The three Pastoral letters present themselves as Paul's personal correspondence, but their contents would fit better the genre of a community letter. The pseudonymous author has forged them as personal letters from ‘Paul’, because he had to reckon with his readers' critique concerning their authenticity, above all with critical scrutiny directed at possible contradictions in their circumstances of origin. Through the genre of a private letter he has attempted to concoct previously unknown letter-situations, and to make understandable the late discovery of the letters. At the same time, through the construction of three letters he has made a claim for general validity in respect of geography and time, so as to spread the ‘right meaning’ of the statements in the Corpus Paulinum.
