Bible Review

Though 1 Timothy is attributed to Paul, most mainstream scholars do not think it was written by Paul, but by a follower (or “corrector”?) of Paul writing two or three generations later in Paul’s name.

Milgrom argues (BR, December 1993) that the prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus 18:22 applied only to Jewish males, and not to Gentile males (unless living in Israel). Whatever one makes of this specific claim (and I am not competent to make a judgment about it), the more general point of the law code of ancient Israel that contained many particularities that Christian tradition has generally set aside.

Didache 11:3–12.

Martin Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im “Hirten des Hermas” (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), pp. 31–39, lists from ancient Greco-Roman literature nine scenes of mortal man observing bathing goddesses, eighteen references to cultic washing of goddess statues and pictures, and nine erotic scenes, from other ancient texts, that portray women bathing, among them David and Bathsheba and Susanna and the elders.

See F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit (Exeter: Paternoster, 1977), p. 81–82; Betz, Galatians, p. 74; S. Legasse, Paul apotre: Essai de biographie critique (Paris: Cerf/Fides, 1991), p. 72.

Most recently M.-F. Baslez, Saint Paul (Paris: Fayard, 1991) p. 101; R. N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41; Dallas: Word, 1990) p. 34.

The date of its demise is impossible to pinpoint, for its erosion was a gradual process, occurring at different times for different groups (earlier for the “intellectual elites” than for mass culture). As a cultural “event,” it has been dated by some scholars to the late 19th century.

Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 166–167.