The Pastoral Letters As Composite Documents

The authorship of the Pastoral letters has been a matter of intense scholarly debate for almost two hundred years. The letters clearly purport to be written by Paul, but perceived differences in the literary style, vocabulary and theology of the Pastorals when compared with that of the genuine Pauline letters suggests that this was not so. The arguments have centred primarily on the question of whether Paul or a disciple of Paul - a gifted pseudonymist - composed these letters. It is the 'either/or' nature of the debate that is brought into serious question in this book. Dr Miller argues that the Pastorals reflect a compositional history that was commonplace throughout the ancient Near East. He takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour of biblical and extra-biblical sources, examining their literary histories, and arguing that the Pastorals are composite documents, not unlike many Jewish and early Christian works.

Paul's influence on the history of Christian life and theology is as profound as it is pervasive. A brief survey of almost twenty centuries of Christian thought and practice will confirm the enduring importance of Paul for the life of the church in the Roman and Protestant traditions of the West as well as the Orthodox traditions of the East. Even as Christianity, at the dawn of its third millennium, has become increasingly global and traditions have come to develop and intersect in new and complex ways, Paul's place in the story of Christianity remains deeply rooted in the church's theology, worship, and pastoral life. In both past and present, Paul's influence on the Christian church can hardly be overestimated. Among the many intriguing issues generated by the historical Paul, his New Testament letters, and early church history is the question, what happened to Paul after Paul? Whether we think in terms of the reception of Paul's theology, or the ongoing legacy of Paul, or early Christian reinterpretation of his letters, the questions persist: what did the early church do with Paul's memory? How did it reshape his theology? And what role did his letters come to play in the life of the church? The focus of the present discussion is in the early decades and centuries of Christianity, a time when the memory and legacy of Paul came to serve varied and often competing interests in the emerging church. It was a time when Paul's reputation and importance to the church were being reinforced and when his epistles were gaining the authority that would ensure their place in the sacred library of Christianity. It was also the time when the Jesus movement forged itself into Christianity, a process in which Paul played a pivotal role and eventually also became an object of revision and transformation himself. What is virtually indisputable in this process is that Paul, during his lifetime and after, played a critical role in making Christianity what it was to become.

The so-called “New Perspective on Paul” has become a provocative way of understanding Judaism as a pattern of religion characterized by “covenantal nomism,” which stands in contrast to the traditional, Lutheran position that argues that the Judaism against which Paul responded was “legalistic.” This “new perspective” of first-century Judaism has remarkably changed the landscape of Pauline studies, but it has done so in relative isolation from the Pastoral Epistles, which are considered by most critical scholarship to be pseudonymous. Because of this lack of interaction with the Pastoral Epistles this study seeks to test the hermeneutic of the New Perspective on Paul from a canonical perspective. This study is not a polemic against the New Perspective on Paul, but an attempt to test its hermeneutic within the Pastoral Epistles. Four basic tenets of the New Perspective on Paul, taken from the writings of E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, and James D. G. Dunn, are identified and utilized to choose the passages in the Pastoral Epistles to be studied to test the New Perspective’s hermeneutic outside “undisputed” Paul. The four tenets are as follows: Justification/Salvation, Law and Works, Paul’s View of Judaism, and the Opponents. Based on these tenets, the passages considered are 1 Tim 1:6–16; 2:3–7; 2 Tim 1:3, 8–12; and Titus 3:3–7.

An overview of recent trends in scholarship on the Pastoral Epistles.

For over one hundred years, the International Critical Commentary series has held a special place among works on the Bible. It has sought to bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis — linguistic and textual no less than archaeological, historical, literary and theological—with a level of comprehension and quality of scholarship unmatched by any other series. No attempt has been made to secure a uniform theological or critical approach to the biblical text: contributors have been invited for their scholarly distinction, not for their adherence to any one school of thought. The first paperback editions to be published cover the heart of the New Testament, providing a wealth of information and research in accessible and attractive format.

How does the Holy Spirit guide the Christian community in its custodianship and interpretation of Scripture? How does the fact that the Spirit is characterized by koinonia impact upon this task? In light of this, do we read Scripture with too much of an individualistic mindset? In this new book, Dr Trevor Reynolds addresses these questions, seeking answers primarily from within Scripture itself. He explores in depth what Jesus and the New Testament community taught concerning the interpretive role of the Holy Spirit. How did they interpret Scripture, with the help of the Spirit? He highlights their corporate/Spirit-led hermeneutic, with its challenge to our individualistic approaches. The New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament in a way that revealed communal methods of interpretation. These were informed by Jewish pneumatic and corporate solidarity notions, as reshaped by Jesus’ own Spirit-given example and legacy. In this book, New Testament extracts are discussed which contain either specific examples of how Old Testament Scripture is interpreted by members of the New Testament community, with the Spirit’s help, or speak of the Spirit’s work of interpretation in a more general way. Trevor Reynolds seeks to uncover their implications for biblical hermeneutics, as well as for the doctrine, use and custodianship of Scripture in the life and witness of the church today. The book concludes by pointing to the wide-ranging implications that reading Scripture in the fellowship of the Spirit poses for today’s church.

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.

Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians is the first of three volumes extending Ben Witherington's innovative socio-rhetorical analysis of New Testament books to the latter-Pauline and non-Pauline corpora. A second volume will continue the focus on letters and homilies for Hellenized Christians (1-2 Peter), while a third will focus on letters and homilies for Jewish Christians (Hebrews, James and Jude). By dividing the volumes according to the socio-religious contexts for which they were written, Witherington sheds fresh light on the documents, their provenance, character and importance. Throughout, Witherington shows his thorough knowledge of recent literature on these texts and focuses his attention on the unique insights brought about through socio-rhetorical analysis that either reinforces or corrects those gleaned from other approaches. Strikingly, based on his rhetorical analysis of the Pastorals, he makes the case for Luke as Paul's amanuensis for these letters. He also makes a strenuous argument against New Testament pseudepigrapha. "Bridging the Horizons" sections point to the relevance of the text for believers today, making this volume of special value to pastors and general readers as well as students and scholars.