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Roman Crete and the Letter to Titus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

George M. Wieland
George M. Wieland
Affiliation:
Carey Baptist College and Laidlaw-Carey Graduate School, 473 Great South Road, Penrose, Auckland 1642, New Zealand email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Crete is rarely taken seriously as a plausible actual destination for the NT letter to Titus. Investigation of Roman Crete, however, yields intriguing points of contact with puzzling features of the letter. Patterns of social organisation on the island correlate closely to the structure of behavioural instruction in Titus 2.1–10, suggesting that it might have been shaped specifically to that environment. Unusual elements of the major theological statements in Titus correspond to aspects of Cretan religion in ways that could represent intentional engagement. There are implications for identifying the letter's provenance and interpreting it as a missionary document.

Keywords

TitusCretehousehold codeZeusArtemisIsis
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 338 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Houlden, J. L., The Pastoral Epistles (Handsworth: Penguin, 1976; repr. London: SCM, 1983) 142Google Scholar.

2 Dibelius, M. and Conzelmann, H., The Pastoral Epistles (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 153Google Scholar.

3 Quinn, J. D., The Letter to Titus (AB 35; New York: Doubleday, 1990) 17Google Scholar.

4 Quinn, Titus, 16.

5 Oberlinner, L., Titusbriefe, Die Pastoralbriefe 2.3 (HTK 11.2; Freiburg: Herder, 1996) 21–2Google Scholar.

6 Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 153.

7 Prent, M., Cretan Sanctuaries and Cults: Continuity and Change from Late Minoan IIIC to the Archaic Period (Religion in the Graeco-Roman World 154; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005) 613CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 L. Vance Watroud and Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou, ‘Mesara Romana (150bc–ad400)’, 351–8 in Watrous, L. Vance, Hadzi-Vallianou, Despoina and Blitzer, Harriet, The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete (Monumenta Archaeologica 23; Cotsen Institute of Archaeology: University of California, 2004) 357Google Scholar. In interpeting Strabo his universalising and, hence, romanising tendency has to be taken into account (see Katherine Clarke's illuminating discussion of Strabo, along with Polybius and Posidonius, in Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World [Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University, 1999], 341, where she describes their ‘concern to express the unity of the Roman world’).

9 Francis, J. and Harrison, G. W. M., ‘Review Article: Gortyn: First City of Roman Crete’, American Journal of Archaeology 107.3 (2003) 487–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar (487), referring particularly to work over the past two decades of the Archaeological School of Athens and the Italian Archaeological Mission under the direction of Professor A. Di Vita, published in Gortina Vols. 2, 3, 4, 5 (Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente 7, 8, 10, 12; Padua: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1997–2001). See also the brief description of recent work by Bingham, A., ‘Crete's Roman Past’, History Today 45 (1999) 45Google Scholar. Work is also underway on Roman Knossos, led by Dr Ken Wardle of Birmingham University (reports of current work are available at http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aha/kaw/Knossos/job11.htm – accessed 2.4.09). Alcock, Susan E. discusses aspects of Hellenistic and Roman Crete and their relationship to earlier Cretan periods in ‘Cretan Inventions’, Chapter 3 of Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002) 99–131Google Scholar; see references to other work on Roman Crete on p. 105 n. 10.

10 Results of the on-going excavations of Gortyn are being made more widely accessible by Cretan archaeologist Dr. Antoni Vasilakis in a series of both technical and popular publications, e.g. Gortyn (Iraklio: V. Kouvadis – V. Manouras, n.d).

11 See Willetts, R. F., ed., The Law Code of Gortyn (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and more recently A. S. Vasilakis, The Great Inscription of the Law Code of Gortyn (Heraklion: Mystis, n.d.), with bibliography.

12 One find that recently gained wide media coverage was archaeologist Anna Micheli's discovery of marble statues of the goddesses Athena and Hera dating from the Roman period, lying in the theatre where they had fallen during an earthquake that destroyed much of the city in 367 ce. See newspaper report by Kate Roberts, ‘Important Find at Gortyn’, Crete Gazette, December 2005, 4–5 (http://www.cretegazette.com/pdf/news2005dec.pdf – accessed 2.4.09).

