First and Second Letters to Timothy: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The

Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Yarbrough, Robert W

Luke Timothy Johnson. The First and Second Letters To Timothy: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible 35A. New York: Doubleday, 2001. 494 pp. $40.00.

On numerous counts this is a masterful commentary. Anyone who preaches from 1 or 2 Timothy or simply studies these epistles seriously does well to own it Luke Timothy Johnson, a professor at Emory University, has won acclaim with commentaries on other NT writings like Acts and James, with important monographs like The Real Jesus and Religious Experience in Early Christianity, and with a valuable introduction to the NT (Writings of the New Testament), among numerous other published works. Readers will find the same combination of careful reasoning and fetching prose here.

The commentary is distinguished first of all by its rich history of the interpretation of 1 and 2 Timothy. Most commentaries either pass over this topic in silence or treat it superficially; Johnson gives it a thorough and illuminating airing (pp. 20-54). This sets up a still more stellar segment: "Assessing the Authorship of the Pastoral Letters" (pp. 55-90). Here Johnson shows the independence of judgment that makes his work so valuable. He challenges the majority consensus that the Pastorals could not have been written by Paul. He demonstrates conclusively that a truly critical approach would acknowledge that the majority consensus has at least as many weaknesses as the traditional view of Pauline authorship.

Having established grounds for questioning the rejection of Paul's authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy, Johnson sketches his approach (pp. 91-99). It is relatively novel in that it does not blend Titus into the discussion, and it also does not simply combine 1 and 2 Timothy but rather reads them as reflecting distinctly different settings and concerns. He concludes by affirming the positive, not reactionary, nature of his approach, since "if all the standard arguments against authenticity are shown to be flawed-and they certainly are-then placement within Paul's ministry becomes the most elegant hypothesis" (p. 97; Johnson's emphasis). Distinctives of his treatment include affirming the status of 1 and 2 Timothy as "real rather than fictional letters" and the "appropriate comparative context for" both letters as "the Pauline corpus" (p. 98). This is in contrast to mainstream conviction that the letters are pseudonymous and fictional, and that the context for construing them is a hypothetical, non-Pauline setting, in the later part of the first century.

Particularly refreshing in a scholarly commentary is that while Johnson focuses on the conventional task of linguistic and historical description, he has "occasionally ... tried to recapture the sense, once natural to all readers of 1 and 2 Timothy, not only that they speak for Paul the Apostle, but that through them Paul the Apostle speaks to us for God" (p. 99). This signals the presence of a theological dimension to the discussion that will make it edifying to those with spiritual interest who seek to understand Paul's arguments as well as suggestive to those with homiletical interest who seek to preach Paul's message.

A bibliography of nearly thirty pages (pp. 103-31) lists basic texts and tools, commentaries (divided into these periods: patristic, medieval, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and nineteenth and twentieth centuries), and studies. By rough count no fewer than six hundred works are listed. Curiously, Johnson does not cite two earlier commentaries he wrote on the Pastoral Epistles, one in the New Testament in Context series (1996) and the another in the Knox Preaching Guides (1987). Combining the bibliography with indices containing about twenty pages of Scripture references, a dozen pages of other ancient sources (seven Greco-Roman, three Jewish, three patristic), and six pages of authors, the commentary is useful not only for the preacher but also for the scholar.

The commentary proper follows a sane and straightforward format: 1) translation of a section of text (Johnson divides 1 Timothy into fourteen sections and 2 Timothy into eleven); 2) "Notes" that are largely linguistic, historical, and text-critical in nature; and 3) "Comment" consisting of essays and exposition that summarize, reflect on, and at times extend the message or teachings contained in the text. Few major commentary series are organized in a fashion that is any more user-friendly.

My admiration for the overall thrust and achievement of this work should by now be clear. A short review cannot catalog specific disagreements in any detail but ought to point out at least a few. For example, I remain unconvinced of the subjective view of "faith in Christ" which turns it into "the faith of Jesus," an increasingly popular outlook among scholars which Johnson seems to have embraced (see e.g., p. 154). I find myself wondering if Hellenistic character ethics are as integral to understanding Paul in these epistles as Johnson thinks, although it is unquestionably salutary that he amasses such a comprehensive collection of references from Greco-Roman sources having some point of contact with Paul's rhetoric.