Jimmy Akin, an apologist by the grace of God, to readers far and wide.
That’s how I might begin if I was writing you a letter in the first century. Back then, they didn’t say “Dear so and so.” Instead, they began by announcing the letter’s sender and receiver (like “From” and “To” in an e-mail).
This formula is used in all of the letters of the New Testament—including the book of Revelation, which is a prophecy written in the form of a letter. Consider these examples:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith (1 Tim. 1:1-2).
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1 Pet. 1:1).
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion (Jas. 1:1).
John to the seven churches that are in Asia (Rev. 1:4).
It’s helpful to understand how ancient letters worked, because—except for the Gospels, Acts, and 1 John—every book of the New Testament is written in the form of a letter. (Hebrews is a partial exception; it begins like a treatise and ends like a letter.)
The demand for letters
Like us, ancient people wanted to keep in touch with distant loved ones, and before telephones and the Internet, that meant using letters.
Ancients thus loved receiving letters—even if they couldn’t read. Most people in the ancient world were functionally illiterate (including Jews; the idea they were usually literate is not supported by the evidence), but they would have a literate person read letters to them.
Many ancient letters contain pleas for the recipient to write back quickly and let the sender know how things are going. Sometimes they contain rebukes for not having responded sooner, and we even have a letter in which a frustrated Egyptian author saying he is sending blank papyrus so that the recipient would not have an excuse for not writing back promptly!
Most letters were just one page long, and they often say little more than the ancient equivalent of “I’m fine; how are you?” Yet people loved getting them. It was the only way they had to stay in touch.
Deciding to write
If people always wanted to receive letters, what caused a person to decide to send one?
Sometimes a person decided to write to discuss an important event that had taken place.
That’s why John wrote Revelation. On the island of Patmos, he received a major prophetic vision on a Sunday (“the Lord’s day”; Rev. 1:10), and he promptly sent a letter to the seven Asian churches the vision directed him to write (Rev. 1:11).
An important event also prompted Galatians. Paul learned there was a heresy spreading in the Galatian churches, and he dashed off an epistle to combat it (Gal. 1:1-7).
Normally, however, letters were sent for less dramatic reasons.
For example, a person might decide to write a letter because he just received one and wanted to write back. This seems to be why Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, as he refers to several matters the Corinthians had written him about (1 Cor. 7:1, 25; 8:1; 12:1; 16:1).
Sometimes a person might write because he had a good scribe available. This may have happened with Romans. Paul had never visited Rome (Rom. 1:10-13) and was not planning on visiting in the near future, since he was planning to go next to Jerusalem (Rom. 15:25-32).
However, we know that Romans was written by a scribed named Tertius, who greets the Romans without any introduction, suggesting that he already knew them (Rom. 16:22). It is likely Tertius was a Roman Christian who visited Paul in Corinth.
Because he planned to eventually visit Rome, Paul used Tertius’s arrival to write a letter introducing himself to the Romans.
Sometimes the fact someone was going on a trip and could carry the letter was what prompted the decision to write.
This may be the case with Philemon. Paul was already sending Ephesians and Colossians by the hand of Tychicus (see below), and he likely wrote Philemon at the same time because he knew Tychicus would be going where Philemon lived.
Sometimes there was more than one reason a person decided to write.
For example, Paul wrote to thank the Philippians for a donation they sent him during his imprisonment (Phil. 1:5, 4:18), but it is likely that they also sent a letter to him with the donation. He was probably responding both to the donation and to the letter that accompanied it.
Preparing to write
After deciding to write, the sender needed to prepare. The first step was to find a scribe. Even people who knew how to read usually did not pen their own letters but employed a trained professional.
Rich people sometimes had slaves who were trained scribes, but ordinary people had to hire a scribe. Either way, it meant spending money. You had to pay either a slave’s upkeep or a scribe’s wages.
The scribe also needed something to write on, and this was usually papyrus, an early form of paper made from reeds that grew along the banks of the Nile River.
Papyrus reeds were several inches thick and, once harvested, they would be cut open and the pulpy inside sliced into strips that were pressed together to form a smooth writing surface. Papyrus was exported from Egypt and used all over the Roman world.
