In the west of Europe there were various efforts made in the direction of non-dramatic pastoral, which it is hard to classify. Early in the 16 th century Alexander Barclay, in England, translated the Latin eclogues of Mantuanus, a scholastic writer of the preceding age. Barnabe Googe, a generation later, in 1563, published his Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonnettes, a deliberate but not very successful attempt to introduce pastoral into English literature. In France it is difficult to deny the title of pastoral to various productions of the poets of the Pléiade, but especially to Rémy Belleau’s pretty miscellany of prose and verse in praise of a country life, called La Bergerie (1565). But the final impulse was given to non-dramatic pastoral by the publication, in 1504, of the famous Arcadia of G. Sannazaro, a work which passed through sixty editions before the close of the 16th century, and which was abundantly copied. Torquato Tasso followed Beccari after an interval of twenty years, and by the success of his Arninta, which was performed b⅛fore the court of Ferrara in 1573, secured the popularity of dramatic pastoral. Most of the existing works in this class may be traced back to the influence either of the Arcadia or of the Arninta. Tasso was immediately succeeded by Alvisio Pasqualigo, who gave a comic turn to pastoral drama, and by Cristoforo Castelletti, in whose hands it grew heroic and romantic, while, finally, Guarini produced in 1590 his famous Pastor Fido, and Ongaro his fishermen’s pastoral of Alceo. During the last quarter of the 16th century pastoral drama was really a power in Italy. Some of the best poetry of the age was written in this form, to be acted privately on the stages of the little court theatres that were everywhere springing up. In a short time music was introduced, and rapidly predominated, until the little forms of tragedy, and pastoral altogether, were merged in opera.

With the reign of Elizabeth a certain tendency to pastoral was introduced in England. In Gascoigne and in Whetstone traces have been observed of a tendency towards the form and spirit of eclogue. It has been conjectured that this tendency, combined with the study of the few extant eclogues of Clément Marot, led Spenser to the composition of what is the finest example of pastoral in the English language, the Shepherd's Calendar, printed in 1579. This famous work is divided into twelve eclogues, and is remarkable because of the constancy with which Spenser turns in it from the artificial Latin style of pastoral then popular in Italy, and takes his inspiration direct from Theocritus. It is important to note that this is the first effort made in European literature to bring upon a pastoral stage the actual rustics of a modern country, using their own peasant dialect. That Spenser’s attempt was very imperfectly carried out does not militate against the genuineness of the effort, which the very adoption of such names as Willie and Cuddie, instead of the customary Damon and Daphnis, is enough to prove. Having led up to this work, the influence of which was to be confined to England, we return to Sannazaro’s Arcadia, which left its mark upon every literature in Europe. This remarkable romance, which was the type and the original of so many succeeding pastorals, is written in rich but not laborious periods of musical prose, into which are inserted at frequent intervals passages of verse, contests between shepherds on the “humile fistula di Coridone,” or laments for the death of some beautiful virgin. The characters move in a world of supernatural and brilliant beings; they commune without surprise with “i gloriosi spirti degli boschi,” and reflect with singular completeness their author’s longing for an innocent voluptuous existence, with no hell or heaven in the background.

It was in Spain that the influence of the Arcadia made itself most rapidly felt outside Italy. Gil Vicente, who was also a Portuguese writer, had written Spanish religious pastorals early in the 16 th century. But Garcilaso de la Vega is the founder of Spanish pastoral. His first eclogue, El dulce lamentar de los pastores, is considered one of the finest poems of its kind in ancient or in modern literature. He wrote little and died early, in 1536. Two Portuguese poets followed him, and composed pastorals in Spanish, Francisco de Sá de Miranda, who imitated Theocritus, and the famous Jorge de Montemayor, whose Diana (1524) was founded on Sannazaro’s Arcadia. Gaspar Gil Polo, after the death of Montemayor in 1561, completed his romance, and published in 1564 a Diana enamorada. It will be recollected that both these works are mentioned with respect, in their kind, by Cervantes. The author of Don Quixote himself published an admirable pastoral romance, Galatea, in 1584. The rise of the taste for picaresque literature in Spain towards the close of the 16th century was fatal to the writers of pastoral. In Portugal it can hardly be said that this form of literature has ever existed, although Camoens published idyls.

