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

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2003 by Richards, E Randolph

(1) "I do not entrust teaching to a woman, nor authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12). Johnson sees the Pastorals as androcentric and patriarchal but not sexist (p. 412). He sees this passage as dealing with a specific problem in Ephesus: unscrupulous philosophers seducing women of position and means, as was often possible in patriarchal societies where women were chronically undereducated, disempowered, and systematically manipulated. These women had the means and desire to study philosophy but were prevented by societal norms. They had become the "perpetual students" of charlatans who went from house (church?) to house.

(2) Johnson uses "supervisor" for episkopes (1 Tim 3:1), "helpers" for diakonous (1 Tim 3:8), "women helpers" for gynaikas (1 Tim 3:11).

(3) The Christological hymn of 1 Tim 3:15-16, which Johnson considers Pauline (p. 236), disputes it ever existed as a hymn (p. 379) and questions whether it truly represents any sort of "heart" of the Christology of the Pastorals (p. 232), has two mildly surprising points: "appeared to messengers (angelois)," meaning witnesses and thus early Christian preachers and "believed in by the world," meaning "believed in throughout the world" as a parallel to "preached among the nations."

Here are additional examples from 2 Timothy:

(1) "Remember these things . . . do not engage in polemics" (2 Tim 2:14). Johnson translates hypomimneske as "remember" rather than the more customary "remind" (p. 383). He then supplies the missing object as these "things" rather than the more usual "these men" (either the faithful men or the opponents). Johnson also follows the less attested variant "do not engage in" (logomachei for logomachein, p. 389).

(2) "Every scripture is God-inspired and useful . . ." (2 Tim 3:16). Evangelicals may believe they have found a friend in Johnson, with his strong defense of Pauline authorship and his seemingly "conservative" translation of this verse. Yet, Johnson is equally impatient with what he considers shallow exegesis and poor scholarship on the evangelical side. Johnson takes a hard stance against those who use this verse to support a position on the authority of Scripture, saying all such "endless arguments" are "wrong, not only exegetically but also hermeneutically." He reiterates the position taken in his work Scripture and Discernment (1996): "The authority of the Bible does not rest on its inspiration, but on its canonicity, a status that each church confirms by the use of the Bible in every generation in liturgy and in decision making" (p. 422).

In conclusion, we have been enriched with a spate of new commentaries on the Pastorals. Gordon Fee's work on the Pastorals (NIBC, 1984) led us to see the necessity of using the sociological setting of Ephesus to interpret the letters. George Knight (NIGTC, 1992) and William Mounce (WBC, 2000) gave us thoughtful exegesis. Marshall (ICC, 1999) and Quinn and Wacker (ECC, 2000) offer us a thorough treatment of the letters, although from a deutero-Pauline view. Johnson brings the strengths of all these recent works into one coherent volume, with some brash Johnson impatience dashed in for entertaining reading. Traditional, critical, and cutting-edge are not terms often placed together, but here they are. I heartily recommend this volume.