Many scholars believe that Luke was a Greek physician who lived in the Greek city of Antioch in Ancient Syria, although some other scholars and theologians think Luke was a Hellenic Jew.
and further down
There is similar evidence that Luke resided in Troas, the province which included the ruins of ancient Troy, in that he writes in Acts in the third person about Paul and his travels until they get to Troas, where he switches to the first person plural. The "we" section of Acts continues until the group leaves Philippi, when his writing goes back to the third person.
What’s your source for him being from Philippi?
Um, from the Books of Acts itself, Luke became the minister of the Phillipi Community This is from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Online
But we know that he lived in Philippi for a considerable period. He first meets Paul at Troas just before the vision of the Man from Macedonia (Ac 16:10-12), and a conversation with Paul about the work in Macedonia may well have been the human occasion of that vision and call. Luke remains in Philippi when Paul and Silas leave (Ac 16:40, "They .... departed"). He is here when Paul comes back on his 3rd tour bound for Jerusalem (Ac 20:3-5). He shows also a natural pride in the claims of Philippi to the primacy in the province as against Amphipolis and Thessalonica (Ac 16:12, "the first of the district"). On the whole, then, we may consider Philippi as the home of Luke, though he was probably a man who had traveled a great deal, and may have been with Paul in Galatia before coming to Troas. He may have ministered to Paul in his sickness there (Ga 4:14). His later years were spent chiefly with Paul away from Philippi (compare Ac 20:3-28,31, on the way to Jerusalem, at Caesarea, the voyage to Rome and in Rome).
Interesting. I had not thought of reading the 'we' passages in this way, though it is certainly plausible.
I see that a number of commentators (T.W. Manson, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 23 [1939] 199;M. Hájek, Communio Viatorum 7 [1964] 261–62; F.F. Bruce NIBC [1989]Gordon Fee NICNT [1995], 393–94) consider that Luke might be the unnamed addressee of Philippians 4.3.
Interesting. I had not thought of reading the 'we' passages in this way, though it is certainly plausible.
I see that a number of commentators (T.W. Manson, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 23 [1939] 199;M. Hájek, Communio Viatorum 7 [1964] 261–62; F.F. Bruce NIBC [1989]Gordon Fee NICNT [1995], 393–94) consider that Luke might be the unnamed addressee of Philippians 4.3.
The deal of it is, in most of Paul's letters, he will specifically name individuals he knows in the community. Why he did not specifically name Luke but could have referred to him indirectly in Philippians 4:3 just seems a little out of character.
The thought I had as I read this, with no reference to the texts whatsoever, is that do we know that Paul called Luke Luke? Is Luke a pseudonym for someone named in those epistles by another name?
The thought I had as I read this, with no reference to the texts whatsoever, is that do we know that Paul called Luke Luke? Is Luke a pseudonym for someone named in those epistles by another name?
I would agree with BroJames that Luke is a real person.
I didn't ask if Luke was a real person, I don't doubt that. I queried whether Luke existed in the Epistles, under a different name.
The question was whether Paul (or whoever wrote the particular epistle) and/or Luke used a pseudonym (a different name) to refer to the doctor who wrote the books we now know as the Gospel of Luke and Acts. So whether we do see Luke in the letters, we just don't recognise him as he appears under another name?
It's ages since I read them and I struggle with the Pauline epistles anyway, so am not likely to pick them up from choice without a reason any time soon.
Again, Paul died around 64 CE and Luke died around 84 CE. Critical scholars place the date of Ephesians around 90 CE and the date of Colossians around 80 - 100 CE. 2 Timothy is around 140 CE. Therefore, the mention of Luke in Timothy is not correct.
(As has been pointed out on another thread, Luke is generally supposed to have been 84 when he died. This is not the same as suggesting he died in 84 CE.)
The grounds for giving a late date to Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles are the theory that they were not written by Paul and the dubious claim that the Pastoral Epistles represent a significantly developed Church order.
There is a circularity here. If they were written by Paul they are not late. If they are late they were not written by Paul. In my view, there is no compelling evidence either that they are late (and therefore could not have been written by Paul) or that they are not written by Paul (and therefore that they are probably late.