13 Dibelius, Martin, An die Kolosser, an die Epheser, an Philemon (HNT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1913)Google Scholar.

14 See, e.g., Schrage, W., ‘Zur Ethik der neutestamentlichen Haustafeln’, NTS 21 (1974) 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lürhmann, D., ‘Neutestamentliche Haustafeln und Antike Ökonomie’, NTS 27 (1981) 83–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Witherington, Ben III objects that, ‘while discussion of household management was a standing topic in antiquity, both before and after the New Testament era, I can find no direct evidence of a household table and certainly nothing like what we find in the New Testament with reciprocal pairs that are commanded directly’. Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990) 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Useful surveys are provided by Verner, David C., ‘The Haustafeln in Previous Research’, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles (SBLDS 71; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1983), 16–23Google Scholar; Balch, David L., ‘Household Codes’, in Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament (ed. Aune, David E.; SBLSBS 21; Atlanta: Scholars, 1988) 25–50Google Scholar; I. Howard Marshall, Excursus 7: ‘Household Codes and Station Codes’, The Pastoral Epistles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999) 231–6.

16 Barrett, C. K., The Pastoral Epistles (NCB; Oxford: Clarendon, 1963) 134Google Scholar.

17 The members of this community are described as ‘those who have come to believe in God’ (οἱ πϵπιστϵυκότϵς θϵῳ῀, 3:8).

18 Young, F., The Theology of the Pastoral Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994) 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 1 Tim 3.15; cf. the depiction of the church leader as God's οἰκονόμος in Titus 1.7.

20 von Lips, H., ‘Die Haustafel als “Topos” im Rahmen der urchristlichen Paränese: Beobachtungen anhand des 1.Petrusbriefes und des Titusbriefes’, NTS 40 (1994) 261–80 (277)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Marshall's analysis (Pastoral Epistles, 235).

22 Verner, Household, 91. Pertinent is Lincoln's, A. T. complaint in relation to Colossians, that ‘while considerable attention has been paid to the origins of the household code, very little has been given to the function of the code’ (‘The Household Code and Wisdom Mode of Colossians’, JSNT 74 [1999] 93–112, 93Google Scholar).

23 The literary sources for these practices are Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.142–43 (citing Dosiades, an earlier historian of Crete, and an otherwise unknown work by Pyrgion, Cretan Customs), Strabo 10.4, 20–22 (citing the fourth-century bce historian Ephorus), and Aristotle Pol. 2.10 (fourth century bce). On Strabo see n. 8 above. There are complex issues regarding the use of Athenaeus as an historical source. Writing in Rome in the late second or early third century ce (and therefore after the NT period) his ‘dinner-table discussions’ preserve fragments of several hundred earlier works (mostly before the NT period). Students of earlier periods for whom Athenaeus's fragments comprise their primary literary sources have to assess the accuracy with which Athenaeus has preserved them. The results are mixed. On the one hand it has been claimed that ‘his use of notes, and the potential accuracy that suggests, is evident from identical fragments separated by many books’ (Yarrow, Liv Mariah, Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on Roman Rule [Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University, 2006], 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Christopher Pelling, however, offers examples of Athenaeus ‘recasting his materials in substantial ways’ (‘Fun with Fragments: Athenaeus and the Historians’, Athenaeus and his World [ed. David Braund and John Wilkins; Exeter: University of Exeter, 2000], 171–90 [188]). Gorman, Similarly Robert J. and Gorman, Vanessa, ‘The Tryphê of the Sybarites: A Historiographical Problem in Athenaeus’, JHS 127 (2007) 38–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, conclude that to the accounts of the fall of Sybaris in his sources Athenaeus (or an intermediary) has added a moralising explanation of that demise as a consequence of ennervating luxury. For the purposes of the present investigation, however, the issue is less the accuracy of Athenaeus's reproduction of older sources than the extent to which Athenaeus's descriptions reveal realities of life in the Mediterranean during the Roman period nearer to his own time. Born in Naucritus, Egypt, a student in Alexandria and writing in Rome, Athenaeus was well placed to acquire current knowledge of the Mediterranean world. It is quite likely that he might even have called in on Crete which was a regular stopping point on the shipping lane from Egypt to Greece and Rome (see Erdkamp, Paul, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political, and Economic Study [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2005], 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Recent archaeological studies add credibility to the view that distinctive features of Cretan life as represented by Athenaeus continued to pertain during the Roman period relevant to the present investigation (see n. 8 above).

