_THE PERSONAL DETAILS A GUARANTEE OF GENUINENESS._
"Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas forsook me,
having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens
to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Take Mark,
and bring him with thee: for he is useful to me for ministering. But
Tychicus I sent to Ephesus. The cloke that I left at Troas with
Carpus, bring when thou comest, and the books, especially the
parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord
will render to him according to his works: of whom be thou ware
also; for he greatly withstood our words."--2 TIM. iv. 9-15.
"Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the house of Onesiphorus. Erastus
abode at Corinth: but Trophimus I left at Miletus sick. Do thy
diligence to come before winter. Eubulus saluteth thee, and Pudens,
and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren." vv. 19-21.
It would scarcely be exceeding the limits of legitimate hyperbole to say
that these two passages prove the authenticity and genuineness of the
Pastoral Epistles; that they are sufficient to show that these letters
are an authentic account of the matters of which they treat, and that
they are genuine letters of the Apostle Paul.
In the first of these expositions it was pointed out how improbable it
is that a portion of one of these letters should be genuine, and not the
remainder of it; or that one of the three should be genuine, and not
the other two; and _a fortiori_, that two of the three should be
genuine, and not the remaining one.
The passages before us are among those of which it has been truly said
that they "cling so closely to Paul that it is only by tearing the
letter to pieces that any part can be dissociated from that
Apostle."[97] The internal evidence is here too strong even for those
critics who deny the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles as a
whole. Thus Renan and Weisse are disposed to admit that we have here
embedded in the work of a later writer portions of a genuine letter of
the Apostle; while Ewald, Hausrath, and Pfleiderer accept not only these
verses, but the earlier passage about Phygelus, Hermogenes, and
Onesiphorus as genuine also. Similar views are advocated by Hitzig,
Krenkel, and Immer, of whom the two first admit that the Epistle to
Titus also contains genuine fragments. And quite recently (1882) we have
Lemme contending that only the central portion of 2 Timothy (ii. 11 to
iv. 5) is an interpolation.
These concessions amount to a concession of the whole case. It is
impossible to stop there. Either much more must be conceded or much
less. For, (1) we cannot without very strong evidence indeed accept so
improbable a supposition as that a Christian long after the Apostle's
death was in possession of letters written by him, of which no one else
knew anything, that he worked bits of these into writings of his own,
which he wished to pass off as Apostolic, and that he then destroyed the
genuine letters, or disposed of them in such a way that no one knew
that they had ever existed. Such a story is not absolutely impossible,
but it is so unlikely to be true, that to accept it without clear
evidence would be most uncritical. And there is not only no clear
evidence; there is no evidence at all. The hypothesis is pure
imagination. (2) The portions of this letter which are allowed by
adverse critics to be genuine are precisely those in which a forger
would be pretty sure to be caught tripping. They are full of personal
details, some of which admit of being tested, and all of which can be
criticized, as to whether they are natural and consistent or not. Would
a forger be likely to risk detection by venturing on such dangerous
ground? He would put into the letter those doctrines for which he wished
to appear to have St. Paul's authority; and, if he added anything else,
he would take care not to go beyond vague generalities, too indefinite
to be caught in the meshes of criticism. But the writer of this letter
has done the reverse of all this. He has given an abundance of personal
detail, such as can be found in only one other place in the New
Testament, and that in the concluding portion of the Epistle to the
Romans, one of the indisputable writings of St. Paul.
And he has not been caught tripping. Hostile writers have subjected
these details to the most searching criticism; and the result, as we
have seen, is that many of them are constrained to admit that these
portions of the letter are genuine productions of the Apostle. That is,
those portions of the Epistle which can be subjected to a severe test,
are allowed to be by St. Paul, because they stand the test; while those
which do not admit of being thus tested are rejected, not because there
is any proof of their being spurious, but because critics think that
the style is not like the Apostle's. Would they not be the first to
deride others for such an opinion? Supposing that these details had
contained absurdities or contradictions, which _could_ not have been
written by St. Paul, would they not have maintained, and reasonably
maintained, that it was monstrous to surrender as spurious those
sections of the letter which had been tested and found wanting, and to
defend as genuine the other sections, which did not admit of being
tested?
