evinced multiple different possible shapes and sizes of this canon of sacred texts. This debate continues into our own day, whether to set aside the very idea of a biblical canon or to open it up to additional texts. The tenor of this debate begs the question why the church settled on the biblical canon it did and in particular on a thirteen-letter Pauline collection that includes these three Pastoral Epistles. Why this canonical shape and not some other? How an object is formed and how its parts