The impetus to see Timothy and Titus as late, and reflective of a more developed pattern of Church order finds its origin, in my view, in the theories of F.C. Baur, and his hypothesis of conflictual Pauline and Petrine Christianities. As Wikipedia states, Baur based
his ideas about the New Testament [and the New Testament Church] on the [Pseudo-]Clementines, and his ideas about the [Pseudo-]Clementines on St. Epiphanius [(c. 310–320 – 403)], who found the writings used by an Ebionite sect in the 4th century.
I find Baur's hypothesis places too much emphasis on this avowedly late material, and is too dependent on his embrace of the Hegelian philosophy of history. His love for the philosophy skews too much his reading of the evidence.
Textually, as has already been discussed on this thread, there is no good reason for seeing πρεσβυτέρους in Titus 1.5 as being a different person from the ἐπίσκοπον in Titus 1.7. There is no sense in Titus (or in 1 or 2 Timothy come to that) as has sometimes been argued as grounds for seeing these epistles as late.
In being asked to appoint elders, nothing is being expected from Timothy and Titus, beyond the practice of Paul and Barnabas noted in Acts 14 - a reference which should be seen as reflecting their typical practice, not something extraordinary.
The trouble with the language of 'priests' and 'bishops', is that imports into the New Testament language of 'elders' and 'supervisors' all sorts of connotations from the contemporary world which are alien to the world of the New Testament.
The trouble with the language of 'priests' and 'bishops', is that imports into the New Testament language of 'elders' and 'supervisors' all sorts of connotations from the contemporary world which are alien to the world of the New Testament.
Also, the verb kathistémi in Titus 1:5 is usually translated as "appoint" but in some Bibles as "ordain", which looks as though it might be an agenda-driven translation, even in the KJV.
Lamb Chopped, it is very well established by tradition and recent studies that Paul was martyred between 64 and 66 CE. If you simply google "When did St. Luke die?," it will show he died in March 84 CE. There are several biographies also listed that show he died in 84 CE. And, yes, he was 84. Tradition says he completed his gospel just before he died.
The question was when were the Pastorals written. We really do not have any dispute about when Paul or Luke died. Maybe by a couple of years, but even then it is in the margin of error. So, the latest Paul would have written the Pastorals according to tradition is 64-66. But, I argue that based on the comments about ordination (see above) and the hierarchy of church governance that did not happen until the mid-second century ie 140 plus or minus 10 years.
Now, if you want to cite the Didache. The earliest manuscript we have of it is 150 CE, and yes some people will argue it might have been written early, say around 90 CE, but that would have been well after Paul's death. The earliest the 1st Epistle of Clement is 90 CE. I could grant that the term bishop started during the second generation of the church, but the common formal office of what we would recognize as bishop remains mid second century.
Acts 20 has Paul speaking to the elders of the Ephesians and he does call them overseers--but by the time the Pastoral Epistles were written, the two terms--elders and overseers (or bishops) are differentiated.
One key argument for the later authorship is the polemic against Marcionism which developed around 140. I had already pointed out Marcion did not include the Pastoral Epistles in his canon. Obviously, because he did not agree with them. But the deal of it is Marcion considered Paul the only true apostle of Jesus. I would think he would have had problems saying that if Paul--or even Luke--wrote them (Marcian really liked the Gospel of Luke too),
Moreover, none of the other Pauline Epistles make any allusion to the heresy we know as Marcionism.
@Gramps49, that document you link to, by Neil Godfrey, mentions as one historical possibility among several (unless I'm misreading him) that the author of the Pastoral Epistles may be none other than Luke:
There are linguistic similarities across the Pastorals, the writings of Ignatius and the epistle of Polycarp that can be seen as pointing to the following:
> The Pastorals were born in the same cultural tradition as the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp
> The possibility even that the Pastorals were written by Polycarp or “Luke”
@Gramps49, that document you link to, by Neil Godfrey, mentions as one historical possibility among several (unless I'm misreading him) that the author of the Pastoral Epistles may be none other than Luke:
There are linguistic similarities across the Pastorals, the writings of Ignatius and the epistle of Polycarp that can be seen as pointing to the following:
> The Pastorals were born in the same cultural tradition as the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp
> The possibility even that the Pastorals were written by Polycarp or “Luke”
The way I read the last comment is that it was likely Polycarp that wrote the Pastorals and he was identified as the Luke in the Pastorals.
Polycarp lived from 65CE to 155CE. He would have been a second-generation Christian and would have been around 20 when Luke died, though he is considered a disciple of John. This dating would fit my argument that the Pastorals were written around 140, possibly 150, but I really have never studied him or read any of his writings.
