A Text centred rhetorical analysis of Paul's Letter to Titus

i) Pseudonymity or fiction hypothesis
In Germany, it was J.G. Eichorn, who in 1812 argued for the pseudonymity of
each letter. Gradually, this snow-balled to become what some have termed
“contemporary critical orthodoxy” (Carson, Moo, et al. 1992:360). One
contemporary scholar considers the original argument of Holtzmann so
watertight that he alleges incorrectly that Holtzmann’s five objections still wait
to be rebutted (Lea and Griffin, 1992:22). Such a rebuttal has been
adequately proffered by the respected scholar and commentator, Donald
Guthrie (1957:11-53). Still, it remains true to say that pseudonymity was
initially a formidable challenge to the authenticity of the Pastoral Letters. The
simplistic, outright rejection of Pauline authorship has developed some rather
complex twists and turns since its original conception in Germany.
At its simplest level, pseudonymity implies that the letters were written by
someone other than Paul at a time much later than that of the apostle. This
person is designated a Paulinist (Harrison, 1921:9), while at other times he is
awkwardly referred to as the mysterious “pastor” (Harding, 1998:103, 16;
Goulder, 1996:242). In the majority of instances, he is simply called the
“author” who was probably a disciple of the apostle (Goulder, 1996:243;
Dibelius and Conzelmann, 1972:1). It is argued, that since this “disciple” was
familiar with the writings of the apostle, he wanted to preserve the teaching of
the apostle for a new (second) generation church setting in the light of the
delay of the parousia, as well as for subsequent generations (Dibelius and
Conzelmann, 1972:8; Beker, 1991:35-75).
Pseudonymity raised several tricky questions that have kept scholars
occupied and continue to do so. A major implication relates to the content of
these letters and the matter of authorship. If Paul did not write them, then the
people and historical references contained in this corpus are not real. Caution
is sounded not to assume “that the historical data of these pseudonymous
Epistles are necessarily true” (Barrett 1963:30). Hence, some scholars refer to
pseudonymity as the fiction hypothesis (Mounce, 2000: cxviii; Marshall, Travis
et al. 2002:179). Thus, references to Paul, Timothy, Titus, Crete, Ephesus,
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