When did Paul write 2 Timothy?

A:

The clear consensus of New Testament scholars is that Second Timothy was written towards the middle of the second century. The three "pastoral epistles", Titus, 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, all address pastoral issues that arose in the Church during the second century, but which were not relevant to the Church at the time of the Apostle Paul.

It was not Paul who wrote this epistle. In Paul's own letters, he says it is better not to be married, but in the pastorals it is required that people (at least church leaders) be married. Paul also argued that performing the 'works of the law' could not contribute to one's right standing before God. It was not the Jewish law that could bring salvation, but the death and resurrection of Jesus. When he talks about 'works', he means doing the things that the Jewish law requires, such as being circumcised, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath. In the pastorals, the Jewish law is no longer even an issue, and the author speaks of works as 'good works', doing good deeds for other people. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians and other communities, he wrote to the congregation as a whole and as equals, because there were no church leaders in these churches. 2 Timothy, on the other hand, is concerned with explaining to the reader not just the role of deacons, but of bishops, clearly demonstrating that a definite hierarchy had arisen, as we know happened during the second century.

The British scholar A. N. Harrison wrote a study of the pastoral letters in 1921, with numerous statistics about the Word usage in these writings. Among other statistics, he found 848 different Words used in the pastoral letters, of which 306, or more than one third, do not occur in any of the other Pauline epistles. That is an inordinately high number, especially as about two thirds of these 306 Words were used by Christian authors living in the second century. This confirms the conclusion that 2 Timothy was written in the second century. We can not give a particular year for its authorship, but it was certainly written later than 1 Timothy, another second-century epistle written using Paul's name, and it should be dated later in the first half of the second century.