The name customarily used to refer to 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. The idea of a "pastoral rule" was already nascent in the 13th Cent when Thomas Aquinas spoke of such a "pastoral rule, which the apostle [Paul] committed to Timothy" (First Epistle to Timothy). The term itself, however, did not appear until much later, and is usually attributed to the German scholar Paul Anton (1661-1730) who used it to refer collectively to the three letters in his writings and lectures. While they do not represent a comprehensive "manual of pastoral theology," they are, nonetheless, appropriate in that, "[a]mong other things, they provide instructions for pastoral oversight of congregations, and they speak of the qualities and duties of church leaders" (Arland J. Hultgren) .
The pastoral letters are difficult to place chronologically in Paul's career as a missionary as far as the latter may be reconstructed from Paul's other letters and the accounts of Acts. The difficulties concerning these three letters for scholars continue with the fact that these letters are very different in style and vocabulary from many of the other letters that are thought to be genuinely Pauline. No one solution to all these questions have satisfied every scholar. Evangelicals, generally, believe that they are Pauline, and account for the differences from the circumstances and purposes for which they were written. Overall, they are seen as the works from the later years of Paul's ministry when, instead of writing to a younger church in which serious theological issues had to be clarified, Paul was here writing to help the church deal with the institutional needs of the maturing and growing churches that had been established. This would place the letters most likely in the 60s, in the years just before Paul's death.
Read the entry in
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia M
Further Reading & Resources:
Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles and the Mind of Paul. The Tyndale New Testament Lecture, 1955. London: The Tyndale Press, 1956. Pbk. pp.44.
Pdf N 6-7 Open on Phone
©ALBERITH
070322lch