In France there has always been so strong a tendency towards a graceful sort of bucolic literature that it is hard to decide what should and what should not be mentioned here. The charming pastourelles of the 13th century, with their knight on horseback and shepherdess by the roadside, need not detain us further than to hint that when the influence of Italian pastoral began to be felt in France these earlier lyrics gave it a national inclination. We have mentioned the Bergerie of Rémy Belleau, in which the art of Sannazaro seems to join hands with the simple sweetness of the mediaeval pastourelle. But there was nothing in France that could compare with the school of Spanish pastoral writers which we have just noticed. Even the typical French pastoral, the Astree of Honoré d’Urfé (1610), has almost more connexion with the knightly romances which Cervantes laughed at than with the pastorals which he praised. D’Urfé had been preceded by Nicolas de Montreux, whose Bergeries de Juliette are just worthy of mention. The famous Astrée was the result of the study of Tasso’s Aminta on the one hand and Montemayor’s Diana on the other, with a strong flavouring of the romantic spirit of the Amadis. To remedy the pagan tendency of the Astrée a priest, Camus de Pontcarré, wrote a series of Christian pastorals. Of the romances which followed in the wake of the Astrée, and in which the pastoral element was gradually reduced to a minimum, a succinct but admirable account is given in Mr Saintsbury’s Short History of French Literature. The main authors in this style were Mademoiselle de Scudéry, La Calprenède, and Gomberville. Racon produced in 1625 a pastoral drama, Les Bergeries, founded on the Astree of D’Urfé.

In England the movement in favour of Theocritean simplicity which had been introduced by Spenser in the Shepherd's Calendar was immediately defeated by the success of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, a romance closely modelled on the masterpiece of Sannazaro. So far from attempting to sink to colloquial idiom, and adopt a realism in rustic dialect, the tenor of Sidney’s narrative is even more grave and stately than it is conceivable that the conversation of the most serious nobles can have ever been. In these two remarkable books, then, we have two great contemporaries and friends, the leading men of letters of their generation, trying their earliest flights in the region of pastoral, and producing typical masterpieces in each of the two great branches of that species of poetry. Henceforward, in England, pastoral took one or other of these forms. It very shortly appeared, however, that the San-nazarean form was more suited to the temper of the age, even in England, than the Theocritean. In 1583 a great impetus was given to the former by Robert Greene, who was composing his Morando, and still more in 1584 by the publication of two pastoral dramas, the Gallathea of Lyly and the Arraignment of Paris of Peele. It is doubtful whether either of these writers knew anything about the Arcadia of Sidney, which was posthumously published, but Greene, at all events, became more and more imbued with the Italiän spirit of pastoral. His Menaphon and his Never too Late are pure bucolic romances. While in the general form of his stories, however, he follows Sidney, the verse which he introduces is often, especially in the Menaphon, extremely rustic and colloquial. In 1589 Lodge appended some eclogues to his Scilla’ s Metamorphosis, but in his Rosalynde (1590) he made a much more important contribution to English literature in general, and to Arcadian poetry in particular. This beautiful and fantastic book is modelled more exactly upon the masterpiece of Sannazaro than any other in our language. The other works of Lodge scarcely come under the head of pastoral, although his Phillis in 1593 included some pastoral sonnets, and his Margarite of America (1596) is modelled in form upon the Arcadia. The Sixe Idillia of 1588, paraphrases of Theocritus, are anonymous, but conjecture has attributed them to Sir Edward Dyer. In 1598 Bartholomew Young published an English version of the Diana of Montemayor.

