a separate Passerine family—Panuridae. It was formerly found
in many parts of England, especially in the eastern counties, where
it bore the name of reed-pheasant;[1] but through the draining of
meres, the destruction of reed-beds, and the rapacity of collectors
it now exists in few localities. It is a beautiful little bird, of a bright
tawny colour, variegated with black and white, while the cock is
further distinguished by a bluish grey head and a black tuft of
feathers on each side of the chin. Its chief food seems to be reed-seeds
and the smaller kinds of fresh-water molluscs, which it finds
among the reed-beds it seldom quits.
The general affinities of the Paridae seem to lie rather with the Sittidae (see Nuthatch) and the tree-creepers. (A. N.)
TITUS, one of the companions of St Paul, was of Greek origin
(Gal. ii. 3), and was perhaps a native of Asia Minor. He appears
to have been among the apostle’s earliest converts, being first
mentioned (Gal. ii. 1) as having accompanied Paul and Barnabas
to Jerusalem (cf. Acts xv. 2) “to represent the success of the
Pauline gospel outside Judaism.” Here the conservative section
demanded that he should be circumcised; but Paul successfully
opposed this (see Paul). Subsequently he came into close
connexion with the Achaean churches and especially with
Corinth, bearing letters from Paul and being charged with
promoting the proposed collection for poor Christians in Judaea.
In these matters he proved himself a trusty lieutenant, winning
the esteem of the Corinthians by his zeal and disinterestedness.
The liberality which a generation later was recognized by
Clement of Rome as a traditional virtue of the Corinthian Church
owed its inception to Titus. In the epistle with which his name
is associated he is represented (Titus i. 5) as having been left by
Paul in Crete to “ set in order the things that are wanting, and
ordain elders in every city.” He is expected afterwards to join
Paul at Nicopolis (iii. 12). In 2 Tim. iv. 10 he is spoken of as
having gone (perhaps on a mission) to Dalmatia. Tradition,
obviously resting on the Epistle to Titus, has it that he died in
Crete as bishop at an advanced age; another line connects him
with Venice. Attempts to make him the author of the “We”
sections in Acts and to include him in the seventy disciples are
futile. There is more to be said for the suggestion that he was
the brother of St Luke.
See A. Souter and E. P. Boys-Smith in The Expository Times, xviii. 285, 335, 380.
TITUS, THE EPISTLE TO, in the New Testament, an epistle which purports to have been written by Paul to Titus (i. 1–4), who is in charge of the local churches at Crete (i. 5). The younger man is reminded of the qualifications which he is to insist upon in officials (i. 5–16), in view of current errors,[2] doctrinal and moral. The genuine teaching, or “sound doctrine,” which he is to propound (ii. 1, seq), is then outlined, with regard to aged men and women, younger men and slaves especially.[3] After a postscript (iii. 8–11), reiterating the counsels of the letter, with particular reference to the outside public, some personal notices are briefly added (iii. 12–13), and, with some final exhortations, the epistle ends.
The origin of Christian missions in Crete is obscure. A strong Jewish element existed among the population (cf. i. 13 seq., iii. 9), which explains the particular hue of the local heresies as well as, perhaps, the initial efforts of a Christian propaganda (cf. Acts ii. 11). The geographical situation of the island also favoured an early introduction of the new faith. “Crete was a great wintering place” for vessels (cf. Acts xxvii. 12 seq.) working their slow way to Rome along the southern coast of the Mediterranean[4] so that the possibility of Jewish Christian evangelists having reached it before long is to be granted freely.
It is more difficult to determine when Paul can have visited the island and left Titus behind him. Attempts have been made to find a setting for the epistle within the apostle’s life previous to his Roman imprisonment (as recorded in Acts), but by common consent[5] it is now held that the epistle (if written by the apostle) must fall later, during the period of missionary enterprise which is supposed to have followed his release from the first captivity. Like the epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to Titus thus belongs to a phase of the apostle’s life for which we possess no other contemporary evidence. The second imprisonment of Paul, after a period of freedom following his acquittal, is an historical hypothesis (cf. the statement in Steinmetz’s Die zweite röm. Gefangenschaft des Paulus, p. 46 seq.), which is absolutely essential to the Pauline authorship of the pastorals. It is indeed supported by several critics who reject the latter, just as it is occasionally rejected by advocates of their authenticity. But, upon the whole, such evidence from early tradition as can be adduced from the 2nd century seems no more than an expansion of Paul’s language in Rom. xv. 24, 28. The pastorals themselves never mention any mission in Spain. Spanish tradition is silent on the fact, and the allusion to the “west” (in Clem. Rom. v.) can be interpreted at least as fairly of Rome as of Spain. The entire problem is not without its difficulties still, after all the research lavished upon it, but the probabilities seem to converge upon the conclusion that Paul was never released from his imprisonment, and consequently that he never revisited the East.
