Herderlijke regel of inburgeringscursus? Een bijdrage aan het onderzoek naar de ethische richtlijnen in 1 Timoteüs & Titus

Within the debate about Paul’s authorship, Klinker concentrates on one specific point of debate: the question whether the Pastoral Epistles are intended as “pastoral instruction” of Paul to his collaborators Timothy and Titus, or as documents arising at a later time that promote a kind of “assimilated” lifestyle for Christians. “Because of the delay of Christ’s return, the need arose for a more permanent place for Christians in society—that is the currently reigning opinion. The Pastoral Epistles are then a collection of advice to believers so that they, among other things, assimilate respectably into the social conventions prevailing in that time—a kind of ‘lesson about integration.’ Until the nineteenth century people assumed that the Pastoral Epistles were a ‘pastoral rule’ and it was general accepted that Paul was the author. Subsequently the notion of the ‘lesson about integration’ gained ground and it was accepted that later Christians had Paul’s name affixed to their letters in order to lend authority to those documents.” In contemporary discussions, the “ancient” view hardly counts any longer. Nevertheless, according to Klinker, precisely this view contains much that helps explain the differences between the “conventional” advice in the Pastoral Epistles, and the advice we find in the undisputed letters of Paul. She attempts to demonstrate this by comparing the prescriptions about the man-woman relationship in 1 Timothy and Titus with those in 1 Corinthians