17
The Pastoral Epistles
Bolstering support for Pauline authorship and a date no later than the 60s, Luke
Johnson has demonstrated in detail how 1 Timothy affords striking parallels in its
contents and opposition to 1 Corinthians; and 2 Timothy to Philippians.
46
Titus seems to
contend against a uniquely Cretan version of the false teaching afflicting Ephesus in 1
Timothy, showing signs of a much younger and more primitive congregation on that
island as well.
47
Once again, probably to our surprise, factiousness emerges as an
excommunicable offense (Tit. 3:10 that is self-condemning (v. 11).
48
The Rest of the New Testament
Again we may proceed in one probable chronological sequence.
Hebrews and the General Epistles
The letter of James responds neither to false teachers nor to external persecution
but does have to oppose an apparently lifeless orthodoxy among some of the churches
addressed.
49
How often have purely doctrinal squabbles led to the same sterility in our
midst?
50
Hebrews probably reflects the growing temptation of Jewish Christians in Rome
in the early 60s, near the onset of Neronic persecution, to apostatize, lapsing back into
non-Christian Judaism to avoid harassment and, eventually, even martyrdom.
51
1 Peter is
probably written from Rome to predominantly Gentile Christians in what we would call
western and central Turkey at about the same time, though the greatest hostility they face
46
Luke T. Johnson, Letters to Paul's Delegates (Valley Forge: Trinity, 1996), 214; Cf. throughout idem,
The First and Second Letters to Timothy (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
47
Cf. throughout idem, Letters to Paul's Delegates, 211-54.
48
Presupposing that the process of disfellowshiping has followed all the steps of Matthew 18:15-18; see I.
Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 338.
49
Irrespective of the debate over whether James has a small number of specific congregations in mind--so,
e.g., Peter H. Davids (The Epistle of James [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 28-34)--or is an encyclical to
the entire Jewish-Christian diaspora--so esp. Richard Bauckham (James [New York: Routledge, 1999], 11-
28).
50
Even James itself can be thus "intercepted" and emasculated of its force. See esp. Elsa Tamez, The
Scandalous Message of James (New York: Crossroad, 1990).