In 1585 Watson published his collection of Latin elegiacal eclogues, entitled Amyntas, which was translated into English by Abraham Fraunce in 1587. Watson is also the author of two frigid pastorals, Meliboeus (1590) and Amyntae Gaudia (1592). John Dickenson printed at a date unstated, but probably not later than 1592, a “passionate eclogue” called The Shepherd’s Complaint, which begins with a harsh burst of hexameters, but which soon settles down into a harmonious prose story, with lyrical interludes. In 1594 the same writer published the romance of Arisbas. Drayton is the next pastoral poet in date of publication. His Idea: Shepherd's Garland bears the date 1593, but was probably written much earlier. In 1595 the same poet produced an Endimion and Phoebe, which was the least happy of his works. He then turned his fluent pen to the other branches of poetic literature; but after more than thirty years, at the very close of his life, he returned to this early love, and published in 1627 two pastorals, The Quest of Cynthia and The Shepherd's Sirena. The general character of all these pieces is rich, but vague and un impassioned. The Queen’s Arcadia of Daniel must be allowed to lie open to the same charge, and to have been written rather in accordance with a fashion, than in following of the author’s predominant impulse. It may be added that the extremely bucolic title of Warner’s first work, Pan: his Syrinx, is misleading. These prose stories have nothing pastoral about them. The singular eclogue by Barnfield, The Affectionate Shepherd, printed in 1594, is an exercise on the theme “0 crudelis Alexi, nihil mea carmina curas,” and, in spite of its juvenility and indiscretion, takes rank as the first really poetical following of Spenser and Virgil, in distinction to Sidney and Sannazaro. Marlowe’s pastoral lyric Come live with Me, although not printed until 1599, has been attributed to 1589. In 1600 was printed the anonymous pastoral comedy in rhyme, The Maid’s Metamorphosis, long attributed to Lyly.

With the close of the 16th century pastoral literature was not extinguished in England as suddenly or as completely as it was in Italy and Spain. Throughout the romantic Jacobean age the English love of country life asserted itself under the guise of pastoral sentiment, and the influence of Tasso and Guarini was felt in England just when it had ceased to be active in Italy. In England it became the fashion to publish lyrical eclogues, usually in short measure, a class of poetry peculiar to the nation and to that age. The lighter staves of The Shepherd’s Calendar were the model after which all these graceful productions were drawn. We must confine ourselves to a brief enumeration of the principal among these Jacobean eclogues. Nicholas Breton came first with his Passionate Shepherd in 1604. Wither followed with The Shej)herTs Hunting in 1615, and Braithwaite, an inferior writer, published The Poet’s Willoιv in 1613 and Shepherd’s Tales in 1621. The mention of Wither must recall to our minds that of his friend William Browne, who published in 1613-16 his beautiful collection of Devonshire idyls called Britannia’s Pastorals. These were in heroic verse, and 1ess distinctly Spenserian in character than those eclogues recently mentioned. In 1614 Browne, Wither, Christopher Brook, and Davies of Hereford united in the composition of a little volume of pastorals entitled The Shepherd’s Pipe. Meanwhile the composition of pastoral dramas was not entirely discontinued. In 1606 Day dramatized part of Sidney’s Arcadia in his Isle of Culls, and about 1625 the Rev. Thomas Goffe composed his Careless Shepherdess, which Ben Jonson deigned to imitate in the opening lines of his Sad Shepherd. In 1610 Fletcher produced his Faithful Shepherdess in emulation of the Aminta of Tasso. This is the principal pastoral play in our language, and, in spite of its faults in moral taste, it preserves a fascination which has evaporated from most of its fellows. The Arcades of Milton is scarcely dramatic; but it is a bucolic ode of great stateliness and beauty. In the Sad Shepherd, which was perhaps written about 1635, and in his pastoral masques, we see Ben Jonson not disdaining to follow along the track that Fletcher had pointed out in the Faithful Shepherdess. With the Piscatory Eclogues of Phineas Fletcher, in 1633, we may take leave of the more studied forms of pastoral in England early in the 17 th century.

When pastoral had declined in all the other nations of Europe, it enjoyed a curious recrudescence in Holland. More than a century after date, the Arcadia of Sannazaro began to exercise an influence on Dutch literature. Johan van Heemskirk led the way with his popular Batavische Arcadia in 1637. In this curious romance the shepherds and shepherdesses move to and fro between Katwijk and the Hague, in a landscape unaffectedly Dutch. Heemskirk had a troop of imitators. Hendrik Zoeteboom published his Zaanlandsche Arcadia in 1658, and Lambertus Bos his Dordtsche Arcadia in 1662. These local imitations of the suave Italian pastoral were followed by still more crude romances, the Rotterdamsche Arcadia of Willem den Eiger, the Walchersche Arcadia of Gargon, and the Noordwijker Arcadia of Jacobus van der Valk. Germany has nothing to offer us of this class, for the Diana of Werder (1644) and Die adriatische Rosamund of Zesen (1645) are scarcely pastorals even in form.