Let us look at the details a little more closely. Besides St. Paul and
Timothy, twenty-three Christians of the Apostolic age are mentioned in
this short letter. A considerable number of these are persons of whom we
read in the Acts or in St. Paul's other letters; but the majority are
new names, and in most of these cases we know nothing about the bearers
of the names beyond what is told us here. Would a forger have given us
this mixture of known and unknown? If he ventured upon names at all,
would he not either have given us imaginary persons, whose names and
actions could not be checked by existing records, or else have kept
closely to the records, so that the checking might tell in his favour?
He has done neither. The new names do not look like those of imaginary
persons, and the mention of known persons is by no means a mere
reproduction of what is said of them elsewhere.
"Demas forsook me, having loved this present world.... Take Mark and
bring him with thee: for he is useful to me for ministering." A forger
with the Acts and the Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon before him
would have made Mark forsake Paul, and Demas be commended as useful to
him; for in the Acts (xv. 38) Paul had to condemn Mark for slackness,
and in the Epistles to the Colossians (iv. 14) and to Philemon (24)
Demas with Luke is waiting on the Apostle in his imprisonment. And yet
how natural that the Apostle's condemnation should rouse Mark to greater
earnestness, and that the Apostle should recognize that earnestness in
this farewell letter? And how consistent with human frailty also that
Demas should have courage enough to stand by St. Paul during his first
Roman imprisonment, and yet should quail before the greater risks of the
second! That the Apostle's complaint respecting him means more than
this, is unlikely. Yet some have exaggerated it into a charge of heresy,
or even utter apostasy. We are simply to understand that Demas preferred
comfort and security away from Rome to the hardship and danger of a
Roman prison; and therefore went to Thessalonica. Why he selected that
town we are not told, but there being a Christian community there would
be one reason.
"Titus to Dalmatia." Why should a forger send Titus to Dalmatia? The
Pastoral Epistles, whether a forgery or not, are all by one hand, and
seem to have been written within a short time of one another. Would not
a forger have sent Titus either to Crete (Tit. i. 5), or to Nicopolis
(Tit. iii. 12)? But if Titus went to Nicopolis, and failed to find Paul
there, owing to his having been meanwhile arrested, what more probable
than that he should go on into Dalmatia? The forger, if he had thought
of this, would have called attention to it, to ensure that his ingenuity
was not overlooked.
"But Tychicus I sent to Ephesus." The meaning of the "but" is not quite
clear. Perhaps the most probable supposition is that it indicates the
reason why the Apostle needs a useful person like Mark. "I had such a
person in Tychicus; but he is gone on a mission for me to Ephesus." How
natural all this is! And what could induce a forger to put it in? We are
told in the Acts that Tychicus belonged to the Roman province of Asia
(xx. 4), and that he was with St. Paul at the close of his third
missionary journey about nine years before the writing of this letter to
Timothy. Three or four years later we find Tychicus once more with St.
Paul during the first Roman imprisonment; and he is sent with Onesimus
as the bearer of the Epistle to the Colossians (iv. 7) and to the
Ephesians (vi. 21). And we learn from the sentence before us, as well as
from Titus iii. 12, that he still enjoys the confidence of the Apostle,
for he is sent on missions for him to Crete and to Ephesus. All these
separate notices of him hang together consistently representing him as
"the beloved brother," and also as a "faithful minister and
fellow-servant in the Lord," whom St. Paul was accustomed to entrust
with special commissions. If the mission to Ephesus mentioned here is a
mere copy of the other missions, would not a forger have taken some
pains to ensure that the similarity between his fiction and previous
facts should be observed?
