BL1 1-7. Memorize key quotes/reference materials

1. Writing Background

Titus's story does not appear in the Book of Acts, but is scattered throughout Paul's letters. He was a Greek (Galatians 2:3), led to Christ by Paul (Titus 1:4), and accompanied Paul to Jerusalem to meet with the local apostles (Galatians 2:1). During Paul's third missionary journey, he was assigned to several important tasks at the Corinthian church (see 2 Corinthians 7:6, 8:6, 16, 12:18), and later sent to Crete to oversee the church on behalf of the apostles. In this letter, Paul instructs him to go to Nicopopolis to meet (3:12), and then sends him to Talmud (2 Timothy 4:10). After this, Titus's story does not appear again in the Bible. According to church tradition, he returned to Crete, where he died.

This book was written around the same time as 1 Timothy, possibly also in Macedonia, and with roughly the same motivation: to teach Paul's assistants how to establish elders and shepherd the church.

2. Theme Features

The book begins by stating that Paul's apostolic ministry was to enable the chosen people to know "godly truth." This emphasis on both "godliness" and "truth" is a recurring theme throughout the book: pastors must not only preach sound doctrine but also live out good deeds in all things (Paul 2:1, 7). Similarly, all believers must be blameless in their faith and in their lives. Paul's emphasis on both godly living and correct faith stems not only from the fact that heretics of his time preached erroneous doctrines (Paul 1:10, 14-15; Paul 3:9) and acted against God, but also from the fact that the gospel itself aims to turn people away from sin and do good (Paul 2:14), and gives believers a position of justification and renewal (Paul 3:4-7).

[Excerpt from: Bible Beads]·[Annotated Edition (Revised Edition), Hong Kong, Evangelical Witness Association, 2000, p. 1755]

II. The Compilation of Paul's Letters

Paul's letters were written over a period of more than 15 years (he began writing his first letter about 15 years after becoming a Christian), and these letters were sent separately to individuals or churches scattered throughout various places. So how were these 13 letters put together? Simply put, we don't know the answer to this question; because the evidence we have is too little to provide a definitive answer. There are examples where Paul himself instructed that his letters be circulated in a limited manner (Colossians 4:16). Some have offered compelling arguments that Paul's original purpose in writing Ephesians was for general circulation among believers living in Ephesus and neighboring towns, and as an appendix to some letters dealing with more specific issues, such as Colossians and Philemon (and perhaps Philippians).

The earliest list we encounter that specifically compiles Paul's ten letters (excluding the pastoral letters) was compiled by Marcion (a leader of an unorthodox Christian movement that began around AD 140). Some scholars consider this the first comprehensive list of Paul's letters. However, this is clearly impossible. Only a very small fraction of written materials have survived from antiquity to the present day, and Marcion's list is valuable primarily because it suggests that many more detailed orthodox lists likely existed at the time. These pseudo-Christian leaders had long been accustomed to using Christian works to satisfy their own needs. Marcion rejected the entire Old Testament and most of the New Testament; even regarding the Gospels, he only retained a fragmented version of Luke.

Others argue that Paul's letters were first compiled shortly after 90 AD—50 years before Marcion. Some devoted Paul supporters, encouraged by the publication of the Acts (which appears to have been completed just before 90 AD), worked to collect Paul's extant letters. However, the Acts should be dated much earlier, around 64 AD—and it's difficult to understand why the collection of at least a small portion of Paul's letters would have waited until the Acts. We have ample evidence that some of Paul's letters were quoted by the early apostolic fathers (especially Clement of Rome, around 96 AD). More importantly, 2 Peter 3:16 mentions Paul speaking "in all his letters," which, while not necessarily referring to the 13 canonical letters, clearly assumes that believers were generally aware of the Pauline letters circulating in the church. Although modern scholars tend to consider 2 Peter to be a later work, there are also good reasons to support the view that it may have been written earlier than AD 64 or AD 65.

There is another theory that may be more plausible than any of the main arguments, though we cannot verify it. While Paul was still alive, a small number of his letters were already circulating in churches in certain areas, possibly at his own request (Colossians 4:16). Later, after his martyrdom (around AD 65), one or more of his closest colleagues (Timothy?) diligently collected and preserved the original manuscripts of Paul's letters that had circulated in the church. We cannot fully verify any of these theories now. However, some of them seem to best explain what we see today.

