164 jermo van nes
it requires too much imagination, because “[n]ot one point in the hypo-
thetical reconstruction is based on fact.”46 As Charles Moule expressed
his reservation:
I must confess that it amazes me that such a solution has gained wide cur-
rency, for it presupposes (what to the best of my knowledge there is not a
shred of evidence to support) that Paul wrote these little scraps on sepa-
rated, detached papyri; and, even if that could be established, it requires
us to believe that they were kept by the recipients—another improbable
assumption; and finally, it asks us to picture an imitator going round and
collecting them and copying them into the letter he had fabricated at points
so captiously selected that they have puzzled commentators ever since.47
Moreover, Guthrie has shown that when the supposed Pauline fragments
are ordered chronologically, they contradict each other.48 Werner Küm-
mel notes:
The ordering of these fragments, which only hint at their situation, within
the life of Paul as it is known to us is at best only hypothetically possible. No
certainty is to be gained as to whether a section really could be a genuine
fragment because it fits into a situation which we know, and there simply is
no other criterion of authenticity in this case.49
William Mounce asks why there are no genuine Pauline fragments in
1 Timothy if it “contains most of the theology that is supposedly relevant
to the second century.” All fragments considered authentic by Harrison
are inserted at the end of Titus and scattered throughout 2 Timothy. The
latter, however, “contains almost none of the relevant theology but the
majority of the allegedly authentic historical fragments.”50
David Cook argues that even if there was genuine material embed-
ded in some of the PE the writing style of each individual fragment as
identified by Harrison better fits the language of the PE than that of the
non-Pastoral Paulines. Whereas Harrison’s fragment theory was primarily
based on vocabulary statistics, Cook focused in particular on differences
in vocabulary usage. To give but a few examples:
46 Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, cxxi.
47 C. F. D. Moule, “The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles: A Reappraisal,” BJRL 47 (1965): 448.
48 Cf. D. Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (rev. ed.; Leicester: Apollos, 1990), 639–41.
49 W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (rev. ed.; trans. H. C. Kee;
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1975), 385.
50 Cf. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, cxxii.