New Undesigned Coincidence supporting Pauline authorship of 2 Timothy
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
While writing up my chronology of the Pauline epistles, I was re-reading the name references in 2 Timothy. Here's one:
Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. 2 Timothy 4:14-15
Some have suggested that this may be the same person referred to in Acts 19:33, a Jew who stepped forward and tried to address the crowd in the amphitheater during the riot in Ephesus. That seems unlikely, however, for such a move was risky, and that Alexander appears to have intended to "make a defense to the crowd" and is silenced by the angry worshipers of Diana. It's unclear what the point of his "defense" was, but since the rioters were angry at Paul (for teaching the people monotheism and thus reducing the market for shrines of Diana), it seems unlikely that that Alexander was a coppersmith himself or would have stuck his neck out during the riot. The name was not uncommon.
More plausible is the identification of Alexander the coppersmith in 2 Timothy 4 with the Alexander whom Paul anathematizes in I Timothy 1:20, especially given the close connection between I Timothy and 2 Timothy. Apparently this person, whoever he was, was a possible danger to Timothy as well. We may conjecture that he was located wherever Timothy was ministering at that time.
This is the coincidence I see: If you were going to forge a letter as from Paul at the end of his life (as 2 Timothy purports to be) and give him an enemy to complain about, and if you wanted to "place" Timothy at Ephesus (as 1 Timothy apparently does in 1:3), and if you had access to Acts, whom would you choose?
A little reading of Acts 19 makes the answer obvious: Demetrius the silversmith.
About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Acts 19:23-28
Granted, the setting of 2 Timothy is 8-10 years later than the events in Ephesus, but this is an argument all by itself for the authenticity of 2 Timothy. If you're going to forge an epistle from Paul, why put it so late rather than integrating it with events in Acts? In any event, Acts 19 is the last time in Acts that Paul is in Ephesus, so a forger who for whatever reason wants to address the epistle to someone in Ephesus has to make do with what he has, and Demetrius is the obvious enemy to pick.
But 2 Timothy doesn't mention Demetrius. Instead, Paul warns Timothy against an otherwise unknown metalworker named Alexander. Even the Alexander in I Timothy isn't said to be a smith.
There is, however, a connection with Acts 19. For Acts 19 tells us that the riot in Ephesus started not just with Demetrius but with the other "workmen in similar trades," whom Demetrius got together and riled up against Paul. The Alexander of 2 Timothy is a workman in a similar trade to that of Demetrius.
That Alexander, Paul's enemy, should be specifically said to be a metalworker or smith is significant. (Here is the Greek entry on the word used in 2 Timothy for his trade.) But the connection with Demetrius is indirect. Demetrius is specifically said to be a silversmith in Acts 19.
It is not implausible, if Alexander was located in Ephesus, that either he was actually among those who tried to get Paul run out on a rail in Acts 19 or that an animus against Paul among the metalworkers persisted in Ephesus and flared up again when Paul returned to Ephesus after his release from his first Roman imprisonment, in about A.D. 62. There is ample evidence from the pastoral epistles that Paul had a ministry after the imprisonment recorded in Acts 28 and that he was then re-imprisoned and wrote 2 Timothy from that second, and much shorter, imprisonment.
This sort of oblique connection is a perfect example of an undesigned coincidence. The allusion to Alexander the coppersmith does not appear to be designed, but it fits Acts 19 and 2 Timothy together. It thus confirms both; I would say the most obvious confirmation is of the authenticity of 2 Timothy.
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