"The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when thou comest, and
the books, especially the parchments." Here the arguments against the
probability of forgery reach a climax; and this verse should be
remembered side by side with "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a
little wine for thy stomach's sake" in the First Epistle (v. 23). What
writer of a fictitious letter would ever have dreamed of inserting
either passage? To an unbiassed mind they go a long way towards
producing the impression that we are dealing with real letters and not
with inventions. And this argument holds good equally well, whatever
meaning we give to the word (=phelonê=) which is rendered "cloke." It
probably means a cloke, and is a Greek form of the Latin _penula_. It
appears to have been a circular garment without sleeves, but with a hole
in the middle for the head. Hence some persons have made the astounding
suggestion that it was a eucharistic vestment analogous to a chasuble,
and have supposed that the Apostle is here asking, not for warm clothing
"before winter," but for a sacerdotal dress for ritualistic purposes.
But since Chrysostom's day there has been a more credible suggestion
that the word means a bag or case for books. If so, would the Apostle
have mentioned both the book-bag and the books, and would he have put
the bag before the books? He might naturally have written, "Bring the
book-bag,"--of course with the books in it; or, "Bring the books and the
bag also." But it seems a strange way of putting the request to say,
"The book-bag that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when thou comest;
the books also, especially the parchments," as if the bag were the chief
thing that he thought about. It seems better to abide by the old
rendering "cloke;" and, if this is correct, then it fits in well with
"Do thy diligence to come _before winter_." Yet the writer in no way
draws our attention to the connexion between the need of the thick cloke
and the approach of winter: and the writer of a real letter would have
no need to do so. But would a forger have left the connexion to
chance?[98]
Whether Alexander the coppersmith is the person of that name who was put
forward by the Jews in the riot raised by Demetrius (Acts xix. 33), is
not more than a possibility. The name Alexander was exceedingly common;
and we are not told that the Jew in the riot at Ephesus was a smith, or
that Alexander the smith was a Jew. In what way the coppersmith "showed
much ill-treatment" to the Apostle, we are not told. As St. Paul goes on
immediately afterwards to speak of his "first defence," it seems
reasonable to conjecture that Alexander had seriously injured the
Apostle's cause in some way. But this is pure conjecture; and the
ill-treatment may refer to general persecution of St. Paul and
opposition to his teaching. On the whole the latter hypothesis appears
to be safer.
The reading, "The Lord _will_ render to him" (=apodôsei=), is shown by
an overwhelming balance of evidence to be preferable to "The Lord reward
him (=apodôê=) according to his works." There is no malediction. Just as
in ver. 8 the Apostle expresses his conviction that the Lord will render
(=apodôsei=) a crown of righteousness to all those who love His
appearing, so here he expresses a conviction that He will render a just
recompense to all those who oppose the work of His kingdom. What follows
in the next verse, "may it not be laid to their account," seems to show
that the Apostle is in no cursing mood. He writes in sorrow rather than
in anger. It is necessary to put Timothy on his guard against a
dangerous person; but he leaves the requital of the evil deeds to God.
"Salute Prisca and Aquila." A forger with the Apostle's indisputable
writings before him, would hardly have inserted this; for he would have
concluded from Rom. xvi. 3, 4, that these two well-known helpers of St.
Paul were in Rome at this very time. Aquila was a Jew of Pontus who had
migrated from Pontus to Rome, but had had to leave the capital again
when Claudius expelled the Jews from the city (Acts xviii. 2). He and
his wife Prisca or Priscilla then settled in Corinth, where St. Paul
took up his abode with them, because they were Jews and tent-makers,
like himself. And in their workshop the foundations of the Corinthian
Church were laid. Thenceforward they became his helpers in preaching the
Gospel, and went with him to Ephesus, where they helped forward the
conversion of the eloquent Alexandrian Jew Apollos. After much service
to the Church they returned once more to Rome, and were there when St.
Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans. Either the persecution under Nero,
or possibly missionary enterprise, induced them once more to leave Rome
and return to Asia. The Apostle naturally puts such faithful friends,
"who for his life laid down their necks" (Rom. xvi. 3), in the very
first place in sending his personal greetings; and they are equally
naturally coupled with the household of Onesiphorus, who had done
similar service in courageously visiting St. Paul in his imprisonment
(ver. 16). The double mention of "the _household_ of Onesiphorus" (not
of Onesiphorus himself) has been commented upon in a former exposition
(see No. XXVIII.).
