2 - Commentary on 1 Timothy

Summary

1 Timothy is a letter written by a pastor of coworkers, namely an apostle, to a “pastor” of bishops and deacons, Timothy, and thus indirectly becomes a pastoral letter for those in pastoral ministry. This letter, along with 2 Timothy and Titus, thus become paradigmatic letters to pastors about pastoring. Letters functioned then (as now) as the presence of the author¹ but Margaret Mitchell made the important point that authors were also envoys and thus at times more than just a presence.² Recently a more precise genre for 1 Timothy, that of the administrative letter, has been proposed.³ Such a proposal implies that this letter was designed for an audience that saw Paul as an official of an institution set in motion by the command of God. Precise identification of the genre of any of the New Testament (NT) letters more or less fits such genre specifications but how that impacts interpretation varies from scholar to scholar. We should be wary about imposing ideal genres on NT letters.