Paul's Letters
The letters attributed to Paul preserve conflicting voices, and several are widely regarded as later works written in his name.
7 min readUpdated
Thirteen New Testament letters present themselves as written by Paul. Critical scholarship generally accepts seven, divides over three, and regards three — 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus — as most likely written by others in Paul's name.
The seven undisputed letters are the earliest surviving Christian documents, written roughly 50–60, before any Gospel.
The thirteen letters
| Letter | Usual date | Status | Main reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Thessalonians | c. 50 | Undisputed | Earliest; consistent style and situation |
| Galatians | c. 48–55 | Undisputed | Autobiography, named conflict with Peter |
| 1 Corinthians | c. 54 | Undisputed | Named individuals, answers to specific questions |
| 2 Corinthians | c. 55–56 | Undisputed | Personal detail; possibly several letters combined |
| Romans | c. 57 | Undisputed | Names its scribe; concrete travel plans |
| Philippians | c. 61–62 | Undisputed | Named individuals, financial specifics |
| Philemon | c. 61–62 | Undisputed | Short, personal, legally concrete |
| Colossians | c. 62 or 70–80 | Disputed | Style and vocabulary shift; developed christology |
| 2 Thessalonians | c. 51 or 80–90 | Disputed | Eschatology conflicts with 1 Thessalonians |
| Ephesians | c. 62 or 80–90 | Disputed | Heavy overlap with Colossians; impersonal |
| 1 Timothy | c. 100–110 | Doubted | Vocabulary, church offices |
| 2 Timothy | c. 100–110 | Doubted | Same, though more personal detail |
| Titus | c. 100–110 | Doubted | Vocabulary, church offices |
The evidence for the classification
Vocabulary
P. N. Harrison's 1921 count remains the standard starting point. Excluding proper names, the three Pastoral Epistles use 848 words, of which 306 appear nowhere in the other ten letters. About 175 occur nowhere else in the New Testament.
Characteristic Pauline connectives and particles are largely absent, while the Pastorals use terms common in second-century Christian writing — "sound doctrine," "the deposit," "godliness" — that the undisputed letters do not.
Church organization
| Feature | Undisputed letters | Pastorals |
|---|---|---|
| Leadership | Charismatic gifts distributed across the congregation (1 Cor 12:28) | Fixed offices with qualification lists (1 Tim 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9) |
| Appointment | Not described | Elders appointed town by town (Titus 1:5) |
| Widows | Not an institution | A registered order with an age requirement (1 Tim 5:9-16) |
| Teaching | Argued case by case | Guarded as a fixed body of doctrine (2 Tim 1:13-14) |
| Transmission | — | Entrusted to a further generation (2 Tim 2:2) |
Eschatology in the two Thessalonian letters
| 1 Thessalonians | 2 Thessalonians |
|---|---|
| The day comes "like a thief in the night" — no warning | Specific events must occur first: rebellion, then "the man of lawlessness" revealed |
| Paul expects to be alive at the return (4:15-17, "we who are alive") | The delay is explained and a restraining force described |
2 Thessalonians 2:2 warns readers not to be deceived "by a letter seeming to be from us," and 3:17 stresses that the signature marks a genuine letter. Both establish that letters were being forged in Paul's name in the first century.
Ephesians and Colossians
Roughly a third of the wording of Colossians reappears in Ephesians, in similar sequence. Where one is dependent on the other, the borrowing tends to run from Colossians to Ephesians.
Ephesians 1:3-14 is a single sentence of about two hundred words in Greek — a construction with no parallel in the undisputed letters. Ephesians 1:15 refers to "having heard of your faith," which is difficult to reconcile with Acts's account of Paul spending some years in Ephesus.
External evidence
P46, the earliest substantial collection of Paul's letters, from about 200, does not include the Pastorals. Marcion's canon, from around 140, contained ten Pauline letters and likewise omitted them. The Pastorals are not clearly quoted by any writer before the later second century.
Common objections
"Paul used different secretaries, which accounts for the style"
Paul did use scribes. Romans 16:22 has Tertius identifying himself, and Galatians 6:11 notes a change of hand. If a secretary had latitude in composition, differences in style follow naturally.
The difficulty is what this explains and what it does not. Vocabulary and sentence structure are plausibly a secretary's contribution. Church offices with formal qualification lists, a registered order of widows, and a body of doctrine to be guarded are not matters of style — they describe an institution, and the description differs from the congregations in the undisputed letters.
The eschatological difference between the Thessalonian letters is also not a stylistic matter.
"Different topics and audiences explain different vocabulary"
Correct in principle, and it accounts for part of the difference. A letter about appointing leaders will use words a letter about resurrection does not.
Harrison's figures are harder to explain this way. Roughly a third of the Pastorals' vocabulary appears nowhere else in Paul, and the difference includes ordinary connectives and particles, which do not vary with subject matter.
The vocabulary the Pastorals use in place of Paul's is also specific: terms characteristic of second-century Christian writing rather than mid-first-century.
"Writing in a teacher's name was an accepted practice, not forgery"
Widely stated, and it has real support: philosophical schools produced works under a founder's name, and the practice was known.
Bart Ehrman argues against it at length in Forgery and Counterforgery (2013), assembling ancient sources that discuss the practice. His conclusion is that where writers comment on it, they generally condemn it — the practice existed but was regarded as deceptive when detected, not as an accepted convention.
2 Thessalonians 2:2 supports that reading. Its author warns against a forged letter, which indicates that a letter falsely attributed to Paul was treated as a problem rather than a convention.
This objection also concedes the historical claim at issue. Whether or not the practice was acceptable, the question here is who wrote the letters.
"The early church accepted these letters as Paul's"
True from the later second century onward, and the judgment of communities closer to the events deserves weight.
The evidence from the earliest period runs the other way. P46 and Marcion's canon both omit the Pastorals, and no clear citation of them appears before the late second century — which is the point at which the attribution becomes visible, not before.
"2 Timothy contains personal details a forger wouldn't invent"
This objection applies specifically. 2 Timothy 4:13 asks for a cloak left at Troas along with books and parchments; 4:10-15 names companions and opponents. These have no doctrinal purpose.
Some scholars accordingly treat 2 Timothy as containing genuine Pauline fragments, and it is regularly rated the most likely authentic of the three.
The counter-argument is that circumstantial detail is a standard feature of pseudonymous letters precisely because it produces authenticity, and that these details sit alongside the same institutional vocabulary as the other two.
What the evidence shows
Seven letters are accepted as Paul's by nearly all scholars and provide the earliest direct evidence for Christian belief, predating the Gospels by twenty years or more.
Three are genuinely disputed. Three show vocabulary, church structure, and concerns that fit the early second century better than Paul's lifetime, and are absent from the earliest collections of his letters.
The evidence supports a developing Pauline tradition — letters written by Paul, followed by letters written in his name by others continuing his work — rather than a single author across all thirteen. Judgments about the disputed three remain divided, and the arguments above are cumulative rather than decisive.