Chapter 1
Two modern models used to
read Paul’s letters:
The optimistic model says that Paul
dictated his letters to an amanuensis in one sitting without stopping. Any other people present were merely
observers, or make minimal comments. The
pessimistic model says that we can’t know anything about how Paul wrote. Richards commends the pessimistic model’s
cautiousness, but says that we can know some of the process.
How the modern Western
concept of individualism makes it difficult for us to understand Paul’s use of
helpers:
We assume Paul had privacy and wrote
in isolation because that’s how we would write, but Richards says that the
eastern world is “group-oriented” (26), so it’s unlikely that Paul worked
alone. Richards points out that there
was little or no privacy, and Eastern people wouldn’t understand why we value
it so much (27). He says we tend to
ignore the “we” in Paul’s letters because for us writing is a solitary
endeavor, but in Paul’s culture there would at least have been the addition of
a secretary because most people couldn’t write, and most people Paul’s age
couldn’t see well enough to write.
Chapter 2
The “courtesy” argument
regarding people mentioned by Paul in the salutations of his letters:
This argument assumes that Paul is
the sole author and the other people listed in the opening greeting are just
listed out of courtesy, and “merely consulted and endorsed the letter”
(34). According to this argument, it’s
not possible that more than one person could give input and have there be the
degree of consistency that is found in Paul’s letters.
Why Richards sees this
argument as weak:
Richards uses the evidence of typical
letters of Paul’s time to show that it wasn’t common practice to include
co-authors in the greeting as a matter of courtesy, and that using co-authors
was generally rare. Paul’s letters also
list greetings at the end from other people who were present, so if the people
at the beginning of the letter were not coauthors, it seems more likely that
they would simply have been listed at the end as well. Also, if Paul is the only author, then we
have to ignore his use of the word “we” in the letters.
Chapter 3
The first-century practice
of keeping notebooks and what they were used for:
First-century notebooks were a
collection of wax tablets or parchments that were tied together in a
codex. They were used similar to the way
we use notebooks today, except that these were reusable. People used them to take notes while someone
was speaking, or to make notes about something they were reading. The notebooks were also used to write rough
drafts of letters, and to keep copies of the final drafts of letters.
How Richards interprets
Paul’s command to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:13:
Richards says that two different
words were used in Paul’s command, telling Timothy to bring the “books,” which
were probably Old Testament scrolls, and “membranae” or “parchments,” which
were probably notebooks. Paul emphasizes
the notebooks because Timothy might have been likely to disregard them as
unimportant, but they may have contained notes about letters Paul was
preparing, as well as Paul’s copies of previous letters he had written (57).
Chapter 4
The distinction some NT
scholars have made between letters and epistles:
“Letters” are private correspondence
that are similar to our personal letters.
They are short, written in a standard style and format, and use common,
everyday language. “Epistles” are
letters that seem private but use more educated language and are “rhetorically
structured.” They are somewhat similar
to the form of a “letter to the editor” (59).
The wide range of
privilege that secretaries had in the writing of first-century letters and their
3 roles:
The secretary could function as
transcriber, contributor or composer. As
transcriber, the secretary had little input or control over the content, and
simply wrote down exactly what was dictated.
As contributor, the secretary might make editorial changes or
corrections, and the author might ask the secretary to insert a line of
standardized text that was not dictated.
The secretary could also function as composer, creating a letter using
the standard forms and text that were common to Greco-Roman letters. In all cases, the author was fully
responsible for the final content.
Chapter 5
Why Richards concludes
that Paul probably did not use secretaries as composers of his letters:
Richards demonstrates that this was
not common practice. Also, when a secretary did function as the composer they
would use standardized text for a letter in which the author probably didn’t
need to worry about the precise content.
Richards points out the Paul was not writing standard letters, so he
needed to tell the secretary what to write.
One example Richards gives is that Ephesians 6:12 uses a form of
rhetorical device that a typical secretary would not be trained enough to
use. This kind of rhetoric is typical of
Paul’s letters, and since he wouldn’t have used the same secretary for each
letter, we can assume that the common style between them is Paul’s.
