The Pastoral Epistles

The delightful thing about this volume is that how comprehensive and engaging it feels. When I preach, I want to be certain not to make up things or read impossibilities into the text. This is my new guidebook to the Pastoral Epistles.

For a linguist interested in details for accurate translation, the phrase by phrase, in context treatment of these letters is a pleasure. This book offers insights into how the language was normally used as well as innovations of use and form by New Testament writers.

For a preacher like me, it offers a breadth of background, dictionary, lexicon, and function. I've long ago left my Hebrew and NT Greek classes behind, as have so many Bible and theology students. To have a gifted scholar teach us and remind us of structure, culture, and meaning is a true gift. It will change what you say to your congregation and classroom as well as how you say it. My husband is a theology prof so he'll be picking up a copy as well.

Highly recommended.

The work of a pastor is an exceedingly difficult one. Somehow a pastor must simultaneously be a theologian, a grief counselor, an expert on reading ancient texts, an arbitrator of intramural disputes, a voracious reader, a gifted orator, a fount of wisdom for the young, a charming wedding officiator, and more—all while being fully present in family life and personal relationships.

It is because of this impossible load that, when I hear sermons asserting absolutely absurd things about the grammar of the biblical text (Anyone ever heard the argument for the trinity from Genesis 1:27?), I heap grace upon that preacher. My assumption is that what I'm hearing is a good faith effort to teach the text and proclaim the glory of the gospel message, and that this can happen even in the face of missteps, mistakes, and errors with the text.

All that said, it's highly likely that you have heard a sermon in your life where the preacher has attempted to make a theological point solely from the Greek grammar of a New Testament text. That might sound something like this: "Paul's verb here is in the past tense, which means that this is a once-and-for-all action and that Christ's work is complete!" I give grace for this kind of mistake (it really is a difficult skill to take accurate scholarly work and make it accessible), but it still drives me bonkers. The solution, I think, is not only more rigor in seminaries and Bible colleges, but also better resources for pastors.

Stanley Porter's newest commentary on the pastorals is exactly this kind of resource. It is exacting in its attention to every textual detail, bringing the most cutting edge linguistic tools to bear upon the work of making sense of these three letters. His laser focus on grammar and semantics means that he rarely offers his opinion on what implications the text does or doesn't have for modern audiences. I find his use of Systemic Functional Linguistics to be particularly helpful in illuminating the contours of Paul's discourse and in foregrounding his emphases. It also means that he does not make much of historical-cultural data (except here and there where he claims that people use it to read too much into the text!). I'm not a scholar that I can rightly disagree with Porter, but suffice it to say that I find other readings of challenging verses such as Sandra Glahn's take on 1 Timothy 2:15-3:1 (https://benmakuh.com/2023/06/nobodys-mother/) to be far more persuasive than his precisely because it weighs the linguistic data in balance with other relevant material.

That's not to say that this volume is unhelpful—quite the contrary! It's merely to say that it's worth it to pair his meticulous linguistic work with other scholarship in the work of understanding the text. I personally spend quite a bit of time in the pastorals, and I'm certain that I'll make good use of this commentary. I heartily recommend it!

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.

Intended for pastors and academics, this comprehensive work will be a valuable resource for those wanting to further investigate the context of 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus with particular focus on language and grammar.

While I haven't made it thru all the book, I have enjoyed reading sections on specific portions of these Epistles to gain a more informed perspective. I find it's particularly helpful when I'm reading other books and want to compare academic understanding of the text to a lay-person interpretation.

Thank you for early digital copy Brazos Press. This will surely be a grrat resource for teachers, leaders, amd pastors for years to come.