Reggie Kidd, a leading scholar on the Pastorals, has reflected on what the letter to Titus can say to us in an election year.
You can also find a three part lecture series of his on the topic, “How Pauline are the Pastoral Epistles?” here.
(HT: James Grant)
Apart from PastoralEpistles.com’s own Perry Stepp, who has a volume on the Pastoral Epistles coming out in Smith & Helwys’ Reading the New Testament series, Baker/Brazos has the following commentaries in queue for Fall 2008 and "sometime in 2009":
Anyone know of any other publishers releasing commentaries on the Pastorals?
Also, if you’re a publisher and would like your Pastoral Epistles commentary (or any other related books) reviewed on this site, please contact us for information.
The Between Two Worlds blog has an interview with Andreas Köstenberger about $esv(1Ti 2.12). Much of it has to do with Köstenberger’s book, $amz(080102904X Women in the Church).
Saint Augustine Press has published a new English translation of Thomas Aquinas’ Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (pb., 222 pp). The commentaries are actually lecture notes which are briefer than typical commentaries. However, this is a significant source for those involved in the academic study of these letters, precisely because so many of his concerns and our concerns are different. This is C. S. Lewis’ point in urging us to read old books- to judge the balance of our concerns by comparison with the thoughts of those in previous days.
So far I have dipped into various places and have been intrigued. Aquinas’ comments on 1 Timothy 2 will shock many modern readers. He seems to have no problem with bishops being married in his discussion of 1Timothy 3. One value of these notes is all the quotes from the OT, Apocrypha, and Greek philosophers which Aquinas supplies. This could be a real help to those seeking background parallels.
Yep, back on this horse again (see here). The pastor of the church I attend has begun a series on First Timothy. This week we were on 1Ti 1.3-9, but during the sermon I drifted a bit (not much, don’t worry) to think about the intended recipient.
Many people say that First Timothy was written not really to Timothy, but primarily to the church in Ephesus. That is, there is so much in the letter that likely would’ve been elementary to Timothy (who had been Paul’s right-hand man for years by this point) the only reason for it being in there is for Paul to communicate to the church at Ephesus what he had in store for them — what Timothy was going to do — so that Timothy would then be in the clear, authority-wise, to go ahead and do it. (Or something like that)
But, if you look at the overall structure of the grammar in the letter, particularly person/number quality of verbs, it really does sound like it was written to Timothy and not to a group that included Timothy as leader.
In church today, I realized (duh) that communication today is much different than communication in the early Christian era. I agree that Timothy likely knew what his job was, and what Paul expected him to do. But with Paul gone, and for all intents and purposes out of reliable, regular contact; what better form for Timothy to have with him then a letter that clearly, plainly spelled out what Timothy was to do in order to get the Ephesian church back in line?
While Timothy knew the task, what would he do when he was challenged, say, six months into the task, by the false-doctrine purveyors he was attempting to extricate from the church? He could re-consult the letter, and say, "No, Paul really does want me to do this. It really is important. It really is tough. But he’s clear, this is what I’m to do."
This has much in common with P.Tebt.703 (and also here), which was a letter written from a superior to his lieutenant. In simple language it laid out clearly and plainly the expectations the superior has for his underling. The underling surely knew what he was supposed to do, but (as with First Timothy) the letter could also be consulted in the midst of the task to clarify or recall those long-since-forgotten (or at least hazily-remembered) instructions of the superior. After all, he couldn’t send an email, make a phone call, or do a google search to remind himself.
I’m not saying this is exactly the sort of purpose for which First Timothy was written. But it does help me (at this point, anyway) make more sense of the grammar and tone of the letter which seems to say so many things that would be so obvious to Timothy, at least at the time of writing. I’ll have to re-check some commentaries (particularly Witherington and Towner, which as I recall reference P.Tebt.703) to recall once again how the bring P.Tebt.703 into the discussion.
On a more popular level, I notice that the Gospel Coalition conference next Spring will focus on an exposition of 2 Timothy. The conference theme is “Entrusted with the Gospel: Living the Vision of Second Timothy.” You can follow the link to see the speakers and which text each one will have. The sessions work progressively through the letter.
