Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/371

 PASTORAL EPISTLES 349 other hand, it appears from the epistles themselves that the positions of Timothy and Titus were temporary rather than permanent, and that they were special delegates rather than ordinary officers (1 Tim. iii. 14, 15; iv. 13; Tit. iii. 12). For the ordinary officers the qualifications are almost all moral, and they are so similar to each other, j and to the moral qualifications of all Christians, as to imply that the sharp distinctions of later times between one grade of office and another, and between the officers and the other members of the communities, were not yet developed (1 Tim. iii. 2-12; Tit. i. 6-9, possibly also ii. 2-6). The most probable solution of the difficulties which present themselves in relation to the apparent interchange of the names &quot; bishop &quot; and &quot; elder,&quot; and to the apparent double use of the word &quot; elder,&quot; sometimes as a title and sometimes as a designation of age, is that in these epistles there is an imperfect amalgamation of two forms of organization, Jewish and Gentile : in the former the dis tinction between the governing and the governed classes was mainly that of age, and the functions of the govern ing class were mainly those of discipline ; in the latter the distinction was mainly that of functions, and the functions were mainly those of administration. (1) The distinction between elder and younger appears in regard to both men and women (1 Tim. v. 1,2; Tit. ii. 2-6). Out of the elder men some appear to have been chosen or appointed to preside (ol Trpoeo-rcoTf s, 1 Tim. v. 17; a cognate form of the designation is found in Rom. xii. 8, 1 Thess. v. 12, and constitutes almost the only link of connexion between the organization of these and that of the other Pauline epistles), and to have constituted a collective body or &quot;presbytery&quot; (1 Tim. iv. 14, the word was in use to designate the Jewish councils of elders, for which the more common word was yepovcna). Their func tions, like those of the corresponding officers in the Jewish communities, were probably for the most part disciplinary; to these some of them added the function of teaching (1 Tim. v. 17). The elder women also were charged with disciplinary functions ; they had to &quot; train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober-minded &quot; (Tit. ii. 3, 4). Out of such of them as were widows some were specially entered on the roll of church-officers (Ko.TaA.oyos), and formed a class which, though it did not long survive the growth of monasticism, is mentioned in almost all early documents which refer to ecclesiastical order (see Smith and Cheetham, Diet, of Chris. Antiq., s.v, &quot;Widows&quot;). Whether the younger men and women, or a selected number of them had, as such, corresponding duties is not clear, but an inference in favour of the supposition may be drawn from a comparison of 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, 13, Acts v. 6, 10. (2) Side by side with this, and sometimes, but not always, blended with it, was the organization which was probably adopted from the contemporary civil societies, especially those in which, as in the Christian communities, there were funds to be administered ; the presiding elders, or some of them, were also &quot;bishops&quot; or administrators, and some of the younger men were &quot;deacons&quot; or servants. A bishop was &quot;God s steward &quot; (Tit. i. 7) ; a deacon was the active helper of the bishops in both administration and discipline. 2. Language. These epistles are distinguished from the other Pauline epistles by many peculiarities of language, of which only a few can be mentioned here. (1) In 1 Timothy there are seventy-four words which are not elsewhere in the New Testament ; in 2 Timothy there are forty-six such words, and in Titus forty-eight. In the three epistles taken together there are one hundred and thirty-three words which are not found in the other Pauline epistles, though they are found elsewhere in the New Testament; and many of the most marked and frequent expressions of St Paul are absent. (2) There is a tendency which is not found elsewhere in the Pauline epistles to form unusual compounds, e.g., Xoyo)u.a^ftv, lTfpo8i8a.crKa.XfLV, v^/rjXo^povftv, auTOKard/cpiTOS. (3) Words are used for which the other Pauline epistles invariably substitute a different, though nearly synonymous, word ; e.g., Seo-TroTT^s is used for Kvpios, KTI OT/O. for /crt crts. (4) The particles, which are even better tests of identity of style than nouns and verbs, are different : the Pauline yap is rare ; apa, apa ovv, en, yiAT^Trajs, TraXiv, axnrep, are absent. (5) &quot; In the other Pauline epistles the fulness of the apostle s thought struggles with the expression, and causes peculiar difficulties in exposition. The thoughts slide into one another, and are so intertwined in many forms that not seldom the new thought begins before a correct expression has been given to the thought that preceded. Of this confusion there is no example in the Pastoral Epistles&quot; (Huther, Introduction,^.^, tr., p. 10). A complete account of the linguistic peculiarities of these epistles will be found in Holtzmann, pp. 84-117. 3. Historical Difficulties. The historical difficulties to which these epistles give rise are of two kinds: (1) that of finding a place for them in any period of the recorded life of St Paul, and (2) that of determining the state of theo logical opinion to which they are relative. (1) In regard to the first kind of difficulties, each of the three epistles has its own problems. The data of the historical position of 1 Timothy appear to be (a) that St Paul had gone into Macedonia, (b) that he had left Timothy at Ephesus (i. 3). The chief hypotheses which have been framed to satisfy the con ditions which these data imply are the following. (1) The majority of older writers suppose that St Paul left Timothy at Ephesus when he went into Macedonia after the dmeute in the theatre (Acts xx. 1). The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis are that Timothy had been sent into Macedonia (Acts xix. 22), and probably at the same time to Corinth (1 Cor. iv. 17), that he had not returned when St Paul himself reached Macedonia, inas much as St Paul waited for him there (1 Cor. xvi. 11), that the two were together in Macedonia Avhen 2 Corin thians was written (2 Cor. i. 1), and that they returned together to Asia Minor (Acts xx. 4). Some of these difficulties have been met by the conjecture that Timothy never reached Corinth, but returned to St Paul at Ephesus and rejoined him in Macedonia ; but the conjecture implies that Timothy disobeyed the apostle s exhortation to tarry at Ephesus almost as soon as he had received it, and that the apostle, so far from &quot;hoping to come unto him shortly&quot; (1 Tim. iii. 14), was in reality intending to go to Jerusalem and to Rome (Acts xix. 21), not even calling at Ephesus on his way (Acts xx. 17). (2) It has been supposed that there was an unrecorded journey of St Paul into Macedonia during his long stay in Ephesus (Acts xix. 1-20 ; so Mosheim, Schrader, Wieseler, and Reuss, the last of whom makes the journey extend to Crete and Illyricum). There is little difficulty in the supposition of such a journey into Macedonia, but there is great difficulty in supposing that the epistle was written in the course of it, first, because its language is not compatible with the idea that Timothy was merely left in temporary charge during a short absence of the apostle, and, secondly, because the epistle implies the existence of an organized community which had existed long enough to have had errors growing up in it (whereas in Acts xx. 29-30 the coming of heretical teachers is regarded as still future), and in which it was possible that a bishop should be &quot;not a novice&quot; (1 Tim. iii. 6). (3) It has been sup posed that St Paul wrote the epistle during his imprison ment at Caesarea or at Jerusalem ; but this does not