Titus
The Epistle of Paul to Titus, usually referred to simply as Titus, is one of the three Pastoral Epistles (with 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy), traditionally attributed to Saint Paul, and is part of the New Testament. It describes the requirements and duties of elders and bishops.
Composition
Today scholars are divided as to the authenticity of the pastoral epistles. They generally consider the Pastoral epistles to have been written by the same author. Titus has a very close affinity with 1 Timothy, sharing similar phrases and expressions and similar subject matter. While these epistles are traditionally attributed to Paul of Tarsus, many scholars today consider them pseudepigraphical.
Pauline Authenticity
The author of Titus identifies himself as "Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ." According to Easton's Bible Dictionary, "Paul's Authorship was undisputed in antiquity, and was probably written about the same time as the First Epistle to Timothy, with which it has many affinities."
Scholars who believe Paul wrote Titus such as Donald Guthrie date its composition from the circumstance that it was written after Paul's visit to Crete (Titus 1:5). That visit could not be the one referred to in the Book of Acts 27:7, when Paul was on his voyage to Rome as a prisoner, and where he continued a prisoner for two years. Thus traditional exegesis supposes that after his release Paul sailed from Rome into Asia, passing Crete by the way, and that there he left Titus "to set in order the things that were wanting." Thence he would have gone to Ephesus, where he left Timothy, and from Ephesus to Macedonia, where he wrote the First Epistle to Timothy, and thence, according to the superscription of this epistle, to Nicopolis in Epirus, from which place he wrote to Titus, about 66 or 67.
The first page of the epistle in Minuscule 699 gives its title as 'προς τιτον, "To Titus."
Opposed to Pauline Authenticity
The Pastoral epistles are regarded by some scholars as being pseudepigraphical. On the basis of the language and content of the pastoral epistles, these scholars today doubt that they were written by Paul, and believe that they were written after his death. Critics examining the text fail to find its vocabulary and literary style similar to Paul's unquestionably authentic letters, fail to fit the life situation of Paul in the epistles into Paul's reconstructed biography, and identify principles of the emerged Christian church rather than those of the apostolic generation.
Those scholars who consider Titus to be pseudepigraphical date the epistle from the 80s up to the end of the 2nd century.
Epimenides
One of the secular peculiarities of the Epistle to Titus is the inclusion of text which has become known as the Epimenides paradox. According to the World English Bible translation, Titus 1:12-13 reads (in part) "One of them, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and idle gluttons.' This testimony is true." The statement by a member of a group that all members are liars is now a famous logic problem. He leaves the character judgment of the people on Crete up to their own prophet.
