At the border of the canon: The pseudepigraphy of the First Epistle to Timothy in the intertextual context

• Applicant: Professor Dr. K. Matthias Schmidt
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology ; Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 360209447

The project pursues the goal to describe the pseudepigraphy of the First Epistle to Timothy regarding its pragmatics. For the first time a study of the letters pseudepigraphy is based on the result - resting on recent studies on the Pastoral Epistles - that the letter is best understood as an unattached pseudepigraph. Previous studies on the pseudepigraphy of the New Testament epistle did usually grasp the text as part of a coherent Corpus Pastorale, in which the First Epistle to Timothy is building a literary unity with the two other Pastoral Epistles (2 Tim and Tit). Regarding the analysis of the pragmatics the question whether the text was planned as a deception or a transparent fiction is of peculiar interest. To answer this question it is necessary to consider the intertextual relations between the First Epistle to Timothy and older early Christian writings. Thereby the many-faceted phenomena of pseudepigraphy in New Testament times and the pragmatics of the First Epistle to Timothy have to be collated. The various dependencies also determine the dating of the text in the group of early Christian writings. The project will presumable establish the First Epistle to Timothy as the latest New Testament writing, in contrary to the so far predominant view of scholars. In the midst of the second century the letter takes up position in a controversy on the appropriate structures of communities and is involved in a creative discussion of earlier schemes, which is especially discernible by focussing the instructions for different groups of persons. These instructions presuppose possibly Polycarp's letter to the Philippians. The First Epistle to Timothy could therefore represent an interface to the non-canonical writings. Previous approaches were not able to conceive suitably the pragmatics of the pseudepigraphical First Epistle to Timothy, because they did not determine the intertextual dependencies correctly. Either they have taken the epistle as part of a larger Corpus Pastorale or they were dating the letters of the Corpus Pastorale too early.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants