Pastoral Letters

Another worthwhile contribution to the outstanding What Are They Saying About...series is this volume by Mark Harding dealing with the pastoral epistles. In it the author gives an overview of seminal and recent trends in scholarship on the three pastoral epistles: 1 and 1 Timothy and Titus.

Table of Contents:

1. The Authorship of the Pastorals

2. The Pastoral Epistles and Pauline Tradition

3. The Social Setting of the Pastoral Epistles

4. The Literary Setting of the Pastoral Epistles

5. The Pastoral Epistles and Classical Rhetoric

6. The Meaning of the Pastoral Epistles Today

A select bibliography and suggestions for further study complete this significant work, the first of its kind to survey scholarship on the pastoral epistles. Written for seminary and university students, this book will also find an audience among preachers looking for a concise introduction to the letters, and historians of the first century CE Greco-Roman era.

The Pastoral Letters have often been marginalised in modern New Testament studies. Regarded as not authentically Pauline, not very theological, and mostly evidence of the church settling down in the world, their patriarchal orientation has more recently futher alienated readers. Yet it was these little letters which mediated Paul to the Patristic church, and then provided scriptural material for debate about church order and ministry from the Reformation to the present. This study attempts to re-read the Pastorals in their original setting, revising many of the standard scholarly assessments in the light of recent work (especially developments in sociological study of the New Testament), and exploring the development of a tradition which proves to be theological in its fundamental structure and in its mode of addressing practical and organisational issues. The letters are then related to the very different context of the modern world.