Gays and the Bible (1 Timothy)
Image via Wikipedia By Elodie Ballantine Emig The most natural place to turn, after an examination of Paul’s vice list in I Corinthians , is to his vice list in I Timothy . Since the early 19th century, it has been alleged that Paul couldn’t possibly have written the Pastorals. The most common objections are: The writing style and word choices are different from Paul’s earlier letters. The Pastorals don’t fit with what we know of Paul from Acts . The heresy combated is second-century Gnosticism . The church is too developed for the first century. The theology of the Pastorals lacks Paul’s distinctives. The Pastorals are not contained in the oldest (mid-third-century) codex we have of the Pauline epistles . Before briefly answering these objections, I must state my conviction that the burden of proof is on the scholar who denies Pauline authorship to books regarded as genuine for eighteen centuries. I Timothy claims to have been written by Paul, and it was preserved and canoni