In England the writing of eclogues of the sub-Spenserian class of Breton and Wither led in another generation to a rich growth of lyrics which may be roughly called pastoral, but are not strictly bucolic. Carew, Lovelace, Suckling, Stanley, and Cartwright are lyrists who all contributed to this harvest of country-song, but by far the most copious and the most characteristic of the pastoral lyrists is Herrick. He has, perhaps, no rival in modern literature in this particular direction. His command of his resources, his deep originality and observation, his power of concentrating his genius on the details of rural beauty, his interest in recording homely facts of country life, combined with his extraordinary gift of song to place him in the very first rank among pastoral writers; and it is noticeable that in Herrick’s hands, for the first time, the pastoral became a real and modern, instead of being an ideal and humanistic thing. From him we date the recognition in poetry of the humble beauty that lies about our doors. His genius and influence were almost instantly obscured by the Restoration. During the final decline of the Jacobean drama a certain number of pastorals were still produced. Of these the only ones which deserve mention are three dramatic adaptations, Shirley’s Arcadia (1640), Fanshawe’s Pastor Fido (1646), and Leonard Willan’s Astraea (1651). The last pastoral drama in the 17th century was Settle’s Pastor Fido (1677). The Restoration was extremely unfavourable to this species of literature. Sir Charles Sedley, Aphra Behn, and Congreve published eclogues, and the Pastoral Dialogue between Thirsis and Strephon of the first-mentioned was much admired. All of these, however, are in the highest degree insipid and unreal, and partook of the extreme artificiality of the age.

Pastoral came into fashion again early in the 18th century. The controversy in the Guardian, the famous critique on Ambrose Philips’s Pastorals, the anger and rivalry of Pope, and the doubt which must always exist as to Steele’s share in the mystification, give 1708 a considerable importance in the annals of bucolic writing. Pope had written his idyls first, and it was a source of infinite annoyance to him that Philips contrived to precede him in publication. He succeeded in throwing ridicule on Philips, however, and his own pastorals were greatly admired. Yet there was some nature in Philips, and, though Pope is more elegant and faultless, he is not one whit more genuinely bucolic than his rival. A far better writer of pastoral than either is Gay, whose Shepherd’s Week was a serious attempt to throw to the winds the ridiculous Arcadian tradition of nymphs and swains, and to copy Theocritus in his simplicity. Gay was far more successful in executing this pleasing and natural cycle of poems than in writing his pastoral tragedy of Dione or his “tragi-comico pastoral farce” of The What Tye call it (1715). He deserves a very high place in the history of English pastoral on the score of his Shepherd’s Week. Swift proposed to Gay that he should write a Newgate pastoral in which the swains and nymphs should talk and warble in slang This Gay never did attempt; but a northern admirer of his and Pope’s achieved a veritable and lasting success in Lowland Scotch, a dialect then considered no less beneath the dignity of verse. Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, published in 1725, was the last, and remains the most vertebrate and interesting, bucolic drama produced in Great Britain. The literary value of this play has been exaggerated, but it is a very clever and natural essay, and the best proof of its success as a painting of bucolic life is that it is still a favourite, after a hundred and fifty years, among lowland reapers and milkmaids.

With the Gentle Shepherd the chronicle of pastoral in England practically closes. This is at least the last performance which can be described as a developed eclogue of the school of Tasso and Guarini. It is in Switzerland that we find the next important revival of pastoral properly so-called. The taste of the 18th century was very agreeably tickled by the religious idyls of Salomon Gessner, who died in 1787. His Daphnis vend Phillis and Der Tod Abel’s were read and imitated throughout Europe. In German literature they left but little mark, but in France they were cleverly copied by Arnaud Berquin. A much more important pastoral writer is Jean Pierre Clovis de Florian, who began by imitating the Galatea of Cervantes, and continued with an original bucolic romance entitled Estelle. His eclogues had a great popularity, but it was said that they would be perfect if only there were sometimes wolves in the sheepfolds· The tone of Florian, as a matter of fact, is tame to fatuity. Neither in France nor in Germany did the shepherds and shepherdesses enjoy any considerable vogue. It has always been noticeable that pastoral is a form of literature which disappears before a breath of ridicule. Neither Gessner nor his follower Abbt were able to survive the laughter of Herder. Since Florian and Gessner there has been no reappearance of bucolic literature properly so-called. The whole spirit of romanticism was fatal to pastoral. Voss in his Luise and Goethe in Hermann und. Dorothea replaced it by poetic scenes from homely and...

