MikeSatterlee@cs.com wrote:
.......................................................
You wrote: [Some suggest] that the Pastoral Epistles were written by a
> "conservative" disciple of St. Paul.
>
> All of the letters which are now widely understood to have been written by
> Paul are now identified as Paul's work because the text of each one of those
> letters clearly identifies Paul as its author. If they were not written by
> Paul, then they contain false information. If they do we, how do we know what
> in them, if anything, can be trusted?
...........................................................
By the same argument at least part of the Book of Enoch was written by
the antedeluvian patriarch Enoch because Jude 14-15 ascribes a quotation from
that book to him. This is, to say the least, highly implausible. Scholars
generally consider the material in this book to be no earlier than ~150 B.C.
Deutero-Pauline writings would contain "false information"
only if their
purpose was to give us information about who actually wrote or dictated them.
But if the ascription to Paul was intended to say that this material
was faithful
to the teachings of Paul then the situation is different. The
pastoral epistles
suggest that they were composed in & for a situation in the life of the church
somewhat later than St. Paul. They probably do contain some material from Paul
himself but it's quite likely that the final composition of these letters was
later in the first century.
................................................................................
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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