24 Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, 634–5. Cretan maturation rites, specifically the ἁρπαγή with its apparent institutionalisation of paedophile rape, were notorious in the ancient Mediterranean world. See A. Bowie, ‘Religion and Politics in Aeschylus’ ΟΡΕΣΤΕΙΑ', CQ ns 43 (1993) 10–31; cf. J. Bremner, ‘Paederasty’, Arethusa 13 (1980) 279–98.

25 George Forrest describes military training in archaic Sparta, where a child was ‘completely robbed of home and family between the ages of five and thirty and even thereafter compelled to devote his days to military training and his evenings to the company of his messmates’. He notes that ‘in Crete…many close similarities to Spartan customs can be seen’. (‘Greece: The History of the Period’, Archaic, The Oxford History of the Classical World [ed. Boardman, John, Griffin, Jasper, and Murray, Oswyn; Oxford: Oxford University, 1986], 19–49 [27]Google Scholar).

26 Willetts, R. F., The Cambridge Ancient History 3.3 (ed. Boardman, J. and Hammond, N. G. L.; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2nd ed. 1982) 227Google Scholar.

27 E.g. Josephus Ant. 13.86, 129.

28 S. V. Spyridakis writes, ‘Crete was one of the leading centers of piracy and the slave trade in the Eastern Mediterranean throughout the Hellenistic Age’. He supplies evidence for Jewish slaves, possibly prisoners of war, on Crete in the second century bce (‘Notes on the Jews of Gortyna and Crete’, ZPE 73 [1988] 171–5 [172–3 n. 16]).

29 See Appian Bell. civ. 5.6.1.

30 Osiek, Carolyn and MacDonald, Margaret Y. with Tulloch, Janet H., A Woman's Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 13Google Scholar.

31 See the discussion of age categories in the Greco-Roman environment and in a range of NT documents in Barclay, John M. G., ‘There is Neither Old Nor Young? Early Christianity and Ancient Ideologies of Age’, NTS 53.2 (2007) 225–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Barclay comments that ‘Titus 2.1–5 represents many of the classical assumptions about age’. This pertains to the instructions both to the older men and to older women. The older women, however, though urged to ‘control their tongues and their appetites for drink’, also ‘have a crucial role to play in socialising the younger generation of wives (αἱ ναι) into the proper family ethos, to ensure that they are domestic, motherly, and obedient to their husbands’ (237).

32 Quinn, Titus, 134.

33 Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, 636.

34 See Alcock, Archaeologies of the Greek Past, 124–8. She argues that Zeus traditions, along with those of the other iconic Cretan figures, Minos, and the Trojan War heroes, ‘became more emphasized, evidently at the expense of other, less widely compelling memories, in the early Roman era’ (128, Alcock's emphasis).

35 Κρῆτϵς ἀϵι ψϵῦσται · καὶ γὰρ τάϕον, ὦ ἄνα σϵιο κρῆτϵς τϵκτήναντο σὺ δὲ οὐ θάνϵς· σσι γὰρ ἀαι. Callimachus Hymn. Jov. 1.8–9. See Heyworth, S., ‘Deceitful Crete: Aeneid 3.84 and the Hymns of Callimachus’, Classical Review ns 43 (1993) 255–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkinson, N., ‘Callimachus's Hymn to Zeus’, CQ 34 (1984) 139–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Faber, Reiner, ‘ “Evil Beasts, Lazy Gluttons”: A Neglected Theme in the Epistle to Titus’, WTJ 67 (2005) 135–45 (136)Google Scholar.

