I am blogging from Rome for the next four months. I arrived with my family on September 21 in order to spend a semester teaching University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) students at the Angelicum. Is there an easier place to be a Catholic biblical scholar than in Rome, the city of Peter and Paul, the heart of the Church? Yes, I think perhaps St. Paul, Minnesota, where I left all my books, libraries to which I can gain easy access, and the comforts of home. I have tried clicking my heels a few times as I walk down the crowded streets saying, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” but I still find myself walking down the Via Nazionale. Is this a complaint? I think it is. I thought there might be some way to transform it from complaint into meaningful insight, but I think it is functioning as intended: a complaint. There is so much to love in Rome, especially the history of the early Christians, so many martyred in this city, but the city makes it no easier, or harder I suppose, to come to terms with the scripture which we are all called to follow. The Apostle Paul was said to have been martyred and buried in this city. I accept these traditions and find them easy to believe, both because we know from Acts that Paul came to Rome under arrest late in his life (Acts 28:14-31) and the archaeological evidence of Paul’s sarcophagus in St. Paul’s Outside-the-Walls supports the literary evidence concerning Paul’s death in Rome (found in the in the 2nd century apocryphal text known, as a whole, as The Acts of Paul). It might also be said that I know of no other tradition concerning either the location of Paul’s martyrdom or his tomb; one often finds competing traditions regarding the location of martyrdom or burial for ancient saints or of great events from the past. While this sort of evidence from silence is not definitive, it does add to the preponderance of the evidence for Rome as the place of Paul’s martyrdom and burial. This brings us to the reading from 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14, a letter attributed to Paul. This is an important reading, with note given of apostolic ordination (“imposition of hands”) and the apostolic tradition, the “deposit of faith,” being handed on (“Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me” and “Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit”). Are these traditions not at the heart of the claims of the Church of Rome? The apostolic tradition is being handed on, through the centuries, by the see of Peter. Yet, biblical scholars have raised numerous questions regarding Pauline authorship of what are known as the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), with the majority of current scholars–but not all!–arguing that these letters are not written by Paul, but by a follower of Paul after his death. This always raises questions for students: if these are not letters by Paul, do they retain the same authority as the rest of scripture? Why would someone write pseudonymously? Is “authorship” of this sort fraudulent? How can we be certain that Paul did not write these letters? What is the evidence for authorship other than that of Paul? Can Pauline authorship be defended? Over the next few weeks, I hope to go through some of the arguments against and for Pauline authorship and give some insight into the manner in which biblical studies enriches and challenges us and its limits. John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.