1. Contents.— The Pastoral Epistles are chiefly distinguished from the other Pauline epistles by the prominence which they give to doctrine. From an objective point of view Christian teaching is “the word” (2 Tim. iv. 2), or “the word of God” (2 Tim. ii. 9), or “the doctrine of God our Saviour” (Tit. ii. 10), or “the truth” (1 Tim. iii. 15, 2 Tim. ii. 18; iv. 4; Tit. i. 14), or “the faith” (1 Tim. iv. 1). From the point of view of the individual it is “the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. ii. 25; iii. 7); and Christians are those who “believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. iv. 3). It had existed long enough to have become perverted, and hence a stress is laid upon “sound” doctrine (1 Tim. i. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 3; Tit. i. 9; ii. 1; in the plural, “sound words,” 1 Tim. vi. 3; 2 Tim. i. 13). It had also tended to become dissociated from right conduct; hence a stress is laid upon a “pure conscience” (1 Tim. i. 19; iii. 8), and the end which it endeavours to attain is “love out of a pure heart, and out of a good conscience, and out of unfeigned faith” (1 Tim. i. 5). Consequently the “things that befit the sound doctrine” are moral attributes and duties (Tit. ii. 1 sqf, and the things that are “contrary to the sound doctrine” (1 Tim. i. 10) are moral vices. This combination of sound doctrine and right conduct is “piety” (eυ<re∕3eια, 1 Tim. ii. 2; iii. 16; iv. 7, 8; vi. 5, 6, 11; 2 Tim. iii. 4) or “godliness” (θeοσcβfια, 1 Tim. ii. 10); and sound doctrine is, in other words, “the doctrine,” or “the truth, that is in harmony with piety” (1 Tim. vi. 3; Tit. i. 1). This doctrine or truth is regarded as a sacred deposit in the hands of the church or community (1 Tim. vi. 20; 2 Tim. i. 14}, and is therefore a “common faith” (Tit. i. 4), of which the church is the “pillar and stay” (1 Tim. iii. 15). Its substance appears to be given in 1 Tim. iii. 16, which has been regarded, not without reason, as a rudimentary form of creed, and possibly part of a liturgical hymn. But the church is no longer identical with “them that are being saved” or “the elect”; it is compared to “a great house” which contains vessels “some unto honour, and some unto dishonour” (2 Tim. ii. 20). It is in other words no longer an ideal community, the “Israel of God” (Gal. vi. 16), but a visible society. And, being such, its organization had come to be of more importance than before. But the nature of the organization to which these epistles point is an unsolved problem. The solution of that problem is attended by the preliminary question, which in the absence of collateral evidence cannot be definitely answered, of the relation in which Timothy and Titus are conceived to stand to the other or ordinary officers. According to a tradition mentioned by Eusebius, but for which he gives no definite authority, Timothy was “bishop” of Ephesus and Titus of Crete; according to others their position was rather that of the later “metropolitans”; and some modern writers, accepting one or other of these views, take it as part of the proof that the epistles belong to a period of the 2d century in which the monarchical idea of the episcopate was struggling to assert itself. On the other hand, it appears from the epistles themselves that the positions of Timothy and Titus were temporary rather than permanent, and that they were special delegates rather than ordinary officers (1 Tim. iii. 14, 15; iv. 13; Tit. iii. 12). For the ordinary officers the qualifications are almost all moral, and they are so similar to each other, and to the moral qualifications of all Christians, as to imply that the sharp distinctions of later times between one grade of office and another, and between the officers and the other members of the communities, were not yet developed (1 Tim. iii. 2-12; Tit. i. 6-9, possibly also ii. 2-6). The most probable solution of the difficulties which present themselves in relation to the apparent interchange of the names “bishop” and “elder,” and to the apparent double use of the word “elder,” sometimes as a title and sometimes as a designation of age, is that in these epistles there is an imperfect amalgamation of two forms of organization, Jewish and Gentile: in the former the distinction between the governing and the governed classes was mainly that of age, and the functions of the governing class were mainly those of discipline; in the latter the distinction was mainly that of functions, and the functions were mainly those of administration. (1) The distinction between elder and younger appears in regard to both men and women (1 Tim. v. 1, 2; Tit. ii. 2-6). Out of the elder men some appear to have been chosen or appointed to preside (oι πpoeστωτeς, 1 Tim. v. 17; a cognate form of the designation is found in Rom. xii. 8, 1 Thess. v. 12, and constitutes almost the only link of connexion between the organization of these and that of the other Pauline epistles), and to have constituted a collective body or “presbytery” (1 Tim. iv. 14, the word was in use to designate the Jewish councils of elders, for which the more common word was γepoυala). Their functions, like those of the corresponding officers in the Jewish communities, were probably for the most part disciplinary; to these some of them added the function of teaching (1 Tim. v. 17). The elder women also were charged with disciplinary functions; they had to “train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober-minded” (Tit. ii. 3, 4). Out of such of them as were widows some were specially entered on the roll of church-officers (κατάλογος), and formed a class which, though it did not long survive the growth of monasticism, is mentioned in almost all early documents which refer to ecclesiastical order (see Smith and Cheetham, Diet, of Chris. Antiq., s.v. “Widows”). Whether the younger men and women, or a selected number of them had, as such, corresponding duties is not clear, but an inference in favour of the supposition may be drawn from a comparison of 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, 13, Acts v. 6, 10. (2) Side by side with this, and sometimes, but not always, blended with it, was the organization which was probably adopted from the contemporary civil societies, especially those in which, as in the Christian communities, there were funds to be administered; the presiding elders, or some of them, were also “bishops” or administrators, and some of the younger men were “deacons” or servants. A bishop was “God’s steward” (Tit. i. 7); a deacon was the active helper of the bishops in both administration and discipline.