36 See Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 136–7 for references and discussion; Quinn comments that ‘the mendacious character of the Cretans was a byword in the Greek language’ (Titus, 108).

37 E.g. Plutarch Aem. 26.

38 E.g. Aesop Fab. 193; Polybius 8.19; Plutarch Aem. 23.10; Lys. 20.2.

39 Simpson, E. K., The Pastoral Epistles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary (London: Tyndale, 1954) 100Google Scholar; cf. Kelly, J. N. D., The Pastoral Epistles: I & II Timothy and Titus (BNTC; London: A. & C. Black, 1963) 234Google Scholar.

40 Will, F., ‘Notes from Crete’, Arion 1 (1962) 74–83 (77–8)Google Scholar.

41 On this and other background see Sanders, I. F., Roman Crete: An Archaeological Survey and Gazetteer of Late Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Crete (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1982Google Scholar).

42 It is certainly not necessary to argue as E. F. Scott does that a real Cretan destination should be ruled out on the grounds that a missionary ‘would not have gone to work by insulting their country, as he does here’. The Pastoral Epistles (MNTC; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936) 157. Cf. Quinn, Titus, 109: ‘The bitter hyperbole of the argument at this point makes it difficult to believe that the author of Titus seriously envisioned the persuasion and conversion of Cretan opponents to the Pauline mission’.

43 The works of Philo and Josephus illustrate the currency of Homer in the Hellenistic Jewish environment. Philo calls Homer ‘the most illustrious of all the Greek poets’ (Mut. 179) or simply ‘the poet’ (Migr. 156; Q.G. III.16), and quotes often from the Iliad (Conf. 170; Migr. 156; Contemp. 17; Aet. 132; Prov. 2.7) and the Odyssey (Migr. 194; Mut. 179; Contemp. 40; Aet. 37; Legat. 80; QG 3.3, 16): cf. Josephus, A.J. 7.67; C. Ap. 1.12; 2.14, 155, 256.

44 On the notable success of Zeus Hypsistos in Greece and Asia Minor in Roman times see Grijalvo, Elena Muñiz, ‘Elites and Religious Change in Roman Athens’, Numen 52.2 (2005) 255–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 In the OT Balaam confesses, ‘God is not a human being, that he should lie’ (Num 23.19) and Ps 89.35 (LXX 88.36) has God declare, ‘Once and for all I have sworn in my holiness; I will not lie to David!’ (ϵἰ τῷ Δαυιδ ψϵύσομαι). In the NT, Heb 6.18 cites God's promise and oath as two things in which ‘it is impossible that God would prove false’ (ἀδύνατον ψϵύσασθαι [τὸν] θϵόν). In both Hebrews and Titus the considerations that buttressed OT faith in God's promises now support a faith that interprets them in Christian terms (Titus 3.6; Heb 6.11–12, 17).

46 As suggested by Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, 126. Faber (‘ “Evil Beasts, Lazy Gluttons” ’, 135–45) develops the argument that in citing Callimachus's accusation the author of Titus is implying that just as Cretans held heterodox views in relation to traditional beliefs about Zeus, now ‘the false teachers hold theological convictions that are opposed to the truth’ (138).

47 R. M. Kidd refers to traditions of Zeus's deception, concluding, ‘And that Titus's biblically unique reference to the Christian God as being “unlying” stands in self-conscious contradistinction to a chief deity whom Titus’ Paul would consider to be an immoral liar I consider to be altogether likely' (‘Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Bellies’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 21 [1999] 185–209 [198]). Cf. P. H. Towner's suggestion that the reference to a God who does not lie ‘could well lampoon the character of the Zeus of Cretan tales, who in fact did lie to have sexual relations with a human woman’ (The Letters to Timothy and Titus [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006], 670).

