XXVI  . 32name of a

great man whose sentiments it was desired to reproduce and record; the question which seems so important to us, whether the words and even the sentiments are the great man's own or only his historian's, seems then hardly to have occurred either to writer or readers " (W . H . Simcox, Writers of the New Testament, p, 38) . The address at Miletus is Paul's last word to the Christian elders of Ephesus, warning them against heresies (Acts xx . 29 seq.) and solemnly bidding them exercise their disciplinary -duties . The Second Epistle to Timothy carries on this line of advice . Here Paul, being dead, yet speaks through Timothy to the local Christians who are exposed to such mischievous tendencies in their environment . Where the writer has hardly succeeded in representing Paul is in his relations to Timothy . One may admit that, strictly speaking, the latter at the age of about thirty-fve or forty could still be called vies, and that Paul might conceivably have termed him still his TEKVOV . But the counsels addressed to him seem rather out of place when one recollects the position which he occupied . To a writer who desired a situation for such advice on church life and doctrine from the lips of Paul to his lieutenant, it was natural to think of a temporary absences But many of the directions are much too serious and fundamental to have been given in this form; one can hardly imagine that Paul considered Timothy (or Titus) still in need of elementary advice and warning upon such matters, and especially on personal purity .

When they are regarded as typical figures of the later episcopi of the Church. the point of this emphasis upon elementary principles and duties is at once clear; they outline graphically the qualifications for the church offices in question . The pressing need of the Church, as the writer conceives it, is to maintain the true Pauline tradition (2 Tim. i . 13, &c.) against certain moral and speculative ideas . This

maintenance takes the twofold practical form of (a) adherence to formulated statements of the " sound teaching " and (b) insistence on a succession of church officials (2 Tim. ii . 1–2) who are not merely to preside but to teach . The last point is significant in view of Didache xv . I . The standpoint of the author is practically that of Clemens Romanus (xlii. seq.), who asserts that the apostles preached " every-where in country and town, appointing their first-fruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons." The interests of discipline and doctrine were thus to be conserved . Paul's lieutenants possess - the central deposit of the apostolic faith, and have the duty as well as the right of exercising the authority with which that position invests them . The occasional coincidences between the pastorals and Barns- to Polycarp, who alludes to i Tim. ii. i, vi . 7, Io, and 2 Tim. ii. it, 25, iv. io (for this and the other passages from Polycarp, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, 1905, pp . 95 seq.) .

This indubitable use of the pastorals in Polycarp8 throws the

terminus ad quem of their composition back into the first decade of the 2nd century, and additional confirmation of this would be forthcoming were the evidence for their use in- Ignatius more 6 The drawback was that, if Paul was soon to see his colleagues again (Titus i . 5; t Tim. i . 3), such detailed advice was hardly necessary; but this imperfection was inevitable . ' The post-Pauline atmosphere of the ecclesiastical regulations is felt most plainly in the references to such sub-apostolic features as the organized register of " widows." The ErieKOlros, the 3utKOYOc and the xipa are also forbidden to contract a second marriage . Such, at any rate, seems the fairest interpretation of I Tim. iii . 2 (E.ricsoros) in the light of early Christian tradition, for although the phrase " husband of one wife " might conceivably be intended as a prohibition of polygamy or vice (=faithful husband, or sober, married man), the antipathy to second marriages (cf . Jacoby, Neatest . Ethik, pp . 378 seq.) is quite in accord with sub-apostolic practice . It is almost as un-Pauline as the assumption that. every irtrKOiros must be married . Cf. on this whole subject Hilgenfeld (Zeitschrift' fiir wiss . Theologie, 1886, pp .

456 seq.) and Schmiedel (Encyd . Biblica, 3113 seq.) ; the opposite position is stated excellently by

Hort (Christian Ecclesia, 1898, 189 seq.) and Dr T . M . Lindsay (Hibbert Journal, i . 166 seq., and in The Church and the Ministry in the, early Centuries, 1903, pp . 139 seq.) . 3 The pastorals soon passed into great favour in the early Church . Their method and aim were entirely congenial to the rising Catholic Church, and one is' not surprised to find from writers in the East (Theophilus of Antioch, Justin Martyr) and West (Irenaeus, Ter1 tullian and the author. of 2 Clement) that they were widely read and valued . Absent from Marcion's canon, they were included in the Muratorian, where they appear as private letters (" Fro affectu et dilectione ") . See, on the external evidence in general, Zahn's Geschichte der neutest . Kanons, i . 634 seq .

II bas or Clemens Romanus do not prove anything more than a

common milieu of thought, but the epistles were plainly familiar secure . The occasional similarities of thought and expression between them and the Lucan writings suggest that the period of their origin lies within a quarter of a century after Paul's death, and, when one or two later accretions are admitted, the internal evidence, either upon the organization of the church' or upon the errors controverted, tallies with this hypothesis .