the problem of the pastoral epistles 155
he died just before the release of his last book, which was in 1964.12 While
his study on Polycarp’s letter enjoyed a good reputation for some time,13
Harrison is best known for his work on the PE.
2.1. The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles
Published as a revised edition of Harrison’s doctoral dissertation initially
presented to the Oxford Society of Historical Theology (and later accepted
by the University of London), The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles was “an
attempt to show how the language of the Pastoral Epistles can be used as
a key to unlock the old secret of their origin” (v). Its main thesis is that
the PE, “in anything like their present form, cannot be the direct work of
the Apostle [Paul]” (5) but originated from “a devout, sincere, and earnest
Paulinist, who lived at Rome or Ephesus and wrote during the later years
of Trajan or (? and) the earlier years of Hadrian’s reign” (8). To prove this,
Harrison advanced three lines of argument.
First, the language of the PE is shown to differ significantly from the
other New Testament letters attributed to Paul in terms of vocabulary,
grammar, and style. Grammatical and stylistic peculiarities include the
absence of anacolutha (inadequate executions of sentence structure), non-
Pauline uses of the article, and the relatively frequent use of a-privative
words. The weight of the argument, however, is primarily carried by the
disproportionate amount of peculiar words per page not found elsewhere
in the Pauline corpus. By means of an elaborate series of diagrams, Har-
rison argued that 306 of the 848 different words used in the PE (over 36%)
are not to be found in any of the non-Pastoral Paulines. Individually, it is
shown that 1 Timothy has 173 of these so-called Pastoral “hapaxes” (27.3 per
page); 2 Timothy 114 (24.4 per page); and Titus 81 (30.4 per page). For the
non-Pastoral Paulines this number ranges only from 7.5 (1 Thess) to 12.7
(Phil) per page. In addition, many of the words common to both corpora are
shown to be used differently in the PE (e.g., γράμματα, ἐπαγγέλλομαι, ἐπέχω,
καθίστημι, κοινός, μακάριος, μόρφωσις, οἶκος [θεοῦ], παρατίθημι, προσδέχομαι,
πληροφορέω, ὑποτίθημι). Harrison also lists 112 Pauline indeclinable words
as part of “Paul’s habitual modes of thought and expression” (35) which
are entirely missing in the PE. All of these peculiarities are considered
C. Spicq’s Saint Paul: Les Épitres Pastorales in JTS 49 (1948): 195–96, and an unpublished
paper entitled “Erastus and His Ledger” (1946).
12 Cf. J. L. Jones, review of Paulines and Pastorals, by P. N. Harrison, JBL 84 (1965): 90.
13 Cf. P. Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament (WUNT 2.134; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2002), 150–51.