In his letter to the Philippians, Polycarp of Smyrna offers a reading of 1 Timothy 6 in which he uses the term ‘the commandment’ as an apparent reference to the practice of almsgiving. Polycarp's Philippians, therefore, offers important and heretofore neglected evidence that supports recent contentions that ‘the commandment’ in 1 Tim 6.14 is almsgiving.

It is generally agreed among contemporary scholars that the modern critique of the authorship claim of the New Testament letters addressed to Timothy and Titus originated in early nineteenth-century Germany with the studies of Schmidt and Schleiermacher on 1 Timothy. However, a late eighteenth-century study by the British clergyman Edward Evanson challenges this consensus as it proves Titus to have been suspect of pseudonymity before. This ‘new’ perspective found in Evanson's neglected source also nuances the common assumption that from its very beginnings the critical campaign against the letters' authenticity was mainly driven by linguistic considerations.

Christian and Jewish sources of late antiquity employ ἡ ἐντολή as a term for almsgiving. The development of the locution passes through at least two stages before reaching semantic maturity around the fourth or fifth century. Tobit and Ben Sira record the early notion of charity as a paradigmatic precept, while the Didache attests to a more stabilised and syntactically developed, but still transitional, expression. The use of ἐντολή in 1 Tim 6.14 does not belong to the mature usage, and Test. Ash. 2.8 is a problematic reference point (pace Nathan Eubank). The Didache is more helpful in contextualising the NT evidence.

This article examines the relationships between adornment, gender and honour in the Graeco-Roman world in order to provide a broad context for understanding the attempts to curtail women's adornment in 1 Tim 2.9 and 1 Pet 3.3. It argues that while many male writers criticize women who adorn themselves, often accusing such women of luxuria, not all women shared such a perspective. Rather, women may well have valued jewellery, fine clothes and elaborate hair as means of conveying status and honour, and as important forms of economic power. These factors require consideration when attempting to understand why the authors of 1 Timothy and 1 Peter counsel women to avoid gold, pearls, braided hair and fine clothing.