Category: Commentary

Veit-Engelmann, Die Briefe an Timotheus und Titus: Die Pastoralbriefe

A new commentary:

Michaela Veit-Engelmann. Die Briefe an Timotheus und Titus: Die Pastoralbriefe. Die Botschaft des Neuen Testaments. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022.

Veit-Engelmann has a monograph on the Pastorals to her credit, the published version of her doctoral thesis completed under the guidance of Jens Herzer, which informs her commentary work: Michaela Engelmann, Unzertrennliche Drillinge? Motivsemantische Untersuchungen zum literarischen Verhältnis der Pastoralbriefe. BZNW 192. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012.

Veit-Engelmann’s BNT volume (see publisher’s page, with sample content) proceeds on the understanding that the three Pastoral Epistles are pseudepigraphical letters written independently by three different authors to mediate the Pauline legacy in three distinct situations: “Zielt der Titusbrief nach Kreta in eine Debatte mit jüdischen Gegnern, geriert sich der 2. Timotheusbrief als Dokument eines innerpaulinischen Schuldiskurses im kleinasiatischen Raum. Das jüngste der drei Schreiben ist der 1. Timotheusbrief; er kennt die beiden anderen Texte und spitzt ihre Inhalte für seinen antignostischen Kampf zu.”

The contents are given below. Note at the close of the volume the 25 pages of discussion of thematic emphases in the letters, as well as the various excursuses throughout the commentary.

Padilla, The Pastoral Epistles (TNTC)

The well-known TNTC series — Tyndale New Testament Commentaries — is releasing a new commentary on the Pastoral Epistles by Osvaldo Padilla.

The new volume replaces a former treatment of the letters by Donald Guthrie (1916–1992), who mounted a robust defense of Pauline authorship in his 1957 TNTC volume (2nd ed., 1990), one of the first in the series. Guthrie was not a prolific author of Pastorals literature, but well-known for what he did write in that vein. Pertinent works included The Pastorals and the Mind of Paul (London: Tyndale, 1955); “The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudepigrapha in New Testament Criticism,” Vox Evangelica 1 (1962): 43–59; and his treatment of the letters in his well-known New Testament Introduction, published and revised in various editions from the 1960s to the final 4th edition in 1990. He also contributed articles on the Pastorals to the New Bible Dictionary. His New Testament Theology thoroughly incorporates the Pastorals as Pauline, but is structured such that there is little in the way of distinct treatment of the letters.

I will formally review Padilla’s volume in the future, but will simply note here its release. Osvaldo Padilla is professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School. The Pastoral Epistles is “the first time I have written in the ‘genre’ of the commentary” (ix), although he has published The Acts of the Apostles: Interpretation, History and Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016). From my initial glance through the volume, he writes as a defender of the letters’ authenticity, as would be expected in the TNTC series (1–16), and as an egalitarian (cf. 97–98). Highlighting these points is not meant to minimize other aspects of the volume, simply to to note two areas that are often of significant interest in a Pastorals commentary. I am grateful to IVP for providing a review copy.

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