The internal criticism of the epistle starts from i. 7–9, which is plainly an interpolation, perhaps from the margin, upon the qualifications of episcopoi. On the other hand a passage like iii. 12–13 is indubitably a Pauline fragment, and the problem for the critic is to determine whether in the epistle as a whole we have a redacted and interpolated edition of what was originally a note from the hand of Paul, or whether the epistle drew upon some Pauline tradition (connecting Titus with Crete) and material, and was afterwards interpolated at i. 7–9. The latter hypothesis seems more probable, upon the whole, although there is little to choose between the two. The substantially Pauline character of the epistle, for all practical purposes, is to be granted upon either hypothesis, for the author or the editor strove not unsuccessfully, upon the whole, to reproduce the Pauline spirit and tradition.[6] The older notion that the personal data in Titus, or in the rest of the pastorals, were invented to lend verisimilitude to the writing must be given up. They are too circumstantial and artless to be the work of a writer idealizing or creating a situation. Thus, in the present epistle, a passage like iii. 12–13 is palpably genuine. But it is another question whether other passages can be added to it (e.g. i. 1 seq., 5–6, 12–13a, 16, iii. 1–7, 15, by Hesse; i. 1, 4, iii. 15, by von Soden; i. 1–6?, iii. 1–7, by McGiffert), in order to reconstruct a more or less independent note from Paul’s own pen.
It seems improbable that Titus or any of the pastorals is directed against any one phase of contemporary heresy.[7] The prohibition of marriage (1 Tim. iv. 3) was common to Marcion and Apelles, while the injunction of fasting[8] is attributed to the Encratites (Iren. Adv. Haer. i, 28, 1) and to Saturninus of Antioch in Syria (ibid. 1. 24, 3), the latter being also credited with having been the first to introduce a dualism into humanity, which made God send his Saviour to destroy the evil and redeem the good, both classes having been formed by the angels (cf. Titus ii. 11; 1 Tim. iv. 10). The exhaustive discussions on this point (cf. Bourquin, pp. 55 seq.) have led most scholars to the conclusion that no one system of 2nd-century gnosticism is before the writer’s mind. He is maintaining Paul’s rôle. He makes the apostle prophesy, vaguely of course, the evil tendencies which were to come upon the church; but the internal evidence,
- ↑ The common names given to this bird are so very inapplicable that it is a pity that “silerella” (from siler, an osier) bestowed upon it by Sir T. Browne, its original discoverer, cannot be restored.
- ↑ On the somewhat harsh estimate of the Cretans in i. 12 see Dr J. Rendel Harris in Expositor (7th series, vol. ii. p. 305 seq.). The other features noted in the epistle, their turbulence, drunkenness and greed, all happen to be verified in the pages of ancient writers like Polybius.
- ↑ On the sub-Pauline tone of iii. 5 cf. Sokolowski’s Geist und Leben bei Paulus (1903), p. 108 seq.
- ↑ Cf. W. M. Ramsay: Pauline and other Studies (1907), p. 76, Hoennicke’s Das Judenchristentum (1908), p. 156 seq., and Harnack’s Mission and Expansion of Christianity, ii. 229–230 (2nd ed., 1908).
- ↑ W. E. Bowen, Professor Bartlet (Apostolic Age, pp. 178 seq.; cf. also article on Paul), Lisco (Vincula sanctorum, 1900) and Laughlin are the only recent exceptions, and their conjectural schemes are mutually destructive. The common style of the epistles forbids any dispersion of them over a term of years. They stand or fall together, as critics of all schools are practically agreed. The impossibility of placing them within the period of Acts is best known by Hatch, Bourquin (pp. 10–25), Bertrand (23–47) and von Soden.
- ↑ The historical site for iii. 12–13, as well as for the tradition which forms the setting of the epistle, is probably to be sought in the neighbourhood of Acts xx. 3 (so Krenkel). Clemen dates iii. 12–13 from Macedonia after 2 Cor. x.–xiii., i.–ix., previous to Romans (in A.D. 59).
- ↑ Essenism, blended with Ebionitism, is the plausible conjecture of Schleiermacher, Neander and Mangold, but the Essenes do not seem to have prohibited marriage so dogmatically.
- ↑ Asceticism was bound up with the gnostic depreciation of the body. By a natural recoil it produced licentiousness of conduct which the pastorals hotly denounce.
