Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (58 page)

And what does the author of the Pastorals have to say about the spiritual gifts bestowed upon each member of the community given to benefit the body of Christ through their loving application? Nothing. His concerns are the leaders of the churches, “Paul’s” personal representatives left behind to organize, structure, and direct the community, and the overseers and deacons who have responsibilities to fulfill. This is a different kind of community, and it does not take a degree in Weberian sociology to recognize what has happened in the historical movement from the chaos of Corinth to the structure of the Pastorals. The expectation of an imminent end of the age had waned (there would still be a future, to be sure), the sense of living in a short interim period had passed, and disorganization and local problems had led to sensible and logical solutions; there needed to be leaders in the church, these persons needed to be qualified, they needed to take charge and make decisions, and in particular they—not the Spirit through ecstatic utterance or the apostle (no longer living) through written communication—needed to pull in the reins on those proffering false and harmful teaching. The women who once exercised authority in the church through their teaching and prophesying needed to be brought to bay now that the church needed to be seen as a respectable institution. The leaders needed to be upright
men
admired even by those on the outside. Widows now had a special function in the life of the church (where does one find anything like
that
in the Pauline letters, Corinthians or otherwise?). Social relations needed to be normalized in the church and the serious asceticism that preferred the life of celibacy in light of the “impending disaster” had thus given way to a traditional set of social values that treasured marriage and family as solid Christian values.

It is true, as Johnson himself stresses, that the Pastoral epistles are not concerned to set up a church organization, as they are sometimes wrongly read. They are concerned with the qualifications of the leaders who man (literally) this organization—not with the duties that they are to perform. But this speaks even more for the pseudepigraphic character of 1 Timothy and Titus—the two letters I have been referring to—because these letters do not assume that a church hierarchy is starting to be established to replace the charismatic ordering of the
churches of Paul’s own day. They instead presuppose that a church hierarchy already is in place, to the extent that there are bishops, deacons, and widows who are to be enrolled. The author does not need to describe what each of these persons or groups does because this is already assumed. That is, it is common knowledge. These books were written well after the transition from a charismatic organization in which persons were authorized by the Spirit given at baptism. Now there are leaders with recognized skills and qualifications, who are ordained by the laying on of hands or selected from a pool of candidates.

It should not be objected that Philippians 1:1 presents us with the same situation already in Paul’s lifetime. Overseers and deacons are mentioned there, but there is nothing either in that verse or the entire letter (or set of letters) of Philippians as a whole to indicate that these are persons selected for an office out of a pool of candidates, or that they were ordained by the laying on of hands. In fact, nothing is said about them at all, giving us no way of knowing whether they are comparable to the figures addressed in the Pastorals or not. If we assume they are it is not because of any evidence, since, in fact, there is no hint of evidence; it is simply a hopeful assumption. The fact that these Philippian overseers and deacons are never addressed in the letter(s) is itself far more telling: Paul does not tell them to correct the false teaching in the congregation, or to make sure Euodia and Syntyche fall in line, or to deal with any of the problems of the church. The differences from the Pastorals are apt.

The authorities for these Pastoral communities are not only the apostolic voice, delivered in writing; they also include written texts that have been elevated to a level of sacrality. This was true for Paul as well, who used the Jewish Scriptures to that end extensively (in at least some of his correspondence), and who could, as well, cite the oral traditions of the words of Jesus. The key difference with the Pastorals is found most clearly in 1 Tim. 5:18, where not just Jesus’ teachings per se but a written text containing those teachings is deemed authoritative; in fact is labeled “Scripture.” Whether the quotation comes from the (now-known) Gospel of Luke (10:7) or from some other written source, the dominical teachings are now known to be written and are on a par with the Scriptures cited so extensively by Paul. Here too we are in a period beyond Paul’s time, at the end of the first century at the very earliest, when Gospel texts were assuming a position of authority in the local communities associated with Paul and others of the apostles.