48 Breytenbach, C., ‘Zeus und der lebendige Gott: Anmerkungen zu Apostelgeschichte 14.11–17’, NTS 39.3 (1993) 396–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He writes, ‘Paulus und Barnabas verkündigen nun, daß der lebendigen Gott “vom Himmel her…durch Regen fruchtbare Zeiten (gab)”. Der lebendigen Gott ist ὁ ἀγαθουργῶν, nicht Ζϵὺς Καλακαγαθίος. Er ist der wetterbestimmende Himmelsgott, der durch Regen fruchttragende Zeiten gibt (διδοὺς…καιροὺς καρποϕόρους) und eben nicht Zeus, der auch Phrygien, Pisidien, Isauria und Lykaonien als Wettergott verehrt wurde und für den in Ostphrygien die Namen Καρποδότης, ᾿Επικάρπιος, Εὔκαρπος und sogar Καρποϕόρος belegt sind’ (408). ‘Es ist eine berechtigte Frage, ob die Rede in Apg 14 nicht von einer Anti-Zeus-Tendenz her gestaltet wurde’ (409).

49 See Pliny Nat. 8.83; Plutarch Inim. util. 86c.

50 Quinn, Titus, 108; Kidd, ‘Titus as Apologia’, 190; Towner, Timothy and Titus, 701.

51 Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, 636.

52 Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, 635.

53 Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries, 638.

54 Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, 268–9.

55 For an extended treatment see M. C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Martin Classical Lectures ns 2; Princeton: Princeton University, 1994).

56 ‘In the context of the letter to Titus these two clusters are mutually defining: the whole saying at 1:12 about Cretans being “liars, beasts, and bellies” sets up the sweeping theological statement at 2:12 about grace coming to teach us to live “soberly” (i.e. not as bellies), “justly” (i.e. not as beasts), and “piously” (i.e. not as liars)’ (Kidd, ‘Titus as Apologia’, 186).

57 For discussion see, e.g., the excursus, ‘Rebirth’, Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 148–50; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, 316–22; Oberlinner, Titusbrief, 173–5; Quinn, Titus, 218–26; Pearson, B. W. R., ‘Baptism and Initiation in the Cult of Isis and Serapis’, in Baptism, the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour of R. E. O. White (ed. Porter, S. E and Cross, A. R.; JSNTSS 171; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999) 42–62Google Scholar.

58 Details are given in Vasilakis, Gortyn, 95–8. Another temple in the praetorium, formerly assumed to be devoted to Augustus, has recently been reinterpreted as a second temple to an Egyptian goddess, possibly Isis (Vasilakis, The Great Inscription of the Law Code of Gortyn, 29–30).

59 ‘By the middle of the 2nd century B.C.E., the cult of Isis had become universal and had spread throughout the Hellenistic Roman world’ (Tripolitis, A., Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 29Google Scholar). See also Solmsen, F., Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salditt-Trappmann, R., Tempel der ägyptischen Götter in Griechenland und an der westküste Kleinasiens (Leiden: Brill, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reporting studies of over fifty temples spread over a wide geographical area. An account of the popularity of Isis worship and discussion of points of contact with the NT is provided by McCabe, Elizabeth A., An Examination of the Isis Cult with Preliminary Exploration into New Testament Studies (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008)Google Scholar.

60 Multis et variis exanclatis laboribus magnisque Fortunae tempestatibus et maximis actus procellis ad portum Quietis et aram Misericordiae tandem, Luci, venisti.

61 See the description in McCabe, Examination of the Isis Cult, 7–13.

62 See Wild's, R. A. full-length study, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis (Leiden: Brill, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis, 43–4. See p. 134 for a plan of the Gortyn temple (following Salditt-Trappmann) identifying the Nile water crypt.

64 On βαπτίζω as an intensive of βάπτω with the sense of ‘to immerse’, see A. Oepke, ‘βάπτω, κτλ’, TDNT 1.529–46 (530).

65 See Quinn, Titus, 225–6; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, 320–3; also my discussion in The Significance of Salvation: A Study of Salvation Language in the Pastoral Epistles (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006) 229–32.

