2 Timothy setting & dates

The setting

The setting of this final letter is stark: a Roman prison cell, most likely a cold, grim dungeon, where Paul awaited execution near the end of the emperor Nero’s reign, around AD 66-67. This was a far harsher confinement than his first Roman imprisonment; Paul describes himself as “suffering, bound with chains as a criminal” (2:9), and speaks of a first defense at which “no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me” (4:16). The great missionary who had traveled the length of the Roman world now sat in one cold room in the imperial capital, lonely and awaiting death, yet writing with unshaken confidence in Christ.

Timothy, the letter’s recipient, was still far to the east, ministering in Ephesus in the province of Asia. Paul’s requests give the geography a poignant, human dimension: he asks Timothy to come to him quickly before winter, to pick up Mark on the way, to stop for the cloak and the books and parchments he had left at Troas, and he notes the whereabouts of various coworkers, Crescens in Galatia, Titus in Dalmatia, Erastus at Corinth, Trophimus left ill at Miletus. These scattered names trace the far-flung network of the early Christian mission across the empire, even as its greatest apostle came to the end of his road. The map of 2 Timothy thus stretches from a Roman death cell across the seas to Ephesus and beyond, as Paul, at the finish of his own race, hands the torch of the gospel to the next generation.

Where the letter went

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Timeline

• c. AD 62-63 - Paul is released from his first Roman imprisonment and travels and ministers again.
• c. AD 63-65 - Paul writes 1 Timothy and Titus during this period of freedom.
• c. AD 66-67 - Paul is arrested again and imprisoned in Rome under Nero, this time in harsh conditions.
• c. AD 67 - Paul writes 2 Timothy, his final letter, expecting execution.
• c. AD 67-68 - Paul is martyred in Rome, having “finished the race.”