The Pastoral Letters as Composite Documents

This book makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the authorship of the Pastoral letters. Arguing the conventional opinion - that the Pastorals were written by a disciple of Paul's - Dr Miller suggests that the letters are composite documents based upon brief, but genuine, Pauline notes written to Timothy and Titus.

The authorship of the Pastoral letters has been a matter of intense scholarly debate for almost two hundred years. The letters clearly purport to be written by Paul, but perceived differences in the literary style, vocabulary and theology of the Pastorals when compared with that of the genuine Pauline letters suggests that this was not so. The arguments have centred primarily on the question of whether Paul or a disciple of Paul – a gifted pseudonymist – composed these letters. It is the 'either/or' nature of the debate that is brought into serious question in this book. Dr Miller argues that the Pastorals reflect a compositional history that was commonplace throughout the ancient Near East. He takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour of biblical and extra-biblical sources, examining their literary histories, and arguing that the Pastorals are composite documents, not unlike many Jewish and early Christian works.