80 stanley e. porter
Corinth in rom 16:21–23, but does not mention titus, so, according to this
view, this must indicate that titus had already gone to Crete. since Paul
wrote romans at the end of his stay in Corinth, titus was written either
while Paul was still in Corinth or, perhaps better, while he was sailing
down the coast of asia minor heading towards Jerusalem (this view takes
Paul’s statement in titus 1:5 to mean that he left titus to complete the
assigned task, not that he left him there physically).35 though the lack of
reference in romans is the only firm evidence for this view, the fact that
the letter to titus refers to elders and overseers (titus 1:5, 7) as does Paul
in the context of his speech at miletus delivered on his trip to Jerusalem
(acts 20:17, 28), and both speak against those who enter the church with
harmful intent (titus 1:10–12; acts 20:29–30) and for those who do good
works (titus 3:8, 14; acts 20:33–34), may also support a common time of
composition.36
there are several potential problems with this reconstruction as well.
the problems noted for the proposal regarding 1 timothy by van Bruggen
apply equally here for his theory regarding titus—the theory requires an
otherwise unknown one-year gap in the acts chronology that is not self-
evident in the text. a second problem is that the thread of evidence of
titus’s name missing from the book of romans is a slender one on which
to hang much of a theory, as proposed by reicke and robinson. further,
some of the other parallels that they suggest regarding conceptual simi-
larities between titus and events in acts on the way to Jerusalem are not
nearly as clear in the greek text as they are in the summaries provided
by others—for example, luke uses the term elder in acts 20:19, not Paul,
and the enemies who enter the church are not described similarly in titus
and in acts 20. finally, there is the recurring issue of placement of titus in
relation to the other Pauline letters. By this hypothesis, according to van
Bruggen, titus along with 1 timothy is written between 1 Corinthians and
2 Corinthians. some might see the placement of two personal letters (or
letters to co-workers, as towner prefers that they be called)37 as possibly
mitigating the difficulty of only one letter intervening (if it is a problem
in light of Johnson’s comments on the similarities, noted above). there
is something to be said for the argument that the differences between a
personal and a church letter might account for some of the differences.
however, the more letters that are placed between 1 and 2 Corinthians the
more difficult it is to account for how 2 Corinthians seems to follow on as
35 reicke, Re-examining Paul’s Letters, 68–73.
36 robinson, Redating the New Testament, 81.
37 towner, Letters to Timothy and Titus, 88–89.
