To understand Irenaeus and the canonical collection, particularly the revision of Paul’s letters, we need to look into the parallel redaction and revision of the famous collection of letters who pseudonymously were credited to Ignatius of Antioch. With him being backdated to the beginning of the second century by Eusebius of Caesarea, his collection of seven letters of which Eusebius is the first to speak, provides the cornerstone for the ancient anti-heretic, anti-Jewish and monepiscopal church history of the beginnings of Christianity. A critical reading of both, Paul’s letters and those of the spurious Ignatius, however, allows to dismantle the fictional account that served Irenaeus and his apologetic followers through the centuries to cement early Christian orthodoxy.

This chapter introduces introduce the critical issues in the study of Paul and his letters, including the problems to be solved in historical reconstructions of his ministry, the standard approaches to determining the authorship of the letters, his place within the Judaism of his time, and the so-called “New Perspective” on Paul.

This chapter discusses the critical issues involved in the interpretation of 1-2 Thessalonians, including pseudonymity, the concept of the parousia and its roots in Jewish apocalypticism, and paraenetic strategies employed by Paul.

This chapter focuses on1-2 Timothy and Titus. Various proposals for understanding their literary genre are discussed, as will their role in attempts to reconstruct the contours of Paul's ministry and theological battles of the early second century.