What Richards means when
he says: “Most likely Paul’s secretary fell in that middle area between the
extremes of transcriber and composer” (93):
It is unlikely that Paul had access
to a secretary that took shorthand, and his letters don’t sound like they were
dictated slowly so that the secretary could write each word precisely as he
said it. Instead the secretary would
have had to take notes, and then transcribe them into a draft that was then
brought back to Paul for review and edit.
Chapter 6
The modern understanding
of plagiarism versus the first-century practice of using already existing
materials:
We expect that whenever a writer uses
any idea or phrase that was written by someone else this will be acknowledged
and the original author given credit and sometimes even paid for its use. In Paul’s time, they didn’t consider existing
material to be owned by anyone and they borrowed others’ ideas and phrases freely.
“Preformed material” and
“interpolations” defined:
“Preformed material” was anything used
in Paul’s writing that existed prior to the time of writing. This included scripture quotations, hymns,
poetry, etc. These insertions could have
been written by Paul at an earlier time or written by someone else (95). “Interpolations” are phrases or sections that
have been inserted by someone else into the letter. One way to tell when there has been an
interpolation is that the text was not in earlier versions of the document, as
demonstrated by the phrase in Romans 8:1 that doesn’t appear until fifth
century manuscripts. Some scholars say that there are non-Pauline insertions
that occurred during the drafting of the original letter. These interpolations are harder to spot but
could be the voice of the co-author and would explain areas where the theology
or character of a passage seems different from what Paul typically wrote.
Chapter 7
What Richards means when
he says that Paul weaves preformed materials and interpolations into his
letters:
We know that Paul used hymns and
scriptures in his letters. Richards says
some of these were probably memorized and part of his dictation, so they were
woven into the letter as he spoke. There
were probably other materials that Paul had in his notebooks that he might have
handed to the secretary to insert at a specified point in the letter. Where Paul included these in his dictation,
the text would flow together well, but where the secretary inserted the
prewritten material there would be less smoothing to make the text flow.
What Richards means when
he says: “As individualistic Westerners we often operate under the
presupposition that ‘Paul alone’ is better than ‘Paul + others” (120):
This goes back to the idea discussed
in earlier chapters that there were no coauthors, just people listed in the
greeting as a courtesy. This
presupposition assumes that inspired writing can only be done by a person
writing in solitude and not by a group of people collaborating together. We assume that only Paul was inspired and
that anything added to Paul’s words reduces their impact.
What Richards says is
wrong with this view:
Richards has demonstrated in previous
chapters that Paul did not write alone.
We know that Timothy and Sosthenes were coauthors, and that a secretary
was a part of the process. Ultimately
Paul was responsible for approving the final content, but other voices are
incorporated.
Chapter 8
The distinction between
public and private letters in the Greco-Roman age:
Public letters were essays written in
formal language and intended for wide distribution. Private letters were shorter and simpler. There were standard sentences and phrases
used in every letter and there was a standard structure that each author
followed, so the letters were fairly impersonal. Very private or personal subjects weren’t
usually addressed in letters because they were dictated to a secretary.
How Paul’s letters fit
into these 2 categories, according to Richards:
Paul used the standard structure for
Greco-Roman private letters, but he did not stick to the standard predetermined
phrases or the usual short length. He
intended his letters to be read to a community of believers like a public
letter, but he did not write formal essays.
Paul’s letters did not fit nicely into either category, but instead fell
somewhere in the middle.
Chapter 9
The two weaknesses of the
approach of some NT scholars in establishing a typical style of writing for
Paul:
The first weakness is that the
outcome changes depending on which letters are chosen as the basis for
determining Paul’s typical style. The
second weakness is that even the four letters that are often chosen as the “authentic
letters” are quite different from each other.
These four were chosen because they include “justification by faith,”
but the absence of this theme from the other letters may just mean that it
didn’t need to be addressed with the church to which the other letters were
written.
What Richards means when
he concludes that Paul’s writing style was “diluted” (155):
Paul was not writing alone. He had coauthors and a secretary, so it is
difficult to know exactly what in his letters is his style. Statistical analysis is not a valid measurement
of authenticity when multiple people are contributing to the letter. Also, preformed material is included, such as
Old Testament scriptures and hymns, and this further dilutes the style and
invalidates the statistical analysis.
