1. Date of the Epistles:
In regard to the date of these epistles, external and internal evidence alike go to show that they belong to practically the same period. The dates of their composition are separated from each other by not more than three or four years; and the dates of each and all of them must be close to the Neronic persecution (64 AD). If Paul was executed 67 AD (see Ramsay, Paul, 396), there is only a short interval of time between his release in 61 or 62, and his death in 67, that is a period of some 5 or 6 years, during which his later travels took place, and when the Pastoral Epistles were written. "Between the three letters there is an affinity of language, a similarity of thought, and a likeness of errors combated, which prevents our referring any of them to a period much earlier than the others" (Zahn, Introduction, II, 37).
2. Their Order:
The order in which they were written must have been 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy. It is universally acknowledged that 2 Timothy is the very last of Paul's extant epistles, and the internal evidence of the other two seems to point out 1 Timothy as earlier than Titus.
To sum up, the evidence of the early reception of the Pastoral Epistles as Pauline is very strong. "The confident denial of the genuineness of these letters--which has been made now for several generations more positively than in the case of any other Pauline epistles--has no support from tradition. .... Traces of their circulation in the church before Marcion's time are clearer than those which can be found for Romans and 2 Corinthians" (Zahn, op. cit., II, 85). The internal evidence shows that all three are from the hand of one and the same writer, a writer who makes many personal allusions of a nature which it would be impossible for a forger to invent. It is generally allowed that the personal passages in 2Ti 1:15-18; 4:9-22 are genuine. But if this is so, then it is not possible to cut and carve the epistles into fragments of this kind. Objections dating only a century back are all too feeble to overturn the consistent marks of Pauline authorship found in all three epistles, corroborated as this is by their reception in the church, dating from the very earliest period. The Pastoral Epistles may be used with the utmost confidence, as having genuinely come from the hand of Paul.
LITERATURE.
R. D. Shaw, The Pauline Epistles; A. S. Peake, A Critical Introduction to the New Testament; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age; Theodor Zahn, An Introduction to the New Testament; Marcus Dods,.Introduction to the New Testament; Weiss, Einleitung in das New Testament (English translation); C. J. Ellicott, A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles; Patrick Fairbairn, The Pastoral Epistles; John Ed. Huther, Critical and Exegetical Handbook of the Epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus; George Salmon, A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament; James Moffatt, The Historical New Testament; Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament; Adolf Julicher, An Introduction to the New Testament; Caspar Rene Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament.
The "lives" of Paul may also be consulted, as they contain much that refers to these epistles, i.e. those by Conybeare and Howson, Lewin, Farrar and others. See also Ramsay's Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen.
John Rutherfurd