If I can go back for a moment to the original purpose of this thread -- and reminding people again I am no expert in church history -- could we say that even if there is no hierarchical distinction between 'elders' and 'overseer', we are nevertheless seeing in the Pastoral Epistles the movement towards more stable or 'respectable' structured clerical forms in the early church? Perhaps in response to the emergence of Gnostic heresies, or scandal or an acknowledgement that a looser form of pastoring with inspired /charismatic /prophetic non-hierarchical leadership was not what was needed at this point in time.
If I can go back for a moment to the original purpose of this thread -- and reminding people again I am no expert in church history -- could we say that even if there is no hierarchical distinction between 'elders' and 'overseers', we are nevertheless seeing in the Pastoral Epistles the movement towards more stable or 'respectable' structured clerical forms in the early church? Perhaps in response to the emergence of Gnostic heresies, or scandal or an acknowledgement that a looser form of pastoring with inspired /charismatic /prophetic non-hierarchical leadership was not what was needed at this point in time.
Thank you, @MaryLouise. There is a further point about a two-tier hierarchy that I didn’t mention in my OP, on purpose, because I wanted to focus clearly on the question of the episkopos/presbuteros distinction.
As I see it, there is indeed evidence in Titus of a two-tier hierarchy, but it comes earlier, in 1:5. Titus is told to appoint elders in every town in Crete. The fact that he in charge of making appointments at the local level shows that he is, in fact, placed on a higher hierarchical level himself. So even if there is no distinction between elders and overseers, there are still two tiers, represented by Titus and the rest.
I think you’re right @MaryLouise in that Paul (and I’m satisfied that it is Paul and not a later writer) is now passing on to others a task which he has previously fulfilled in person. For this reason he has to think a bit about what is involved and set it out in writing. He is encouraging Timothy and Titus to form churches along the same lines that he has learnt to do. I’m resistant to language like ‘structured’ at this stage, and indeed ‘clerical forms’ because I think things will have varied somewhat from place to place according to the size of the Christian community in each place, and according to the culture of the different places; and because I think that the connotations of that language risks importing back into the very early church things which had not yet arisen.
Quite probably he has already given oral instruction, but he is now emphasising it and supplementing it in writing, and also responding to specific issues he has been asked about.
(An analogy might be if you go away and let a friend use your home while you’re away. You might leave them a note about the cranky heating or air conditioning, tell them about who delivers to the door, what to be careful if in the garden/yard, where keys are to be found etc. It doesn’t mark a move to a more formalised way of living, and the note might look rather different from your other notes to your friend.)
Proto-Gnosticism was around from early on as Christianity spread and was related to the widespread popularity of mystery religions. I think we see evidence of that in the letters, but not of the full-blown Gnosticism which developed later. (Which, incidentally, is another reason for not seeing them as late documents.)
And yes, @Ray Sunshine I think you’re right that what we see in Timothy and Titus is Paul advising them about how to carry out the kind of ‘apostolic’ ministry which he has been conducting, and in that sense there is a second tier.
I think you can argue from the NT that ministry in the church has threefold character (diaconal, presbyterial and episcopal) which is not inconsistent with threefold ministries found in contemporary churches. But each ministry is not necessarily exercised by different persons, and the formalisation of those into three orders of ministry is an extrapolation from that rather than directly commanded or ordained by the NT.
(‘Ordained’ is another word I’d be careful about because in contemporary English its connotations are almost exclusively those of an ecclesiastical ‘process’ in a church structure much more formalised than anything we see in the NT.)
Last night I was thinking the Letters to Timothy and Titus exhibit a three-tier system in that there are congregational elders which are overseen by a community bishop and then the writer saying he does not allow women to have authority over men seems to be like an archbishop over several bishops under his control. This seems to be very much like the Orthodox hierarchy.
That just looks to me like a classic case of reading back into the NT a much later structure which derives from it, but is also significantly different from it.
(It is a hierarchy that exists in both East and West, and even in Lutheranism.)
That just looks to me like a classic case of reading back into the NT a much later structure which derives from it, but is also significantly different from it.
(It is a hierarchy that exists in both East and West, and even in Lutheranism.)
The deal of it is, the role of the Archbishop in Roman Catholicism has been significantly reduced after the Second Vatican to more of an administrative role, not an executive role. Lutheranism also uses it as an administrative function.