2. Language.— These epistles are distinguished from the other Pauline epistles by many peculiarities of language, of which only a few can be mentioned here. (1) In 1 Timothy there are seventy-four words which are not elsewhere in the New Testament; in 2 Timothy there are forty-six such words, and in Titus forty-eight. In the three epistles taken together there are one hundred and thirty-three words which are not found in the other Paμline epistles, though they are found elsewhere in the New Testament; and many of the most marked and frequent expressions of St Paul are absent. (2) There is a tendency which is not found elsewhere in the Pauline epistles to form unusual compounds, e.g., λoγoμαχfiν, iτepoδιδασκαλfιν, iψηλoφpoνeιν, αυτοκατάκριτος. (3) Words are used for which the other Pauline epistles invariably substitute a different, though nearly synonymous, word; e.g., 8eσπoτης is used for κύριος, κτlσμa for κτlσις. (4) The particles, which are even better tests of identity of style than nouns and verbs, are different: the Pauline γάρ is rare; ápa, ápa oυν, tτι, μηπως, πάλιν, ωσπep, are absent. (5) “In the other Pauline epistles the fulness of the apostle’s thought struggles with the expression, and causes peculiar difficulties in exposition. The thoughts slide into one another, and are so intertwined in many forms that not seldom the new thought begins before a correct expression has been given to the thought that preceded. Of this confusion there is no example in the Pastoral Epistles” (Huther, Introduction, Eng. tr., p. 10). A complete account of the linguistic peculiarities of these epistles will be found in Holtzmann, pp. 84-117.

3. Historical Difficulties.— The historical difficulties to which these epistles give rise are of two kinds:—(1) that of finding a place for them in any period of the recorded life of St Paul, and (2) that of determining the state of theological opinion to which they are relative.

(1) In regard to the first kind of difficulties, each of the three epistles has its own problems.

