Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/372

350 PASTORAL EPISTLES avoid the difficulty which is fatal to the two preceding hypotheses, that Timothy had been left at Ephesus when the apostle was "going into Macedonia." (4) In order to avoid this fatal difficulty some writers (especially Otto, Die yetchichtlichen Verhdltnisse der Pastoralbriefe, Leipsic, I860, and Rolling, Der ertte Brief Pauli an Timotheus, Berlin, 1882) have attempted a new but impossible trans lation of 1 Tim. i. 3, so as to make it appear that it was Timothy and not Paul that was going into Macedonia (for criticisms of this attempt see Huther s edition of Meyer s commentary ad loc., and Weiss in the Studien u. Kritiken for 1861, p. 577). The data of the historical position of 2 Timothy appear to be (a) that St Paul either was or had been in Rome (i. 17), (b) that he was in prison (i. 16; ii. 9), (c) that he had already had a trial (iv. 16), (d) that he believed himself to be near the end of his life (iv. 6), (e) that he was expecting shortly to see Timothy (i. 4 ; iv. 9, 21), (/) that he had been, apparently not long before, at Troas, Corinth, and Miletus (iv. 13, 20). Upon these data two hypotheses have been framed. (1) It has been supposed that the required his torical position is to be found at the beginning of the " two whole years " of Acts xxviii. 30, and that con sequently the epistle was written before those to the Philippians and Colossians (so, among others, Schrader, Otto, and Reuss). The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis are chiefly two, first, that of accounting for the complete change of tone between the close anticipation of death of 2 Tim. iv. 6 and the hopefulness of Philippians ii. 23, 24, Philemon 22, and, secondly, that of accounting for the " first defence " of 2 Tim. iii. 16 ; this Otto does by supposing it to be the process before Festus at Ca^sarea, a supposition which implies the very improbable further supposition that the process before Felix was not what was technically known as an " actio," and that the term " make my defence " (Acts xxiv. 10) was wrongly applied by St Paul himself to his own speech. (2) It has been supposed that the required position is to be found in the period immediately succeeding the " two whole years " of Acts xxviii. 30, and that the epistle was written after those to the Philippians and Colossians (so, among others, Wieseler). One of the main difficulties in the way of this hypothesis is that it implies an interval of at least four years since the journey referred to in chap, iv., and that it is incredible that St Paul should have written to a disciple in Asia Minor to mention the casual incidents of a voyage such as the leaving a cloak at Troas and a companion sick at Miletus which had occurred several years before ; the difficulty would not be much lessened even if the ingenious conjectures were adopted by which Wieseler endeavours to identify this voyage with that of Acts xxvii. The data of the historical position of the epistle to Titus are (a) that Paul and Titus had been in Crete together, and that Titus had been left there, (b) that Paul was intending to winter at Nicopolis (wherever that may be, places of that name being found in several Roman pro vinces). Upon these data many conjectures have been built. It has been supposed that St Paul visited Crete either (1) at the commencement of this second missionary journey (Acts xv. 41), or (2) during his residence at Corinth (Acts xviii. 1, 8; so Michaelis and Thiersch). Each of these conjectures is met, in addition to other difficulties, by the fact, which seems fatal to it, that Apollos, who is mentioned in Titus iii. 13, was not known to Paul and his company until after the second missionary journey (Acts xviii. 24). (3) The same fact is also fatal to the supposition of Hug and others that the visit to Crete took place during the journey from Corinth to Ephesus (Acts xviii. 18, 19), a supposition which is also inconsistent with the apostle s apparent desire to reach Syria without much delay, and which requires for its support the further . supposition that, although on his way to Antioch and Coesarea, he had selected the almost unknown town of , Nicopolis in Cilicia to winter in. (4) It has been supposed (Credner) that the visit to Crete was made as a detour in the course of the journey from Antioch to Ephesus (Acts xviii. 22, 23 ; xix. 1); this is not only improbable in itself but also inconsistent with the summary of that journey : " Paul, having passed through the upper," i.e., the inland, "country, came to Ephesus." (5) It has been supposed that St Paul called at Crete in the course of a journey which he probably made to Corinth during his long sojourn at Ephesus (so Wieseler, who thinks that he went first to Macedonia, 1 Tim. i. 3, and thence to Corinth, Crete, and back to Ephesus ; and Reuss, who thinks that the route was Ephesus, Crete, Corinth, Illyricum, Macedonia, Ephesus) ; but this supposition seems to be excluded by the inconsistency between the expressed intention to winter in Nicopolis (Tit. iii. 12) and the similar intention to pass the same winter at Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 6), unless the ingenious hypothesis of Wieseler be adopted that he intended to spend part of the winter in one place and the rest in the other. (6) It has been supposed that he made his journey from Macedonia to Greece (Acts xx, 1-3) by way of Crete (so Matthies) ; but this supposition seems to be excluded by the fact that in 2 Cor. viii. 6, 17 (which was written from Macedonia), Titus who had been with Paul in Macedonia had gone forward on his own account not to Crete but to Corinth. And all these endeavours to find a place for the epistle in St Paul s life before his voyage to Rome are met by the improbability that, if Crete had been already so far Christianized as to have communities in several cities (which is implied in Tit. i. 5), there should be no hint of the fact in Acts xxvii. 7-13. The difficulties of all endeavours to find a place for these epistles in the recorded history of St Paul have been so strongly felt by most of those modern writers who support their authenticity that such writers have generally trans ferred them to an unrecorded period of his life, subsequent to the close of the Acts of the Apostles. The external authorities for the belief that there was such a period, and that in the course of it St Paul underwent a second im prisonment, are chiefly the statement of Clement of Rome that he went to "the goal of the West," and that of the Muratorian fragment that he went to Spain (see PAUL, infra, p. 422). Both these statements admit of much dis pute, the one as to its meaning, the other as to its authority ; and their value as evidence is weakened by the fact that Irenseus, Tertullian, and Origen, though they mention the death of the apostle at Rome, say nothing of any journeys subsequent to his arrival there. In the 4th century Eusebius, for the first time, mentions a second imprisonment, but prefixes to his statement the ambiguous words Aoyos e^ei, " there is a story " or " tradition holds." Several fathers subsequent to his time repeat and amplify his statement ; but that statement, if accepted, involves the further difficulties on the one hand of finding room for St Paul s journeys before the great Neronian persecution of 64 A.D., and on the other hand of accounting for the fact that, supposing the apostle to have survived that per secution, he makes no mention of it. For all these diffi culties more or less plausible answers have been framed, | and many narratives of St Paul s unrecorded travels have I been written ; but, although it may be admitted that such narratives are conceivably true, yet it must be conceded on the other hand that they rest rather upon conjecture than upon evidence. It may be added that the hypothesis of a second imprisonment is rejected not only by writers like Baur and Hilgenfeld, who deny the authenticity of