It is important to stress that all of these various arguments are cumulative and all point in the same direction. The accumulation is not merely as strong as its weakest link. One argument after the other simply reinforces the one that precedes: the distinctive vocabulary, its non-Pauline character and force, the post-Pauline historical situation, the role of authorities in the church including written Gospel texts. At the same time, it cannot be stressed enough that specific comments of each of the individual books as well point in precisely the same direction, reinforcing the sense that if one of these books is forged, they all are forged.

The following passages represent statements that seem to stand at odds with the views of the historical Paul, as known from the undisputed letters. In no case can one say that Paul definitely would never have made any such statement. Large allowance must always be made for the flexibility of his thought, his ability to say seemingly contrary things, the possibility that his views developed over time, and the reality that he occasionally changed his mind, even about important matters. But it cannot help but strike the careful reader that so many of the comments in the Pastorals appear to run counter to Paul’s views attested elsewhere. We are not dealing with one or two isolated statements. And so, these comments should not be treated in isolation from one another, but as a Gestalt that confirms the findings already set forth, that whoever wrote these letters, it appears not to have been Paul. Here again, my comments are meant not to be exhaustive but illustrative.

1 Timothy

As with the other two Pastorals, there is no point contending that 1 Timothy sounds completely unlike Paul. In many ways, or at least many places, it does sound like Paul, as one would expect from a letter forged by one of his later followers in his name. And there are numerous instances of verisimilitude—not nearly as many as in Titus or 2 Timothy, but numerous enough, as in the author’s recollection of his former interaction with Timothy when he put him in charge of the congregation in Ephesus (1:3), his reflection on his past life as a blasphemer and persecutor of the church, acting out of unbelief (1:12–16), his indication that he is coming to pay a visit soon (3:14, 4:13); his personal attention to Timothy, urging him to take some wine for his stomach ailment (5:23); and so on.

At the same time, there are, scattered throughout the letter, comments that if nothing else create a real puzzle for those who think the apostle himself produced them. Right off the bat one must wonder about the author’s view of the Jewish Law, which he declares is good “if someone uses it lawfully” (1:8). For Paul, is God’s law good conditional on human obedience? On the contrary, in Romans at least, the Law is good unconditionally, regardless of how a person uses it, since it was given by God. The problem with the Law for Paul—a notoriously vexed issue in itself, of course—was intimately connected with the problem of sin, the cosmic power that compelled people to violate the dictates of God’s (good) Law. There is nothing about the power of sin here in 1 Timothy. The author instead assumes that humans are able to keep the Law and thereby affirm its goodness. And would Paul say that “the Law is not set down for the one who is just/righteous” (1:9)? Quite the contrary, that in no small measure is whom the Law is for, those who have been given the Spirit of God so that they (and they alone) can do what the Law commands, for example by loving their neighbors as themselves, which is to be done precisely because the Law, which itself is good, demands that it be done (Gal. 5:13–14).

A related matter is Paul’s relation to those who promote themselves as teachers of the Law (1:7). Paul himself was always intent on showing opponents who
stressed their superior relation to the Law that he himself understood it better than they, through careful and often ingenious exposition of its teachings. Here, rather than fighting his opponents on their own ground—Paul’s approach—this author simply ignores the Law and refuses to engage his opponents in their views. This “Paul” does not cite the Law, deal with the “false” interpretation of the Law, or explicate the status of the Law for those in Christ.

Just as the reference to the Law has the superficial sound of a Pauline teaching, so too does the problem of false teaching dealt with at the end of
chapter 1
: two false teachers are said to have been “handed over to Satan” in exchange for their misdeeds, an apparent reminiscence of the incident recounted in 1 Corinthians 5. But the differences are more striking than the similarities. Here—this never happens in Paul—the opponents are called by name. Moreover, the “handing over to Satan” is not a community affair; it is something the apostle himself has done. And the purpose of the act appears otherwise indeed; in Corinth it was for the “destruction of the flesh,” which may well be taken as a death curse. In this instance it is for repentance: “that they may be trained not to blaspheme.” The clear implication is that the miscreants will be welcomed back with open arms once they have learned their lesson.