The data of the historical position of 1 Timothy appear to be (a) that St Paul had gone into Macedonia, (ò) that he had left Timothy at Ephesus (i. 3). The chief hypotheses which have been framed to satisfy the conditions which these data imply are the following. (1) The majority of older writers suppose that St Paul left Timothy at Ephesus when he went into Macedonia after the émeute in the theatre (Acts xx. 1). The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis are that Timothy had been sent into Macedonia (Acts xix. 22), and probably at the same time to Corinth (1 Cor. iv. 17), that he had not returned when St Paul himself reached Macedonia, inasmuch as St Paul waited for him there (1 Cor. xvi. 11), that the two were together in Macedonia when 2 Corinthians was written (2 Cor. i. 1), and that they returned together to Asia Minor (Acts xx. 4). Some of these difficulties have been met by the conjecture that Timothy never reached Corinth, but returned to St Paul at Ephesus and rejoined him in Macedonia; but the conjecture implies that Timothy disobeyed the apostle’s exhortation to tarry at Ephesus almost as soon as he had received it, and that the apostle, so far from “hoping to come unto him shortly” (1 Tim. iii. 14), was in reality intending to go to Jerusalem and to Rome (Acts xix. 21), not even calling at Ephesus on his way (Acts xx. 17). (2) It has been supposed that there was an unrecorded journey of St Paul into Macedonia during his long stay in Ephesus (Acts xix. 1-20; so Mosheim, Schrader, Wieseler, and Reuss, the last of whom makes the journey extend to Crete and Illyricum). There is little difficulty in the supposition of such a journey into Macedonia, but there is great difficulty in supposing that the epistle was written in the course of it,—first, because its language is not compatible with the idea that Timothy was merely left in temporary charge during a short absence of the apostle, and, secondly, because the epistle implies the existence of an organized community which had existed long enough to have had errors growing up in it (whereas in Acts xx. 29-30 the coming of heretical teachers is regarded as still future), and in which it was possible that a bishop should be “not a novice” (1 Tim. iii. 6). (3) It has been supposed that St Paul wrote the epistle during his imprisonment at Caesarea or at Jerusalem; but this does not avoid the difficulty which is fatal to the two preceding hypotheses, that Timothy had been left at Ephesus when the apostle was “going into Macedonia.” (4) In order to avoid this fatal difficulty some writers (especially Otto, Die geschichtlichen Verhältnisse der Pastoralbriefe, Leipsic, 1860, and Kölling, Der erste Brief Pauli an Timotheus, Berlin, 1882) have attempted a new but impossible translation of 1 Tim. i. 3, so as to make it appear that it was Timothy and not Paul that was going into Macedonia (for criticisms of this attempt see Huther’s edition of Meyer’s commentary ad loc., and Weiss in the Studien u. Kritiken for 1861, p. 577).

The data of the historical position of 2 Timothy appear to be (a) that St Paul either was or had been in Rome (i. 17), (b) that he was in prison (i. 16; ii. 9), (c) that he had already had a trial (iv. 16), (d) that he believed himself, to be near the end of his life (iv. 6), (e) that he was expecting shortly to see Timothy (i. 4; iv. 9, 21), (∕) that he had been, apparently not long before, at Troas, Corinth, and Miletus (iv. 13, 20). Upon these data two hypotheses have been framed. (1) It has been supposed that the required historical position is to be found at the beginning of the “two whole years” of Acts xxviii. 30, and that consequently the epistle was written before those to the Philippians and Colossians (so, among others, Schrader, Otto, and Reuss). The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis are chiefly two,—first, that of accounting for the complete change of tone between the close anticipation of death of 2 Tim. iv. 6 and the hopefulness of Philippians ii. 23, 24, Philemon 22, and, secondly, that of accounting for the “first defence” of 2 Tim. iii. 16; this Otto does by supposing it to be the process before Festus at Caesarea, a supposition which implies the very improbable further supposition that the process before Felix was not what was technically known as an “actio,” and that the term “make my defence” (Acts xxiv. 10) was wrongly applied by St Paul himself to his own speech. (2) It has been supposed that the required position is to be found in the period immediately succeeding the “two whole years” of Acts xxviii. 30, and that the epistle was written after those to the Philippians and Colossians (so, among others, Wieseler). One of the main difficulties in the way of this hypothesis is that it implies an interval of at least four years since the journey referred to in chap, iv., and that it is incredible that St Paul should have written to a disciple in Asia Minor to mention the casual incidents of a voyage —such as the leaving a cloak at Troas and a companion sick at Miletus—which had occurred several years before; the difficulty would not be much lessened even if the ingenious conjectures were adopted by which Wieseler endeavours to identify this voyage with that of Acts xxvii.

