2 Timothy (Bible)

2 Timothy or the Second Epistle of the Apostle Paul to Timothy is one of the books of the New Testament. It is a letter (epistle), sometimes referred to as one of the Pastoral Epistles, most commonly considered to have been written by the apostle Paul to his pupil Timothy. It is the last epistle (chronologically) that Paul wrote.

The letter contains instructions from the apostle to Timothy about maintaining true Christian doctrine and how to deal with false teachers at Ephesus, where Timothy was serving the Christian community. Apart from this doctrinal content, the letter is also full of personal remarks about Paul's life and provides a number of comments about Timothy's background and his relationship with Paul. At the time of writing, Paul was a prisoner in Rome and he expected to be executed soon. He instructs Timothy to come to Rome.

Authorship and Date

Until about AD 1800, nobody seriously doubted either authorship or date of this letter. The early Church Father Irenaeus and the Canon Muratori, both from the late second century, ascribe the letter to Paul. Only Marcion, excommunicated in AD 144 as a heretic, rejected it as spurious. The traditional date for the letter is sometime between AD 64 and 68.

However, since the nineteenth century, many scholars have questioned the authenticity of 2 Timothy. In 1807, Friedrich Schleiermacher rejected 1 Timothy as inauthentic, which had implications for 2 Timothy. Among the most influential critiques of the standard (canonical) view of the book's authorship and date was The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles by Percy Neale Harrison (1921).

Arguments against the book's authenticity as a Pauline letter rest on the following four points:

1. Historical inaccuracies. Critics have pointed out that there are apparent contradictions between the descriptions of Paul's journeys in 1 and 2 Timothy on the one hand and those in Acts.
2. Literary reasons. The style of 2 Timothy is said to differ in important points from other letters by Paul.
3. Theology. Some critics have doubted the purity of the letter's theology in comparison with earlier writings by the apostle, while others believe the references to the false teachings which can be found in all the Pastoral Epistles refer to a much later heresy known as Gnosticism.
4. Ecclesiastical reasons. Some believe that the detailed references in 2 Timothy to church offices presuppose a much larger and more developed church hierarchy which would be incompatible with the embryonic church of Paul's days.

More conservative Bible scholars remain unconvinced by these objections and have countered with reasonable explanations for any of the supposed problems that have been raised. The historical problems are easily reconciled if a second Pauline imprisonment is supposed, which is not too far-fetched in view of the fact that Luke's description in Acts terminates before the account of Paul's first imprisonment is finished. The literary objections have been rejected as subjective and unprovable; the use of different vocabulary is no proof against identical authorship. The theological and ecclesiastical objections are rejected as reading too much into some of Paul's comments and defenders of the traditional authorship and date see no contradiction in this letter with any other of Paul's writings. For an overview of the arguments surrounding this controversy see Guthrie The Pastoral Epistles (1957; 1990).

References

For Further Reading

• Guthrie, Donald. The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957. 228 pp. ISBN 0802814131; ISBN 9780802814135; 2nd ed. (revised) 1990, by Leon Morris (ed.). 240 pp. ISBN 0802804829; ISBN 9780802804822.
• Hanson, Anthony Tyrrell. The Pastoral Epistles. New Century Bible Commentary. London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott/ Grand Rapids: W. Eerdmans, 1982.
• Harrison, Percy Neale. The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921. [Full-text PDF
• Metzger, Bruce M. "A Reconsideration of Certain Arguments against the Pauline Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles." In: Expository Times 70 (1958-59), pp. 91-94.
• Moule, Handley G.C. The Second Epistle to Timothy. The Devotional Commentary series. Religious Tract Society, 1905.
• Nute, Alan G. "The Pastoral Letters." In: F.F. Bruce et al. (eds.) New International Bible Commentary, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1979, pp. 1472-1497.
• Stott, John R.W. The Message of 2 Timothy. Leicester (UK): Inter-Varsity Press, 1973.