paul, his unshakeable faith always seems to come out in what he writes. Some people call it arrogance, but I have to argue Paul was simply confident because of what he had been through. God was always there for him. Believe me, if you're trying to copy someone you always go for the vocabulary first thing. The tone behind the passage is a good key to truly understand because if it remains fairly constant, that's a good indication of who wrote it. I say that as an English major.
There's a lot of information about possible pseudopigrapha of Paul...so it's a great question. My opinion is that the fact that it is included in the Bible demonstrates its validity; God would not have allowed it in the Bible were it not authentic.
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