Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe Series) by E. Randolph Richards

Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe Series) Reviews

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  Jon

  Most people know that the apostle Paul wrote most, if not all, of his letters with the aid of a scribe (or “secretary”), but many people have only the faintest idea of how that would have worked. There are some misguided ideas out there, for example, leading people to think Paul determined every idea, argument, word, and conjugation of his letters. Not only is this manifestly not the case (Paul quotes early hymns, responds to questions/reports, uses standard letter formulae, and brings together contributions from Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silvanus), it ignores the creative role that scribes would have had. As Richard’s shows in this old but still ground-breaking work, ancient scribes could not only record what someone else dictated, but also edit, co-write, and even sometimes compose on behalf of the author(s). While much of the discussion has gone beyond Richards (see, e.g., Candida Moss’s new God’s Ghostwriters), this is a starting text (albeit an academic one) for anyone interested in how the Pauline letters (and perhaps the New Testament writings altogether) were written.