Die Pastoralbriefe

Following the earlier volume by Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, this commentary offers an entirely new interpretation of First and Second Timothy and Titus. Contemporary scholarship continues to debate the authenticity and connection of the two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus. Stefan Krauter critically engages with these current discussions and carefully weighs the respective positions. On the basis of the available evidence - both within the texts themselves and in external sources - a definitive judgment is not possible; an assessment, however, can be ventured: the three letters are read as a deliberately composed pseudepigraphical letter collection that, in the second century, supplemented the ten other Pauline letters already in circulation as a corpus. The unknown author concisely summarizes the central ideas of the earlier Pauline letters. He develops their themes in linguistically innovative ways appropriate to his own time and brings them into dialogue with motifs drawn from the Gospel tradition. In this way, he tries to influence the subsequent reception of Paul. His writings are not a forgery in the sense of fabricating a Pauline intervention in specific second-century controversies. Rather, they give rise to a constructed image of the apostle as the founder of the Christian community who shapes its future by instructing his co-workers. Stefan Krauter situates the letters within the literature and culture of imperial antiquity, with particular emphasis on their philological, cultural and religio-historical interpretation.