True. And all of it a very long way from anything envisaged in the Pastoral Epistles where the recipients have an apostolic role in relation to establishing the church where they are, and are being advised by one more experienced in the role about the appointment of elders/supervisors.
I think you’re right @MaryLouise in that Paul (and I’m satisfied that it is Paul and not a later writer) is now passing on to others a task which he has previously fulfilled in person. For this reason he has to think a bit about what is involved and set it out in writing. He is encouraging Timothy and Titus to form churches along the same lines that he has learnt to do. I’m resistant to language like ‘structured’ at this stage, and indeed ‘clerical forms’ because I think things will have varied somewhat from place to place according to the size of the Christian community in each place, and according to the culture of the different places; and because I think that the connotations of that language risks importing back into the very early church things which had not yet arisen.
Quite probably he has already given oral instruction, but he is now emphasising it and supplementing it in writing, and also responding to specific issues he has been asked about.
snip
(‘Ordained’ is another word I’d be careful about because in contemporary English its connotations are almost exclusively those of an ecclesiastical ‘process’ in a church structure much more formalised than anything we see in the NT.)
Yes, @BroJames, I was struggling to find terms that wouldn't indicate current preoccupations or generalisations about context. Reading through this thread has reminded me again how hedged with qualifiers any NT close reading has to be, especially for someone like myself reading with a commitment to ecumenical pluralism.
Comments
Um, from the Books of Acts itself, Luke became the minister of the Phillipi Community This is from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Online
https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/L/luke-the-evangelist.html
I see that a number of commentators (T.W. Manson, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 23 [1939] 199;M. Hájek, Communio Viatorum 7 [1964] 261–62; F.F. Bruce NIBC [1989]Gordon Fee NICNT [1995], 393–94) consider that Luke might be the unnamed addressee of Philippians 4.3.
The deal of it is, in most of Paul's letters, he will specifically name individuals he knows in the community. Why he did not specifically name Luke but could have referred to him indirectly in Philippians 4:3 just seems a little out of character.
I would agree with BroJames that Luke is a real person.
The question was whether Paul (or whoever wrote the particular epistle) and/or Luke used a pseudonym (a different name) to refer to the doctor who wrote the books we now know as the Gospel of Luke and Acts. So whether we do see Luke in the letters, we just don't recognise him as he appears under another name?
It's ages since I read them and I struggle with the Pauline epistles anyway, so am not likely to pick them up from choice without a reason any time soon.
To the point about whether only males could be priests and bishops. There are these artifacts dated between 450 CE and 600 CE that certainly raise the possibility that women were ordained: https://www.ncronline.org/news/theology/researcher-artifacts-show-early-church-women-served-clergy
The grounds for giving a late date to Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles are the theory that they were not written by Paul and the dubious claim that the Pastoral Epistles represent a significantly developed Church order.
There is a circularity here. If they were written by Paul they are not late. If they are late they were not written by Paul. In my view, there is no compelling evidence either that they are late (and therefore could not have been written by Paul) or that they are not written by Paul (and therefore that they are probably late.
The impetus to see Timothy and Titus as late, and reflective of a more developed pattern of Church order finds its origin, in my view, in the theories of F.C. Baur, and his hypothesis of conflictual Pauline and Petrine Christianities. As Wikipedia states, Baur based I find Baur's hypothesis places too much emphasis on this avowedly late material, and is too dependent on his embrace of the Hegelian philosophy of history. His love for the philosophy skews too much his reading of the evidence.
Textually, as has already been discussed on this thread, there is no good reason for seeing πρεσβυτέρους in Titus 1.5 as being a different person from the ἐπίσκοπον in Titus 1.7. There is no sense in Titus (or in 1 or 2 Timothy come to that) as has sometimes been argued as grounds for seeing these epistles as late.
In being asked to appoint elders, nothing is being expected from Timothy and Titus, beyond the practice of Paul and Barnabas noted in Acts 14 - a reference which should be seen as reflecting their typical practice, not something extraordinary.
The trouble with the language of 'priests' and 'bishops', is that imports into the New Testament language of 'elders' and 'supervisors' all sorts of connotations from the contemporary world which are alien to the world of the New Testament.
Also, the verb kathistémi in Titus 1:5 is usually translated as "appoint" but in some Bibles as "ordain", which looks as though it might be an agenda-driven translation, even in the KJV.