66 Wild, Water in the Cultic Worship of Isis and Serapis, 146. While the association with the Nile and renewal of life is distinctive to Isis, ritual washing is of course a feature of many religions and cults. Another local example is found in Lebena, Gortyn's port, whose Asklepeion drew supplicants from around the Mediterranean world in quest of healing through bathing and epiphany (see Vasilakis, Gortyn, 95–7, 133–9).

67 CIG 2555.9 = Inscriptiones Creticae 3, 49–52. Quinn, Titus, 77–8, notes the reference but makes no comment on its Cretan location.

68 A comparison may be made with the issue of local terms in the book of Acts. See Hemer, Colin J., The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (WUNT 49; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989)Google Scholar particularly Chapter 4. ‘Types of Knowledge Displayed in Acts’ (101–58); Chapter 5, ‘The Evidence of Historical Details in Acts’ (159–220); and the excursus, ‘Names and Titles in Acts’ (221–43).

69 Homer, Iliad 2.649. Gill, D. W. J. summarises information about the πόλϵις of Roman Crete in ‘A Saviour of the Cities of Crete: The Roman Background to the Epistle to Titus’, The New Testament in its First Century Setting: Essays on Context and Background in Honour of B. W. Winter on his 65th Birthday (ed. Williams, P. J. et al. ; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) 220–30 (222–7)Google Scholar.

70 Dunn, J. D. G., ‘Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul's Letter to the Galatians’, JBL 112 (1993) 459–77 (461)Google Scholar.

71 On μάλιστα see Campbell, R. A., ‘ΚΑΙ ΜΑΛΙΣΤΑ ΟΙΚΕΙΩΝ—A New Look at 1 Timothy 5.8’, NTS 41 (1995) 157–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Skeat, T. C., ‘Especially the Parchments: A Note on 2 Timothy 4.13’, JTS ns 30 (1979) 173–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Fee, G. D., 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (NIBC; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988) 11Google Scholar. G. A. Couser suggests that the approach is preventative rather than corrective (‘God and Christian Existence in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus’ [PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 1992], 134).

73 Josephus A.J. 17.327; B.J. 2.103; Vita 76 (describing his third wife as a Jew from a notable Cretan family); Philo Legat. 282. See also 1 Macc 15.23 and Acts 2.11.

74 Spyridakis, S. V., Ptolemaic Itanos and Hellenistic Crete (University of California Publications in History 82; Berkeley: University of California, 1970) 102 n. 169Google Scholar. The suggestion is developed and further evidence adduced in the same writer's ‘Notes on the Jews of Gortyna and Crete’, ZPE 73 (1988): 171–5.

75 Θ. Β. Τζϵδακης, ‘Συντομος ἱστορια της πισκοπης Κνοσου’, Κρητικα Χρονικα ΚΑ (1969) 333–50 (334).

76 See brief discussions in, e.g., Lock, W. A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924) 158Google Scholar; Marshall, Pastoral Epistles, 343; Oberlinner, Titusbriefe, 197–8; Mounce, W. D., Pastoral Epistles (WBC; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000) 458Google Scholar.

77 Willetts, CAH 3.3: 237.

78 Bonny Thurston represents this approach when she affirms that, ‘[t]he writer of Titus is primarily concerned with church order’ (‘The Theology of Titus’, HBT 21.2 [1999] 171–84 [183]). Cf. Verner, Household, 92–107; Quinn, Titus, 128; Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 408.

79 Chiaoek Ho argues for a missionary orientation of all three Pastoral Epistles in his PhD dissertation, ‘Do the Work of an Evangelist: The Missionary Outlook of the Pastorals’ (University of Aberdeen, 2000), and in his chapter in Entrusted With the Gospel: Paul's Theology in the Pastoral Epistles (ed. A. J. Köstenberger and T. L. Wilder; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, forthcoming).