Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Epistles to Timothy and Titus (The Pastorals)

Timothy and Titus, .—Under date June 12, 1913, the Biblical Commission gave the following answers to questions about these epistles: The tradition of the Church shows that they were written by the Apostle Paul himself and that they were always considered genuine and canonical. They were not made up from fragments of epistles or from lost Pauline epistles after St. Paul's time. The opinion on their genuineness has been in no way lessened by the difficulties advanced from the style and language of the author, from errors of the Gnostics, which are represented as current at the time, or from the state of ecclesiastical authority. They were written during the period between the liberation of the Apostle from his first imprisonment and his death, since both history and ecclesiastical tradition, the testimony of the Eastern and Western Fathers, the abrupt conclusion of the book of the Acts and the Pauline Epistles written at Rome, especially II Timothy, establish the truth of the opinion as to the two Roman imprisonments of the Apostle Paul.

Acta Apostolicæ Sedis (26 June, 1913); Rome (5 July, 1913).