Abstract
This is the second New Testament text to be covered in the relative new series the International Theological Commentary—a companion to the classic ICC (International Critical Commentary) series. To better understand the distinctive feature of this volume (and perhaps the ITC series as a whole) it is useful to make some comparisons between this volume under review and I. H. Marshall’s volume, The Pastoral Epistles (1999) in the ICC series. Marshall’s volume commences with a 108 page introduction covering the unity of the epistles, attestation and canonicity, the text of the epistles, genre and structure, the opposition to Paul, the ecclesiastical situation, authorship and recipients, and the theology of the epistles. By contrast, in the ITC volume, Bray’s introduction is shorter—but still a meaty 69 pages. Topics covered include the current state of scholarship, the author, Paul’s apostleship, the recipients, Paul’s key theological principle, the subject matter of the Pastoral Epistles, dating the epistles, genre and style, history of transmission and interpretation. While some topics are given different titles and arranged in a different order, the overall impression is the range of topics covered is not vastly different. Although the emphasis of Bray’s commentary, in line with the series, is on theological interpretation —Marshall also has a substantial section on the theology of the epistles. Conversely, despite the theological emphasis of Bray’s volume, he does not ignore the standard critical questions of date, authorship, and recipients. Therefore, this series should not be seen as radically different from the ICC series, or other technical commentaries.
In terms of authorship, Bray is more confident of Pauline authorship than was Marshall (who rejected Pauline authorship). Bray states, ‘It is more likely that, given the personal nature of the letters, Paul wrote them himself, without external assistance, which would account both for their similarity to each other and for the absences of the stylistic flourishes that were typical of a professional amanuensis’ (p. 9). Bray find the key theological idea expressed by Paul in the Pastoral Epistles to be the notion that ‘the church is the household of God’ (p. 30). Bray prefers a dating during the reign of Nero (54–68), with 1 Timothy and Titus being written around AD 56 or 57 ce, and 2 Timothy being written later after the great fire of Rome: ‘Paul must have sent his letter to Timothy sometime in the spring of 65’ (p. 47). Such a confident dating may come as a surprise to New Testament scholars.
Perhaps the greatest difference in comparison with Marshall’s volume occurs in the commentary section. First, there is less Greek cited and when it occurs it is transliterated. Second, there is far greater reliance on commentators across the whole range of the history of interpretation. Thus, names such as Chrysostom, Luther, and Calvin are found regularly in the commentary section alongside modern interpreters. The result is a commentary that at times feels less focused on the flow of thought within each of the three letters, and more attuned to the theological insights that later writers have seen in these writings. Of course the two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but there is a perceptible difference in emphasis. That is not to suggest that Bray is unconcerned with the argument of the letters, rather there is a greater reliance on the reception history and the interpretative tradition than one might find in several other commentaries. It is this feature that perhaps is the most obvious aspect of this commentary that allows it to offer something new among the range of existing historio-critical commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles. As such Bray’s commentary is a helpful addition to the interpretation of these fascinating letters.