The other major writing material was parchment, which was made from animal skins (calves, sheep, goats) that had been scraped smooth and stretched out to dry. Parchment was durable and could be made anywhere (not just Egypt), but it seems to have been more expensive, and most people didn’t use it for letters.
A scribe also needed ink and reed pens to write with, but these were inexpensive and easy to come by.
Composing the letter
When it was time to compose a letter, the sender would tell the scribe what he wanted written.
Sometimes he would simply give the scribe a general idea of what he wanted the letter to contain, and the scribe would put it in his own words. This was common if the sender was illiterate and not skilled at composing good written sentences.
Other times, particularly if the sender was a literary figure known for the quality of his letters—like the Roman author Cicero (106-43 B.C.)—he would dictate.
If the scribe was trained in shorthand, he could keep up with dictation at normal, conversational speed. However, if the scribe didn’t know shorthand (most did not), the author would dictate slowly, word by word.
Usually, the scribe served not just as a transcriptionist but also as an editor, and he had some degree of input into how the letter was phrased.
Scholars have noticed stylistic differences among the letters of Paul in the New Testament, which suggests Paul used different scribes in the course of his career.
During dictation, the scribe often took notes using reusable materials. He might write in ink on parchment or scratch notes on wooden frames coated with wax. The ink on the parchment could be washed off and the wax reconditioned so that the temporary writing material could be used again.
Surprisingly, people in the first century did not write at desks. Writing desks had not been invented, and, although they did have tables, they did not use them for writing. Instead, the artistic and literary evidence shows scribes would sit and use a knee, or a tunic stretched between their knees, to support the writing medium.
Writing was not a solitary activity. By modern standards, the ancients lived in tiny, crowded dwellings, and they were seldom alone. They did not value privacy the way we do, and other people were usually present when a letter was being dictated.
We see evidence of this when Paul is emphasizing how few Corinthians he baptized and he suddenly remembers that he baptized the household of Stephanas (1 Cor. 1:16). We know that Stephanas had recently come to Paul (1 Cor. 16:17), so he probably was in the room and reminded Paul’s of the fact as he was dictating.
Preparing to send
After the initial note-taking session, the scribe would prepare a copy for the sender to review. If he wasn’t satisfied, he could tell the scribe to make changes, and a new draft would be prepared.
If he were satisfied, he would sign the letter. This did not mean writing his name at the bottom, the way we do today. It meant adding a personal note in his own hand.
This played the same function as a modern signature—authenticating the letter using the penmanship of the sender—but it also incorporated the function of a modern postscript or “P.S.” That is, it let the sender add something he meant to mention or to communicate news of something that happened while the scribe was preparing the letter to be sent.
We see Paul doing this in his letters. We can often tell where his scribe’s handwriting broke off and his own began, as when he told the Galatians: “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand” (Gal. 6:11) or when he told the Thessalonians to pay attention to his penmanship so they could distinguish his authentic letters from forgeries: “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thess. 3:17; cf. 2:2).
Incidentally, this shows that—even though he was literate—Paul did not write his letters himself but used scribes, like most people did.
Senders also put information in the postscript that they considered confidential and did not want the scribe or others in the house to know. The postscript was a good place for this because it was not dictated and the letter would be sealed immediately afterward, preventing others from reading it.
Today we seal letters inside envelopes, but in the ancient world they were folded and then tied with a piece of cord (often a fiber pulled from the edge of the papyrus). A bit of clay was then used to seal the knot. This played the same function as our sealing an envelope—to secure the letter and keep anyone from reading it in transit.
If the sender was from the upper class and had a signet, he would press it into the clay, adding extra proof the letter was from him.
Sending the letter
Once it was sealed, the letter was given to a carrier for delivery. There were no regular mailmen, and ordinary people did not have access to the Roman military and diplomatic mail service.
If you were rich, you could have a slave (perhaps the scribe who wrote the letter for you) make the journey to deliver it. But if you were an ordinary person, you made do with travelers who happened to be going where you needed a letter sent.
This traveler-based system is still used in parts of the developing world that do not have regular postal service.
Frequently the fact someone was taking a trip would be what motivated a person to write. If you knew someone was heading to where your friend or relative lived, that would make it an opportune time to write.
