Paul's Large Letters : Paul's Autographic Subscription in the Light of Ancient Epistolary Conventions

Professor Steve Reece

ISBN 10: 056768265X / ISBN 13: 9780567682659

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Jun 2018, 2018

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Paul's Large Letters : Paul's Autographic Subscription in the Light of Ancient Epistolary Conventions
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Jun 2018
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 056768265X
• ISBN 13: 9780567682659
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 234W x 156H x 0D millimeters 234 millimeters width by 156 millimeters height by 0 millimeters depth
• Weight: 463 grams

About this title

Synopsis

At the end of several of his letters the apostle Paul claims to be penning a summary and farewell greeting in his own hand: 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, cf. Colossians, 2 Thessalonians. Paul's claims raise some interesting questions about his letter-writing practices. Did he write any complete letters himself, or did he always dictate to a scribe? How much did his scribes contribute to the composition of his letters? Did Paul make the effort to proofread and correct what he had dictated? What was the purpose of Paul's autographic subscriptions? What was Paul's purpose in calling attention to their autographic nature? Why did Paul write in large letters in the subscription of his letter to the Galatians? Why did he call attention to this peculiarity of his handwriting?

A good source of answers to these questions can be found among the primary documents that have survived from around the time of Paul, a large number of which have been discovered over the past two centuries and in fact continue to be discovered to this day. From around the time of Paul there are extant several dozen letters from the caves and refuges in the desert of eastern Judaea (in Hebrew, Aramaic, Nabataean, Greek, and Latin), several hundred from the remains of a Roman military camp in Vindolanda in northern England (in Latin), and several thousand from the sands of Middle and Upper Egypt (in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian Demotic). Reece has examined almost all these documents, many of them unpublished and rarely read, with special attention to their handwriting styles, in order to shed some light on these technical aspects of Paul's letter-writing conventions.

About the Authors

Steve Reece is Professor of Classical Languages and Patricia Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Chris Keith is Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway. He is the author of The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John and the Literacy of Jesus, a winner of the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, and Jesus' Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee. He is also the co-editor of Jesus among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, and was recently named a 2012 Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar.