Epistles (Horace) he had already written. However, as a rule, the Epistles "are compositions like those which Pope, following the manner of Horace, has made familiar to us as Moral Essays." The "Epistles" were published about four years after the first three books of "Odes," and were introduced by a special address to his patron Maecenas, as his "Odes," "Epodes," and "Satires" had been. The form of composition may have been suggested by some of the satires of Lucilius, which were composed as letters to his personal friends... "From the "Epistles"... we gather that [Horace] had gradually adopted a more retired and
Pastoral epistles responding to specific 2nd-century developments (Marcionism, gnosticism). That Marcion (ca. 140) betrays knowledge of a collection of Paul's letters that lack the Pastoral Epistles is another piece of evidence for which any model must account. (This is a separate question to Marcion's "canon", which included only edited versions of Luke and the Pauline epistles; according to Tertullian, Marcion "omitted" the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles.) According to Raymond E. Brown ("An Introduction to the New Testament", 1997), the majority of scholars who accept a post-Pauline date of composition for the Pastorals favour the period 80–100. Scholars supporting