We know the carriers of many New Testament letters. For example, a woman named Phoebe carried Romans (Rom. 16:1); a man named Tychicus carried Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (Eph. 6:21, Col. 4:7-9, Philem. 10-12); and Silvanus carried 1 Peter (Peter says he has “written briefly to you” by Silvanus, which was a common way of introducing the letter carrier to the recipients; 1 Pet. 5:12).
Receiving a letter
When the letter arrived, it was common for the carrier to read it aloud, assuming the carrier was literate.
Often the carrier was present when the letter was being written, and he could provide extra details, clarify points that might be confusing, and imitate the sender’s tone of voice, to make sure the intent came through properly.
If the carrier was about to return where he came from—as with a slave dispatched to deliver a letter—it was common for the recipient to dictate a reply and send it back with the carrier.
Although the letters of the New Testament are like other ancient letters in many ways, they are also different in ways that would have surprised the recipients when they arrived.
One difference in Paul’s letters is that he often names co-authors. 1 Corinthians is from Paul and Sosthenes; 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Colossians are from Paul and Timothy; and 1 and 2 Thessalonians are from Paul and Silvanus and Timothy.
Today we rarely send letters jointly, and people in the ancient world were no different, so Paul’s habit of listing co-authors is unusual.
He presumably did it to signal how much he valued the help of his co-workers and to signal the recipients that he was not writing just his own opinions; his associates also endorsed what he said.
The length of the New Testament letters is even more startling. Ancient letters were an average of 87 words long (Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing, 163). Even a literary figure such as Cicero wrote letters that averaged only 295 words. The only New Testament letters shorter than this are 2 John (245 words) and 3 John (219 words). Paul’s shortest letter—Philemon (335 words)—is longer than Cicero’s average one.
Imagine what the Romans must have thought when they got Paul’s letter. At 7,111 words, Romans is eighty-two times longer than the average ancient letter! They must have been gobsmacked to receive such a lengthy letter from a man who had never even visited their church.
The cost of letters
The Romans also would have been impressed by something else: how much Paul’s letter to them cost.
Today writing and sending a letter is a trivial expense, but it was far from trivial in Paul’s day. Papyrus was expensive, and so was hiring a scribe. This is one reason ancient letters were so short.
While cross-cultural cost comparisons are always tricky, Richards did a helpful study of how much Paul’s letters would have cost, and he estimates that Romans would have cost Paul around $2,275 to produce (in 2004 dollars).
This would have paid for one copy to send to Rome and one to keep for his records, which leads to our next subject.
Collecting letters
Skeptical scholars have proposed that Paul’s letters were initially sent to individual churches and that only slowly, over a long period of time, were copies made and circulated to other churches, leading finally to the collection we have in the New Testament. This was thought to be an organic process that nobody supervised.
It is sometimes called the “snowball” theory of how the Pauline collection arose—like a snowball gaining mass as it rolls. Other scholars have dubbed the alternative as the “big bang” theory of collection.
It holds that Paul’s letters were collected all at once, or in discreet stages, through the action of specific individuals who took initiative. This theory better fits the evidence. Paul’s letters were major literary productions, and literary letter-writers kept copies of what they wrote.
When collections of ancient letters —like Cicero’s—were published, they were invariably taken from the author’s archives, not gradually gathered up from the many places they had been sent.
Paul’s letters were likely collected from his personal archives and then published. He even appears to ask Timothy to bring him those archives toward the end of his life (see 2 Timothy 4:13).
Based on factors too complex to go into here, we can even tell the stages in which Paul’s letters were likely collected: There was an initial collection of Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, and Galatians. Later, another collection was made containing Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1-2 Thessalonians. And there was also a collection of Paul’s letters to individuals (1-2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon).
Paul probably released the first collection himself. We have evidence that there was a collection of Paul’s letters circulating in his life, for Peter displays knowledge of multiple Pauline letters and expects his audience to know them as well (2 Pet. 3:15-16).
The third collection takes us up to Paul’s death (see 2 Timothy 4:6-8), and it was likely released after Paul’s death by Luke or Timothy (see 2 Timothy 4:11, 21), based on Paul’s archives.
The middle collection may have been released between these two times or at the same time as the third collection.
HANDWRITTEN PORTION
See how carefully I print this greeting in my own hand? I do that because my cursive handwriting is terrible. I hope you have enjoyed learning about ancient letters and how they relate to the New Testament. God bless you all!—Jimmy Akin