Why did St. Paul write St Timothy so many letters?

Answer 1

Christian scholars refer to the letters to Timothy (and Titus) as the 'Pastorals' because they are concerned with pastoral issues that became important in the second century. They were not really written by Paul, nor were they written to Timothy, but were encyclicals to the Church at large, providing instruction for the overseers of congregations in the second century. By writing two epistles and attributing them to Paul, the author created a marvelous fiction in order to place a church manual of discipline from the mid-second century in the very beginning of the apostolic tradition.

Their attribution to Paul is clearly fictional, for their language, style and thought are thoroughly un-Pauline. The 'personal' references to particular occasions in the lives of Timothy, Titus, and Paul do not fit with reconstructions of that history taken from the authentic letters of Paul.

The letters were not included in Marcion's list of Paul's letters (ca 140 CE), nor do they appear in the earliest manuscript collection of Paul's letters (ca. 200 CE). The first quotations from the epistles appear in lrenaeus' Against Heresies, dated about 180 CE.