Paul here teaches the teachers.

Their genuineness is more frequently denied than that of any other of
St. Paul's Epistles, and this attack upon their genuineness has been
mostly based upon the character of their teaching about the
office-bearers of the Church. Attempts have sometimes been made to
separate some fragments supposed to be genuine from the remaining
portions. All such attempts have failed. These Epistles must either
be rejected entirely or accepted entirely. Otherwise we become
involved in a hopeless tangle of conjectures.

The _external evidence_ is excellent. They are found in the Syriac and
Old Latin versions, and in the _Muratorian Fragment_. They are all
quoted by Irenaeus, and also by Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian.
Their authenticity was therefore regarded as a certain fact in the
latter part of the 2nd century, and early in the 4th century Eusebius
was unaware that any doubts concerning them existed in the Church.
Moreover, St. Polycarp, A.D. 110, quotes both 1 and 2 Timothy. The
{196} combined evidence of these writers forms a very substantial
argument. Against it we sometimes find urged the fact that the heretic
Marcion rejected them. Such an objection borders on frivolity.
Marcion held a definite doctrinal heresy, and rejected everything which
he could not make to coincide with his own belief. The value which is
set on the Old Testament (_e.g._ 2 Tim. iii. 16), the assertion of a
real incarnation (_e.g._ 1 Tim. ii. 5), and the sustained opposition to
a false spiritualism, which these Epistles exhibit, must have been
intensely distasteful to Marcion. We have therefore no reason for
believing that he would hesitate to reject them, while knowing them to
be genuine, any more than he hesitated to reject all the Gospels except
Luke.

The _internal evidence_ is called in question for the following reasons.

1. _Historical difficulties._--We cannot place the journey referred to
in 1 Tim. i. 3 during the three years' stay at Ephesus mentioned in
Acts. The visit to Miletus in 2 Tim. iv. 20 cannot have taken place on
the journey to Jerusalem in Acts xx., because Trophimus was with the
apostle when he reached that city (Acts xxi. 29). Again, in 2 Tim. iv.
20 Erastus "abode at Corinth." But he had not been to Corinth for a
long time before the journey to Rome recorded in Acts. In Tit. i. 5 we
see Titus left by St. Paul at Crete; he is to join the apostle in
Nicopolis (iii. 12). But