Pseudepigrapha Psalad Psurgery IV: The Pastoral Epistles

First Timothy

• Chapter 1, Verse 10: The author here seems to condemn the slave trade, but not ownership of slaves. He underscores his endorsement of slave ownership in Chapter 6, Verse 1, and in Titus 2:9, where he has advice for both slaves and masters.
• Chapter 2
  • Verse 4: God "wants all men to be saved", and Chapter 4, Verse 10, God "is the savior of all men". These don't fit well with II Thessalonians 2:11 - 13, where God chooses only some to be saved and deliberately deludes the rest of us.
  • Verse 15: "...women will be saved through childbearing". I had no idea. I thought that women had to confess and believe just like men. I feel sorry for all those nuns, thinking that they will be in heaven with Jesus.
• Chapter 4
  • Verses 2 - 3: "...hypocritical liars...forbid people to marry". Amen, Brother!
  • Verse 4: "...everything God created is good". Bullshit, Brother!
• Chapter 6
  • Verse 15: God is the "only ruler"? What about all those rulers and authorities mentioned in the Ephesians/Colossians mashup?
  • Verse 16: "...no one has seen or can see" God. What is Moses, chopped liver?
• Bullets Dodged:
  
  • Chapter 2
    
    • Verse 9: Women should dress modestly, not braiding their hair or wearing gold, pearls, or expensive clothing.
    • Verse 12: Women are not allowed to teach. Women are not allowed to have authority over a man. Hey, Prop 8 people: why aren't you making a big fuss about women holding positions of authority in American companies, the government, and the military? Isn't God crashing planes into buildings and leaving millions of Pakistanis destitute because of this terrible sinfulness in the U.S.?
  • Chapter 3, Verse 2: Church authority figures (men only, remember!) must be above reproach, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. They must manage their own families well and their children must obey them with proper respect. They must have a good reputation with non-believers. You guys are so, so lucky that Paul didn't write this letter.

Second Timothy

• Chapter 3
  • Verse 12: "...everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." This is not only stupid, it's simply false. The vast majority of rational people in the world don't give a shit about your private sex lives, which seems to be the main emphasis of Jesusianism. I persecute only those Jesusianismists who wish to impose their wrongheaded will on our government, or those who wish to get their myths taught as fact in science classes, or those who teach children that they are evil and sinful and deserve punishment. Live your life however you want, but stop hurting and limiting other people, and the so-called persecution will shrink to nothing.
  • Verse 16: "All Scripture is God-breathed". Compare this to Mark 10:5, "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you [the law permitting divorce]." So at least that part of Scripture was Moses-written, not God-breathed, not to mention that apparently it was without God's approval that Moses wrote that bit of Scripture.
• Chapter 4, Verse 14: "Alexander the metalworker did me a gread deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done." What happened to I Corinthians 13:5, where love keeps no record of wrongs?

Titus

There's only one thing worth mentioning in Titus: Chapter 1, Verse 12, in which the author demonstrates that although gay sex is not ok, racism is quite acceptable: "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons."