these difficulties are the following:
(1.) Whoever carefully studies these three epistles in their
connection with each other, and in contrast with the other
Pauline epistles, must be profoundly impressed with the
conviction that they all belong, as it respects style and tone
of thought, to the same period of the apostle's life; and, as it
respects subject-matter, to the same era when the churches were
troubled by the same forms of error. But if we assume that they
were written during that part of Paul's ministry of which Luke
has left us the record, the second to Timothy must be widely
separated from the other two. That was certainly written during
Paul's last imprisonment near the close of his life. But when he
wrote the first to Timothy and that to Titus he was at liberty
and prosecuting his missionary labors in Asia Minor and the
vicinity. It must have been then, upon this assumption, during
his third missionary tour (when Apollos appears for the first
time, Acts 18:24 compared with Titus 3:13), and before his last
recorded journey to Jerusalem, his arrest there, his two years'
imprisonment at Cesarea, his voyage to Rome, and his
imprisonment there for the space of at least two more years.
(2.) There is no part of Paul's history "between his first visit
to Ephesus and his Roman imprisonment, which satisfies the
historical conditions implied in the statements of any one of
these epistles." Conybeare and Howson, vol. 2, Appendix 1. The
student may see the arguments on one side in Davidson's
Introduction to the New Testament; and on the other in Alford,
and other critical commentators. Reference may also be made to
the biblical dictionaries.
(3.) Upon the assumption that the first epistle to Timothy, whom
Paul had left in charge of the Ephesian church, was written
_before_ his recorded imprisonments at Cesarea and Rome, it must
be earlier than his farewell address to the elders of Ephesus,
and also his epistle to the Ephesians. But the contents of the
epistle manifestly point to a later period, when the errors in
doctrine and practice which he had predicted (Acts 20:29, 30),
but of which he takes no notice in his epistle to the Ephesians,
had already begun to manifest themselves. The more one compares
with each other these two epistles, the deeper must his
convi
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