The three letters which follow are addressed, not to churches, but to two of Paul's colleagues, Timothy and Titus; but this does not mean that they were originally part of a personal correspondence. On the contrary, Timothy and Titus are addressed, not as friends and partners in Paul's missionary activity, but as men who hold long-term responsibility for their respective churches in Ephesus and Crete, and to whom it is appropriate to send instructions about the correct ordering of church affairs. They are addressed, in fact, in their capacity as established pastors; and these three letters, which are notably similar in tone and presuppose similar conditions in the churches to which they were written, have been known since the eighteenth century as the pastoral epistles.

The letters purport to have been written by Paul and were accepted as genuine by the church from at least the end of the second century. But in recent times their authenticity has been questioned. The language and style can be seen on a first reading to be different from those of the other letters attributed to Paul; the structure and the concerns of the churches addressed seem to reflect a later stage of development than one would expect to find in the period of Paul's main correspondence; and the writer's presentation of the Christian faith has an unexpectedly steady, settled quality.