Of the statements, "Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus I left at
Miletus sick," no more need be said than to point out how lifelike and
natural they are in a real letter from one friend to another who knows
the persons mentioned; how unlikely they are to have occurred to a
writer who was inventing a letter in order to advocate his own doctrinal
views. That Trophimus is the same person as the Ephesian, who with
Tychicus accompanied St. Paul on his third missionary journey (Acts xx.
4; xxi. 29), may be safely assumed. Whether Erastus is identical with
the treasurer of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 23), or with the Erastus who was
sent by Paul with Timothy to Macedonia (Acts xix. 22), must remain
uncertain.
"Eubulus saluteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia." With this
group of names our accumulation of arguments for the genuineness of this
portion of the letter, and therefore of the whole letter, and therefore
of all three Pastoral Epistles, comes to an end. The argument is a
cumulative one, and this last item of the internal evidence is by no
means the least important or least convincing. About Eubulus, Pudens,
and Claudia we know nothing beyond what this passage implies, viz., that
they were members of the Christian Church in Rome; for the very bare
possibility that Pudens and Claudia may be the persons of that name who
are mentioned by Martial, is not worth more than a passing reference.
But Linus is a person about whom something is known. It is unlikely that
in the Apostolic age there were two Christians of this name in the Roman
Church; and therefore we may safely conclude that the Linus who here
sends greeting is identical with the Linus, who, according to very early
testimony preserved by Irenaeus (_Haer._, III. iii. 3), was first among
the earliest bishops of the Church of Rome. Irenaeus himself expressly
identifies the first Bishop of Rome with the Linus mentioned in the
Epistles to Timothy, and that in a passage in which (thanks to Eusebius)
we have the original Greek of Irenaeus as well as the Latin translation.
From his time (c. A.D. 180) to the present day, Linus, Anencletus or
Anacletus or Cletus (all three forms of the name are used), and Clement
have been commemorated as the three first Bishops of Rome. They must all
of them have been contemporaries of the Apostle. Of these three far the
most famous was Clement; and a writer at the end of the first century,
or beginning of the second, inventing a letter for St. Paul, would be
much more likely to put Clement into it than Linus. Again, such a writer
would know that Linus, after the Apostle's death, became the presiding
presbyter of the Church of Rome, and would place him before Eubulus and
Pudens. But here Linus is placed after the other two. The obvious
inference is, that, at the time when this letter was written, Linus was
not yet in any position of authority. Like the other persons here named,
he was a leading member of the Church in Rome, otherwise he would hardly
have been mentioned at all; but he has not yet been promoted to the
chief place, otherwise he would at least have been mentioned first, and
probably with some epithet or title. Once more one asks, what writer of
fiction would have thought of these niceties? And what writer who
thought of them, and elaborated them thus skilfully, would have
abstained from all attempt to prevent their being overlooked and
unappreciated?
The result of this investigation is greatly to increase our confidence
in the genuineness of this letter and of all three Pastoral Epistles. We
began by treating them as veritable writings of the great Apostle, and a
closer acquaintance with them has justified this treatment. Doubts may
be raised about everything; but reasonable doubts have their limits. To
dispute the authenticity of the Epistles to the Corinthians, Romans,
and Galatians is now considered to be a sure proof that the doubter
cannot estimate evidence; and we may look forward to the time when the
Second Epistle to Timothy will be ranked with those four great Epistles
as indisputable. Meanwhile let no student of this letter doubt that in
it he is reading the touching words in which the Apostle of the Gentiles
gave his last charge to his beloved disciple, and through him to the
Christian Church.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] Salmon's _Historical Introduction to the New Testament_, p. 426,
3rd ed., to which the writer of this exposition is under great
obligations. The book should be in the hands of every student of the N.
T.
[98] The striking parallel to this request afforded by that of William
Tyndale is pointed out in Farrar's _St. Paul_, ii. p. 571. Tyndale
writes from his prison in the Castle of Vilvorden to ask, "idque per
Dominum Jesum," for warmer clothing, and above all for his Hebrew Bible,
grammar, and dictionary.