Pseudepigraphy and Ethical Argument in the Pastoral Epistles

By employing analyses of the literary structure of ancient pseudepigraphical letters and of the logical structure of ethical argument, Lewis R. Donelson discovers in the Pastoral Epistles a consistent theological ethic which has cosmological and cultic grounding. First, an investigation of Greco-Roman religious pseudepigraphical letters identifies those literary patterns which determine the form of argumentation in the Pastoral Epistles. Second, an investigation of the structure of ethical argument produces categories for organizing and analyzing the apparently disorganized arguments in these letters. Finally, this study concludes that the author of the Pastoral Epistles builds a coherent theological ethic by falsifying Pauline history and by grounding his ethical warrants in church officers.

»Donelson has made important contributions to unraveling the mystery of these three small epistles, which bear the name of Paul ...«
Robert J. Karries in Journal of Biblical Literature, Dec. 1988, 558ff.

»Dr. L.R. Donelson has written an interesting and potentially fruitful study of the Pastoral Epistles ...«
Anthony Hanson in The Expository Times 12 (1986)

»Insgesamt ist die vorgestellte Arbeit uneingeschränkt zu begrüßen. Sie ermöglicht einen gut fundierten hermeneutischen Ansatz für das Verständnis der Past und läßt diesen drei Briefen zugleich eine gerechte sachliche Beurteilung zukommen.«
Eckart Reinmuth in TLZ 7 (1990), S. 508