And at the top of the heap, and the only one you need if you have it, is Phil Towner [Full Review]

Philip Towner's commentary in the NICNT series is less technical than Knight's, but it is still an imposing work at over 900 pages. Despite its length, it remains accessible to most educated readers. Like Knight, Towner rejects the conclusions of critical scholars who deny Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles. [Full Review]

[Full Review]

[Full Review]

The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. Towner’s commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, a title that he eschews, is certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, commentary to appear in English on these letters in recent years. Towner was well suited for the task. A revised version of his doctoral thesis, The Goal of Our Instruction, appeared under the Sheffield imprint almost twenty years ago. Since then he has not only published a number of articles on the Pastoral Epistles, but he has also worked with I. Howard Marshall in the preparation of the latter’s ICC volume on the Pastorals. Towner’s disavowal of the “Pastoral Epistles” nomenclature forms a ring construction around his 89-page introduction (2, 88–89). At bottom he is less concerned with Pastoral Epistles language than he is with the idea that the use of such language promotes the idea that the three letters should be read as a single corpus. Towner prefers that they be read as individual compositions, with each individual letter serving as the primary context for the interpretation of any of its parts. At best, following an opinion promoted by Luke Timothy Johnson, Towner would allow that the three letters be identified as a cluster, similar to the Romans-Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, and Ephesians-Colossians clusters of the Pauline epistles. [Full Review]