You've just repeated this claim without answering when I asked you your authority for saying so. I'd really like to know.
The question was when were the Pastorals written. We really do not have any dispute about when Paul or Luke died. Maybe by a couple of years, but even then it is in the margin of error. So, the latest Paul would have written the Pastorals according to tradition is 64-66. But, I argue that based on the comments about ordination (see above) and the hierarchy of church governance that did not happen until the mid-second century ie 140 plus or minus 10 years.
Now, if you want to cite the Didache. The earliest manuscript we have of it is 150 CE, and yes some people will argue it might have been written early, say around 90 CE, but that would have been well after Paul's death. The earliest the 1st Epistle of Clement is 90 CE. I could grant that the term bishop started during the second generation of the church, but the common formal office of what we would recognize as bishop remains mid second century.
One key argument for the later authorship is the polemic against Marcionism which developed around 140. I had already pointed out Marcion did not include the Pastoral Epistles in his canon. Obviously, because he did not agree with them. But the deal of it is Marcion considered Paul the only true apostle of Jesus. I would think he would have had problems saying that if Paul--or even Luke--wrote them (Marcian really liked the Gospel of Luke too),
Moreover, none of the other Pauline Epistles make any allusion to the heresy we know as Marcionism.
See: https://vridar.org/2008/01/20/the-anti-marcionite-character-of-the-pastoral-epistles/
There are linguistic similarities across the Pastorals, the writings of Ignatius and the epistle of Polycarp that can be seen as pointing to the following:
> The Pastorals were born in the same cultural tradition as the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp
> The possibility even that the Pastorals were written by Polycarp or “Luke”
The way I read the last comment is that it was likely Polycarp that wrote the Pastorals and he was identified as the Luke in the Pastorals.
Polycarp lived from 65CE to 155CE. He would have been a second-generation Christian and would have been around 20 when Luke died, though he is considered a disciple of John. This dating would fit my argument that the Pastorals were written around 140, possibly 150, but I really have never studied him or read any of his writings.
Trying to sort out blip
As I see it, there is indeed evidence in Titus of a two-tier hierarchy, but it comes earlier, in 1:5. Titus is told to appoint elders in every town in Crete. The fact that he in charge of making appointments at the local level shows that he is, in fact, placed on a higher hierarchical level himself. So even if there is no distinction between elders and overseers, there are still two tiers, represented by Titus and the rest.
Quite probably he has already given oral instruction, but he is now emphasising it and supplementing it in writing, and also responding to specific issues he has been asked about.
(An analogy might be if you go away and let a friend use your home while you’re away. You might leave them a note about the cranky heating or air conditioning, tell them about who delivers to the door, what to be careful if in the garden/yard, where keys are to be found etc. It doesn’t mark a move to a more formalised way of living, and the note might look rather different from your other notes to your friend.)
Proto-Gnosticism was around from early on as Christianity spread and was related to the widespread popularity of mystery religions. I think we see evidence of that in the letters, but not of the full-blown Gnosticism which developed later. (Which, incidentally, is another reason for not seeing them as late documents.)
And yes, @Ray Sunshine I think you’re right that what we see in Timothy and Titus is Paul advising them about how to carry out the kind of ‘apostolic’ ministry which he has been conducting, and in that sense there is a second tier.
I think you can argue from the NT that ministry in the church has threefold character (diaconal, presbyterial and episcopal) which is not inconsistent with threefold ministries found in contemporary churches. But each ministry is not necessarily exercised by different persons, and the formalisation of those into three orders of ministry is an extrapolation from that rather than directly commanded or ordained by the NT.
(‘Ordained’ is another word I’d be careful about because in contemporary English its connotations are almost exclusively those of an ecclesiastical ‘process’ in a church structure much more formalised than anything we see in the NT.)
(It is a hierarchy that exists in both East and West, and even in Lutheranism.)
The deal of it is, the role of the Archbishop in Roman Catholicism has been significantly reduced after the Second Vatican to more of an administrative role, not an executive role. Lutheranism also uses it as an administrative function.
Yes, @BroJames, I was struggling to find terms that wouldn't indicate current preoccupations or generalisations about context. Reading through this thread has reminded me again how hedged with qualifiers any NT close reading has to be, especially for someone like myself reading with a commitment to ecumenical pluralism.