The oath that the author swears in 2:7 has a Pauline feel to it, but it is delivered in a completely un-Pauline way. When Paul utters his oath in Gal. 1:20 (“the things I am writing you—see, before God, I am not lying!”) it is to convince readers who may well have reasons of their own for not believing what he has to say; the oath, reasonably enough, is designed to convince them that he really is speaking the truth. So too the virtual oath of Rom. 9:1 “I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying.” For readers who might well suspect that Paul harbors an animosity toward the Jewish people, given everything he has said in the letter up to this point, Paul avers that nothing is farther from the truth; he insists that he is not lying about it. The author of 1 Tim. 2:7 also utters an oath: “I am telling the truth, I am not lying.” This may sound like the other two instances, but it is strikingly different. Here “Paul” is writing to his close companion and erstwhile fellow-missionary Timothy, insisting that he really is a “herald, and apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.” Why would the historical Paul have to swear to this? Why would Timothy suspect anything different? They were companions on the mission field together for years.

Not much need be said about the instructions to women in 2:11–15 to be silent and submissive and to exercise no authority over men. The women in Paul’s churches were apostles and deacons; they were not silent in church or urged to be silent, but were told to speak their prayers and prophecies—congregational activities performed in the presence of men—with covered heads. The act of prophecy necessarily involves a woman in an authoritative position, as, of course, does serving as a deacon and, especially, an apostle. And to say that women’s salvation is contingent on bearing children is completely removed from anything known from the apostle Paul. Among other things, it makes being “saved” a matter of life in this world rather than at the appearance of Christ at the end. And the idea that
bearing children will somehow earn the right to be saved is not even in the right ballpark of a Pauline soteriology.

The views of marriage seem to stand at odds with Paul. It is true that he never did, in the surviving letters, actually “forbid marriage” (4:3); but he certainly discouraged it, in no uncertain terms, in view of the “impending disaster” (1 Cor. 7:27–27). Not this author. Bishops are actually required to be married men with households that they rule over (3:2, 4). So too the deacons (3:12). Young women, too, are to be married and have children (5:14). How does this coincide with Paul’s wish that others—presumably leaders above all—be like him, celibate and single (1 Cor. 7:6–7)? How could he urge celibacy in one place and forbid it in another? Where, in fact, is the “impending disaster” that marks the urgency of Paul’s mission and that drives his social ethics?

Is this author even Jewish? The idea that anyone would urge people “to abstain from foods” seems completely foreign to him (4:3), a sign of living in the latter days. For this author all foods are created by God and are good, and no food is to be rejected if received thankfully (4:4). Certainly Paul himself may have come to view laws governing kashrut as adiaphora, now that Christ has fulfilled the Law. But would it have seemed strange to him, and a sign of the end of time, that there were people out there actually forbidding the consumption of certain foods? Isn’t that the religion he grew up in and espoused for most of his early life? Can he conceive of the kosher food laws as not having been given by God, as 4:4 implies, even if they have now been surpassed with the coming of Christ—if indeed they have been for the historical Paul, who certainly never tells Jews that they are to stop keeping kosher?

Moreover, the insistence that all foods be consumed stands at clear tension with the advice of the real Paul himself to the Corinthians and Romans, where he urges restraint and abstention from certain foods for the sake of others (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; Rom. 14:20). By contrast, here in 1 Timothy the scruples of others are mocked and maligned. Everything is to be eaten, regardless—or rather, precisely in the face of—the objections of others. The logic and the grounds of the ethics of eating differ here, but that is precisely the point. Following the “apostle’s” teaching is far more important than being concerned over causing another to stumble.