The data of the historical position of the epistle to Titus are (a) that Paul and Titus had been in Crete together, and that Titus had been left there, (b) that Paul was intending to winter at Nicopolis (wherever that may be, places of that name being found in several Roman provinces). Upon these data many conjectures have been built. It has been supposed that St Paul visited Crete either (1) at the cömmencement of this second missionary journey (Acts xv. 41), or (2) during his residence at Corinth (Acts xviii. 1, 8; so Michaelis and Thiersch). Each of these conjectures is met, in addition to other difficulties, by the fact, which seems fatal to it, that Apollos, who is mentioned in Titus iii. 13, was not known to Paul and his company until after the second missionary journey (Acts xviii. 24). (3) The same fact is also fatal to the supposition of Hug and others that the visit to Crete took place during the journey from Corinth to Ephesus (Acts xviii. 18,19), a supposition which is also inconsistent with the apostle’s apparent desire to reach Syria without much delay, and which requires for its support the further supposition that, although on his way to Antioch and Caesarea, he had selected the almost unknown town of Nicopolis in Cilicia to winter in. (4) It has been supposed (Credner) that the visit to Crete was made as a detour in the course of the journey from Antioch to Ephesus (Acts xviii. 22, 23; xix. 1); this is not only improbable in itself but also inconsistent with the summary of that journey: “Paul, having passed through the upper,” i.e., the inland, “country, came to Ephesus.” (5) It has been supposed that St Paul called at Crete in the course of a journey which he probably made to Corinth during his long sojourn at Ephesus (so Wieseler, who thinks that he went first to Macedonia, 1 Tim. i. 3, and thence to Corinth, Crete, and back to Ephesus; and Reuss, who thinks that the route was Ephesus, Crete, Corinth, Illyricum, Macedonia, Ephesus); but this supposition seems to be excluded by the inconsistency between the expressed intention to winter in Nicopolis (Tit. iii. 12) and the similar intention to pass the same winter at Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 6), unless the ingenious hypothesis of Wieseler be adopted that he intended to spend part of the winter in one place and the rest in the other. (6) It has been supposed that he made his journey from Macedonia to Greece (Acts xx. 1-3) by way of Crete (so Matthies); but this supposition seems to be excluded by the fact that in 2 Cor. viii. 6, 17 (which was written from Macedonia), Titus who had been with Paul in Macedonia had gone forward on his own account not to Crete but to Corinth. And all these endeavours to find a place for the epistle in St Paul’s life before his voyage to Rome are met by the improbability that, if Crete had been already so far Christianized as to have communities in several cities (which is implied in Tit. i. 5), there should be no hint of the fact in Acts xxvii. 7-13.

The difficulties of all endeavours to find a place for these epistles in the recorded history of St Paul have been so strongly felt by most of those modern writers who support their authenticity that such writers have generally transferred them to an unrecorded period of his life, subsequent to the close of the Acts of the Apostles. The external authorities for the belief that there was such a period, and that in the course of it St Paul underwent a second imprisonment, are chiefly the statement of Clement of Rome that he went to “the goal of the West,” and that of the Muratorian fragment that he went to Spain (see Paul, infra, p. 422). Both these statements admit of much dispute, the one as to its meaning, the other as to its authority; and their value as evidence is weakened by the fact that Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, though they mention the death of the apostle at Rome, say nothing of any journeys subsequent to his arrival there. In the 4th century Eusebius, for the first time, mentions a second imprisonment, but prefixes to his statement the ambiguous words λόγος tχeι, “there is a story” or “tradition holds.” Several fathers subsequent to his time repeat and amplify his statement; but that statement, if accepted, involves the further difficulties on the one hand of finding room for St Paul’s journeys before the great Neronian persecution of 64 A.D., and on the other hand of accounting for the fact that, supposing the apostle to have survived that persecution, he makes no mention of it. For all these difficulties more or less plausible answers have been framed, and many narratives of St Paul’s unrecorded travels have been written; but, although it may be admitted that such narratives are conceivably true, yet it must be conceded on the other hand that they rest rather upon conjecture than upon evidence. It may be added that the hypothesis of a second imprisonment is rejected not only by writers like Baur and Hilgenfeld, who deny the authenticity of both the Pastoral Epistles and the other “Epistles of the Captivity,” but also by conservative writers, such as Meyer, Ebrard, Otto, Wieseler, Thiersch, and De Pressensé.

(2) The second kind of historical difficulties, that of determining the state of theological opinion to which these epistles are relative, arises partly from the incidental nature of the references to false teachers in the epistles themselves and...