Chapter 10
How Paul’s letters
compare with typical Greco-Roman letters with regard to length:
A typical letter was only one papyrus
sheet long, and an average of 87 words.
Letters by Cicero and Seneca were longer than average, 295 and 995
words, respectively, but they still didn’t come close to Paul, because Paul’s
average letter was 2,495 words. As
Richards says, “Paul’s letters were inordinately long” (163).
What this tells us about
the likely expense which Paul incurred in writing his letters:
Richards calculates the amount of
papyrus and the cost of hiring a secretary, converting ancient currency into
U.S. dollars, and comes up with a cost of $101 for Paul’s shortest letter, and
$2,275 for Romans, the longest letter, demonstrating that the cost of these
letters was significant (169).
Chapter 11
The 3 ways that
first-century letter writers authenticated their letters instead of signing
them:
One way was to seal the letter with
clay and press a seal into it. This was
the most secure way, but also the least used. Another was for the author to
write a summary at the end in their own handwriting. The third was for the author to write a
personal note at the end. In these last
two forms of authentication, the change from the secretary’s handwriting to the
author’s was obvious and showed that the author had approved its contents.
The 3 kinds of letter
carriers that existed in the Roman Empire in the first century:
There were imperial letter carriers,
but these were only available for official correspondence. Private citizens couldn’t use the imperial
carriers, so they sent letters via happenstance carriers or private
carriers. Happenstance carriers were
people who happened to be going in the same direction or to the same place the
letter needed to go. These might be
friends or family, or total strangers.
Private carriers were usually personal slaves, or someone who was sent
somewhere specifically for the purpose of delivering the letter.
Chapter 12
Two dangers that letter
carriers had to contend with:
One danger was weather, which could
be unpredictable and which caused obstacles like swollen rivers or snowed-in
mountain passes. Another danger was
thieves. Travelers had to be wary and
often sought out others to travel with so that they would be less likely to be
attacked.
Chapter 13
What is meant by saying
that the carriers of Paul’s letters sometimes functioned as his “envoys”:
Paul at first sent his letters via
happenstance carriers, but then switched to using private carriers because they
were more reliable, and because they could serve as Paul’s envoys. This meant that they could speak for Paul,
and serve as his delegates. When there
was a question about something in a letter, the envoy could explain and help
the church to understand Paul’s meaning.
Chapter 14
The new scholarly
interest in the likely process by which Paul’s letters were collected:
Interest was renewed by a book by
Harry Gamble that theorized that Paul’s letters were assembled into codices
because of a desire to show their “catholicity” (213). To make the theological statement, the
letters needed to be together in one document and this was best accomplished in
a codex.
Richards’ theory of how
Paul’s letters were collected:
Richards says it was common practice
for authors to retain copies of their letters, so Paul himself is the most
likely source for a collection of his letters.
These may have been in the notebooks he asks Timothy to bring (2 Tim.
4:13). Paul probably had no thought of
publishing them, but kept them for reference or in case a letter didn’t reach
its destination. When Paul died, one of
his team probably kept the notebooks. Richards speculates that when Acts was
published, people may have started asking for copies of Paul’s letters, so that
was possibly when they were first published as a collection.
Chapter 15
Richards’ understanding
of inspiration as it applies to Paul’s letters:
Richards suggests that inspiration is
not focused on the writer, but instead on the document. He shows that considering the process and the
fact that Paul’s letters were not a product of Paul working alone, we must
consider that God “divinely prepared” the team members and the situation
(226-7). All of these elements were
“divinely supervised” so that they produced the inspired letters (229).
My understanding of the process by
which they were written has changed, and I will read them differently now. I had never paid much attention to the people
listed in the greeting, or considered that there might be any voices present in
the letter except Paul’s. The
description of how 1 Corinthians might reflect both Paul and Sosthenes
perspectives on food sacrificed to idols (116-7) makes those passages make
sense in a different way, and points out the importance of understanding the
context not just for Paul but also for whoever else is listed as coauthor.
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