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•TITUS honourable, was with Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and accompanied them to the council at Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1-3; Acts 15:2), although his name nowhere occurs in the Acts of the Apostles. He appears to have been a Gentile, and to have been chiefly engaged in ministering to Gentiles; for Paul sternly refused to have him circumcised, inasmuch as in his case the cause of gospel liberty was at stake. We find him, at a later period, with Paul and Timothy at Ephesus, whence he was sent by Paul to Corinth for the purpose of getting the contributions of the church there in behalf of the poor saints at Jerusalem sent forward (2 Corinthians 8:6; 12:18). He rejoined the apostle when he was in Macedonia, and cheered him with the tidings he brought from Corinth (7:6-15). After this his name is not mentioned till after Paul’s first imprisonment, when we find him engaged in the organization of the church in Crete, where the apostle had left him for this purpose (Titus 1:5). The last notice of him is in 2 Timothy 4:10, where we find him with Paul at Rome during his second imprisonment. From Rome he was sent into Dalmatia, no doubt on some important missionary errand. We have no record of his death. He is not mentioned in the Acts.

•TITUS, EPISTLE TO was probably written about the same time as the first epistle to Timothy, with which it has many affinities. “Both letters were addressed to persons left by the writer to preside in their respective churches during his absence. Both letters are principally occupied in describing the qualifications to be sought for in those whom they should appoint to offices in the church; and the ingredients of this description are in both letters nearly the same. Timothy and Titus are likewise cautioned against the same prevailing corruptions, and in particular against the same misdirection of their cares and studies. This affinity obtains not only in the subject of the letters, which from the similarity of situation in the persons to whom they were addressed might be expected to be somewhat alike, but extends in a great variety of instances to the phrases and expressions. The writer accosts his two friends with the same salutation, and passes on to

the business of his letter by the same transition (comp. 1 Timothy 1:2, 3 with Titus 1:4, 5; 1 Timothy 1:4 with Titus 1:13, 14; 3:9; 1 Timothy 4:12 with Titus 2:7, 15).”, Paley’s Horae Paulinae.

The date of its composition may be concluded from the circumstance that it was written after Paul’s visit to Crete (Titus 1:5). That visit could not be the one referred to in Acts 27:7, when Paul was on his voyage to Rome as a prisoner, and where he continued a prisoner for two years. We may warrantably suppose that after his release Paul sailed from Rome into Asia and took Crete by the way, and that there he left Titus “to set in order the things that were wanting.” Thence he went to Ephesus, where he left Timothy, and from Ephesus to Macedonia, where he wrote First Timothy, and thence to Nicopolis in Epirus, from which place he wrote to Titus, about A.D. 66 or 67.

In the subscription to the epistle it is said to have been written from “Nicopolis of Macedonia,” but no such place is known. The subscriptions to the epistles are of no authority, as they are not authentic.

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