Recensiones y presentación de libros 153 Porter also introduces the essays of the volume. J. W. Aageson discusses “The Pastoral Epistles, Apostolic Authority, and the Development of the Pauline Scriptures” (5-26). R. W. Wall examines “The Function of the Pastoral Letters within the Pauline Canon of the NT: A Canonical Approach” (27-44). He gives a brief overview of the formation of the Pauline canon and applies a canonical approach to describe the function of the Pastoral epistles within the Pauline collection. Wall argues that “only in consideration of this thirteen-letter whole, and not a fraction thereof, is a complete understanding of the Pauline regula fidei possible for Christian nurture” (36). Wall then describes the significance of the inclusion of the Pastorals with their ecclesiology and emphasis on the character of the Christian for the reconstruction of Paul’s theology. Wall ar- gues that “the interpreter must steadfastly avoid the current practice of setting aside the three-letter collection of Pauline Pastorals as ‘inauthentic’ and accept their teaching as complementary for a holistic Pauline theology that is, in fact, authorized by the church’s Scriptures” (37). The Pastorals function to correct what I think is a dangerous tendency of the (especially) Protes- tant misreading of Paul, which demonizes good works as somehow subversive of the sinner’s dependency on Christ’s death for salvation. Further, the Pasto- rals’ stress on the formation of a “godly” character as the distinguishing mark of the faithful believer, who is then morally competent to perform “good works”, corrects another tendency of a (especially) Protestant misreading of Paul: namely the emphasis on teaching a saving orthodoxy to the exclusion of any instruction in a practical divinity that embodies confessed truth in the hard work of Christian charity and virtue. In this regard, too, the emphasis of the Pastorals brings a necessary balance to the whole of Scripture’s Pauline teaching (44). M.-É. Boismard’s, “Paul’s Letter to the Laodiceans” (45-57, for the later extant Latin version see Harding’s essay, 138f) suggests on the basis of many doublets in Colossians that the now lost letter to the Laodiceans of Col 4:16 has been incorporated into Colossians. The editor of the Pauline letter col- lection did not forget the letter to the Laodiceans, “but combined it with the letter to the Colossians; consequently, it still exists, but in the form of membra disjecta, in a letter (Colossians) which we still possess. It was all the easier to do this since … the two letters were in part parallel and dealt with similar themes. The compiler thus fulfilled at the same time the wish expressed by Paul in Col 4:16: both letters were to be read by the same readers; that would be easier if they were combined to form a single letter” (45f). Boismard considers his reconstruction on the basis of Colossians as an authentic letter of Paul. In “The Hellenistic Letter-formula and the Pauline Letter-scheme” (59-93), D. Dormeyer “utilizes recent work in letter-form and rhetorical analysis (60- 64) to explore issues of canon. He outlines several types of rhetorical tech- niques that are found in the individual letters and uses the criterion of these techniques to address questions of authorship and authenticity, and hence canonicity” (2f).