[Excerpted from: "The Study of the Epistles" by A.D. Arson, in Chen Huirong and Hu Wenxian (eds.), The Witness to the Lord in the 21st Century (2), Hong Kong, Second Edition, Second Printing, 2008, pp. 1167-1168]

III. The Order of Paul's Epistles

The order of Paul's letters in the New Testament...is not based on the order of their writing dates, nor on their themes. It follows two simple principles: letters to the church (Romans to 2 Thessalonians) come first, followed by personal letters (1 Timothy to Philemon), with the longest letter in each group preceding the shortest. Ephesians is the only exception, as it should precede Galatians according to the aforementioned principles. Some speculate that the person who arranged Paul's letters in this way may have had a copy of Ephesians written in finer calligraphy, thus mistakenly placing it between Galatians and Philippians.

We usually categorize Paul's letters into four types based on their themes.

The first category includes Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, which are sometimes described as the great evangelical epistles. The first three letters were completed by Paul during his third missionary journey. Although many consider Galatians to be a work from this period, there is good reason to believe that Galatians was the first of Paul's extant letters to be completed. In terms of content, Romans and Galatians are very similar, although the purpose of Galatians is clearly to warn Galatian believers against the growing Judaism within the (Gentile) Christian community, while Romans does not seem to have this explicit purpose.

The second category is often referred to as the "Prison Epistles" because Paul mentions being imprisoned in these letters. These include Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. It is possible that these four letters were written by Paul while he was in a Roman prison, although many scholars have countered this, suggesting that Philippians and some of them were sent from prisons in Ephesus or Caesarea.

The third category includes 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Many believe these are Paul's earliest extant letters. However, even if Paul wrote Galatians first, these two letters, written from Corinth during his second missionary journey, still express a pastoral sentiment and a set of views on the "last days," which recur in many of his later letters. Although Paul habitually mentions the names of one or more co-workers in the first few lines of his letters, these two letters clearly connect Paul, Silas, and Timothy, and the following content is quite unusual, almost entirely using the first-person plural pronoun "we."

The fourth category is the "Pastoral Epistles," which includes 1 Timothy and Titus. These Pauline letters are the most frequently considered forgeries. If we were to assume they were all written by Paul, we would have to conclude that he had already left the Roman prison at that time, since he was no longer a prisoner when he wrote 1 Timothy and Titus. However, Paul was imprisoned again when he wrote 2 Timothy, and this time he was quite aware that he had little hope of survival. While some have exaggerated the uniqueness of these letters in terms of language and subject matter, it is a fact, believed to be based on many underlying factors. These letters are private correspondence written by the Apostle Paul near the end of his life, some of which outline principles for Christian leadership, and it is very likely that the author dictated them to a reliable co-worker (Luke?), giving this scribe greater freedom than usual in writing the content.

[Excerpt from: "The Study of the Epistles" by A.D. Arson, in Chen Huirong and Hu Wenxian (eds.), The Witness to the Lord in the 21st Century (2), Hong Kong, Second Edition, Second Printing, 2008, p. 1168]

IV. Supplementary Materials for Studying Paul's Letters

1. An Introduction to the Pauline Epistles, by Hebeid, translated by Siu Wai-yuen, Hong Kong: Baptist Press, 7th edition, 1989.

2. Yang Keqin, ed., *A Comparative Study of Pauline Epistles*, Hong Kong: International Chinese Bible Press, 1997.

3. Ma Youzhao, *From Justification to Sanctification: An Interpretation of Paul's Epistles*, Hong Kong: Tianen Publishing House, 2005.

4. Zhang Damin and Huang Ximu, *Essentials of the Acts of the Apostles and Pauline Epistles*, Hong Kong: Keido Publishing House, 2003.

V. Recommended Readings by Titus

1. John Stott, *Bible Message Series: 1 Timothy and Titus*, translated by Huang Yuanlin, Taiwan: Campus Bookstore Press, 2001.

2. Riffe, *International Exegetical Series: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus*, translated by Huang Yixian, Hong Kong: Chinese Bible Society, 2004.