---
title: "Titus"
canonical: "https://paulineletters.com/explore/resources/evidence-titus"
updated: "2026-09-21"
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
source: "Pauline Letters"
---

# Titus

Titus instructs a delegate in Crete to appoint elders, counter destructive teaching, and cultivate communities marked by sound teaching and good works.

**What situation does Titus address, and what is debated about its setting or authorship?**

The letter’s exact authorship and historical itinerary remain debated.

## What remains uncertain

The traditional post-Acts reconstruction shown here connects the letter with Crete and a plan to winter at Nicopolis around AD 62–64, while Paul’s own location remains uncertain.

Nicopolis is in Epirus, not Macedonia; Titus 3:12 names a winter plan, not a demonstrated writing location, and Brown’s direct-Pauline summary dates the letter around AD 65.

Titus belongs to the traditional Pauline corpus, but its direct authorship is widely disputed for reasons similar to 1 Timothy: vocabulary, church structure, and a post-Acts itinerary. A traditional direct-Pauline reconstruction places its letter setting after Acts and before the final Roman setting proposed for Second Timothy; Acts does not narrate a release, post-Acts ministry, or that sequence.

A later pastoral work: Most critical scholarship reads Titus as a later work in Pauline tradition, often because of vocabulary, church order, and the difficulty of its itinerary. Crete and Nicopolis remain important literary horizons, but they cannot be mapped as securely attested travels of Paul.

## Sources

- Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (Doubleday, 1997). Chapter 29, “Pastoral Letter: To Titus,” “General Analysis of the Message”; Chapter 29, “Pastoral Letter: To Titus,” “Summary of Basic Information about Titus”; Chapter 29, “Pastoral Letter: To Titus,” “The Pastoral Letters in General: Title, Interrelationship”; Chapter 29, “Pastoral Letter: To Titus,” “The Background (of Titus)”; Chapter 30, “Pastoral Letter: The First to Timothy,” “Who Wrote Titus and I Timothy?”
- Romans through Philemon, World English Bible (public domain).  — https://ebible.org/web/
- Acts 7–28, World English Bible (public domain).  — https://ebible.org/eng-web/ACT.htm
- The project’s 67-row chronology, cross-referencing Acts and the letters and labeling debated dates. 
- Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford University Press, 1996). Chapter 1, “The Chronological Framework,” “The Evidence from the Pauline Letters” and “The Evidence from the Acts of the Apostles”

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Canonical: https://paulineletters.com/explore/resources/evidence-titus