This sounds like a good conference and it is encouraging to see such a setting mining the riches of this wonderful letter.
HT: James Grant
The manuscript for my commentary, Reading Paul’s Letters to Individuals: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Letters to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy, is officially in the mail to Smyth and Helwys.
S&H expects the commentary to be available in October, just in time for SBL. Maybe I’ll need to go to Boston after all.
This is the commentary that Glenn Hinson was supposed to write, then Marty Soards. Both ended up not filling the contract. Then Hulitt Gloer wrote a manuscript, but was not able to finish it for health reasons.
So in January–you may recall–the editor of the series, Charles Talbert (who was my doctorfather at Baylor) asked if I could finish Gloer’s manuscript. And I’ve spent the last few months doing so.
I’d originally hoped to have 300 – 325 double spaced pages, and ended up with 425: OUCH! Did I type all that stuff?
What’s innovative or fresh about the commentary? Two things, off the top of my head:
First, it is a scholarly commentary, interacting extensively with primary sources (Philo and Josephus, especially) and cutting-edge secondary sources (e.g., Bruce Winter’s work on the new Roman woman), BUT the exposition is aimed at preachers and teachers. This would be the first commentary I would recommend for people who want to preach these letters.
Second, this is the first commentary on the Pastorals to take into account the role that succession plays in these letters.
Nick Norelli responds to a query by someone named Brian about translation of $esv(2Ti 2.15).
Brian’s query asks:
Nick translates thusly: "Make every effort to present yourself to God [as] an approved worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." See his post for further explanation.
I did a translation of the Pastoral Epistles four or five years ago. My translation of 2Ti 2.15 (actually, 2.14-18) is:
14 Remind them of these things, warning them before God not to fight about words, which is nothing useful and serves to ruin those who hear. 15 Take pains to present yourself approved of God, an unashamed worker, guiding the word of truth along a straight path. 16 But shun frivolous chatter and empty talk. These will lead to further ungodliness 17 and their word will spread like gangrene. Of whom are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 who concerning the truth have strayed, saying the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some.
On Brian’s questions, I actually have notes online. Here are my notes on verbs, nouns and adjectives in 2Ti 2.15. Note that I’ve revisited portions of the translation since I wrote the notes (one of the reasons for writing the notes).
I am honored to be participating in a new book from B&H Academic entitled Entrusted with the Gospel: Paul’s Theology in the Pastoral Epistles. It will be a collection of essays focusing on specific aspects of the Pastorals written by scholars who have been working on these letters for some time. Contributors include Howard Marshall, Andreas Kostenberger, and Terry Wilder. Work is just beginning but I thought readers of this blog would be interested to know of the project.
When Westcott & Hort published their edition of the Greek New Testament in 1881, they also released (in $amz(159244198X a second volume)) a 300+ page Introduction discussing their text-critical principles (the volume also has 200+ pages of appendix, equaling 600+ pages of goodness). That introduction also discusses in some detail the typesetting of the edition in Section E, “Punctuation, Divisions of text, and Titles of books” (§§417-423, pp. 318-322).
[[NB: I’ve discussed the introduction on my other blog, ricoblog. The Intro/Appendix is available from Google Books if you’d like to check it out.]]
In the introduction (§419, p. 319) they discuss how they encode what is essentially a discourse-level hierarchy (sentence level and above) into the text using paragraph formatting, casing, and spacing.
Have you ever wondered why (if using a printed WH or an electronic edition with proper casing/punctuation) some paragraphs/sections begin with words in ALLCAPS; why sometimes there is vertical space before a new paragraph, and most of all why there are these long spaces (over a centimeter!) within paragraphs? And why sometimes sentences start with a capitalized letter, and others do not?
Well, you’ve stumbled onto WH’s typography/casing/spacing based outline of the text without knowing it. Here are the basics:
Major Section: vertical white space above, headed by word in CAPS
Section: vertical white space above, no initial CAP WORD
Paragraph: Newline with indentation
subparagraph: full stop followed by large amount of horizontal whitespace
UC-initial sentence: “Groups of sentences introduced by a capital bear the same relation to subparagraphs as subparagraphs to paragraphs”
lc-initial sentence: When a lower-case initial word starts a sentence. lowest punctuated unit; grammar dictates structure within the sentence unit.
Following this, I’ve examined a printed edition of WH and distilled the outline to First Timothy, which is below. I’ve only gone through this once (and that was hasty) so there may very well be some errors. Also note that the hierarchy I’ve implied is based on containing references; WH’s typography/casing/spacing does not imply a strict heirarchy (see Matthew). Also, dialogue in Greek NT’s typically begins with a sentence-initial cap; I’ve yet to determine how that would mesh with the encoded structure, largely because no such dialogue exists in First Timothy. That said, here’s the outline. Notable is how $esv(1Ti 3.1a) is handled, and also $esv(1Ti 6.2b).
1.1-6.22: Major section headed by ΠΑΥΛΟΣ
1.1-2: Paragraph
1.1-2: UC-initial sentence
1.3-20: Paragraph
1.3-7: subparagraph, UC-initial (single sentence)
1.8-11: subparagraph, UC-initial (single sentence)
1.12-17: subparagraph
1.12-16: UC-initial sentence
1.17: UC-initial sentence
1.18-20: subparagraph, UC-initial (single sentence)
2.1-3.16: Paragraph
2.1-7: subparagraph, UC-initial
2.1-4: UC-initial sentence group
2.1-2: UC-initial sentence
2.3-4: lc-initial sentence
2.5-7: UC-initial sentence
2.8-3.1a: subparagraph, UC-initial
2.8: UC-initial sentence
2.9-10: UC-initial sentence
2.11-12: UC-initial sentence
2.13-3.1a: UC-initial sentence group
2.13-15: UC-initial sentence
3.1a: lc-initial sentence
3.1b-13: subparagraph, UC-initial
3.1b-7: UC-initial sentence group
3.1b: UC-initial sentence
3.2-6: lc-initial sentence
3.8-13: UC-initial sentence group
3.8: UC-initial sentence
3.9-11: lc-initial sentence
3.12-13: lc-initial sentence
3.14-16: subparagraph, UC-initial
3.14-16a: UC-initial sentence
3.16b: metrically arranged
4.1-10: Paragraph
4.1-5: subparagraph, UC-initial
4.1-5: UC-initial sentence group
4.1-3: UC-initial sentence
4.4-5: lc-initial sentence
4.6-10: subparagraph, UC-initial
4.6-10: UC-initial sentence group
4.6-7: UC-initial sentence
4.8: lc-initial sentence
4.9-10: lc-initial sentence
4.11-16: Paragraph
4.11-16: UC-initial sentence group
4.11-12: UC-initial sentence
4.13: lc-initial sentence
4.14: lc-initial sentence
4.14-16: lc-initial sentence
5.1-6.2: Paragraph
5.1-16: subparagraph, UC-initial
5.1-2: UC-initial sentence
5.3-8: UC-initial sentence
5.9-13: UC-initial sentence group
5.9-10: UC-initial sentence
5.11-13: lc-initial sentence
5.14-16: UC-initial sentence group
5.14-15: UC-initial sentence
5.16: lc-initial sentence
5.17-25: subparagraph, UC-initial
5.17-20: UC-initial sentence group
5.17-18: UC-initial sentence
5.19-20: lc-initial sentence
5.21: UC-initial sentence
5.22: UC-initial sentence
5.23: UC-initial sentence
5.24-25: UC-initial sentence
6.1-2a: subparagraph, UC-initial
6.1-2a: UC-initial sentence group
6.1: UC-initial sentence
6.2-2a: lc-initial sentence
6.2b-6.21a: Paragraph
6.2b-10: subparagraph, UC-initial
6.2b-10: UC-initial sentence group
6.2b-5: UC-initial sentence
6.6-8: lc-initial sentence
6.9-10: lc-initial sentence
6.11-16: subparagraph, UC-initial
6.11-16: UC-initial sentence group
6.11: UC-initial sentence
6.12: lc-initial sentence
6.13-16: lc-initial sentence
6.17-19: subparagraph, UC-initial
6.17-19: UC-initial sentence
6.20-21a: subparagraph, UC-initial
6.20-21a: UC-initial sentence
6.21b: Paragraph
6.21b: UC-initial sentence
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