I. Authorship

Virtually no NT scholar has challenged the traditional claim that Paul was the author of this epistle. Hans Deiter Betz, a recognized authority, well summarizes the consensus that “the theological argument . . . is characteristically Pauline both in method and content,” further noting that there was unquestioned acceptance “of authorship even in the earliest period of historical study” (Betz, 1; see also Tenney, 216).