We are not, at the moment, concerned with any particular epistle, but with
the true significance of the Greek word epistole.
A superficial acquaintance with language may lead a reader to say, ‘epistle is
most evidently but the Anglicized form of the Greek
epistole and should therefore be adopted
without demur’. This, however, takes no notice of the subtle changes that words
undergo in the course of time. Did the apostle desire the high priest to send
‘letters’ or ‘epistles’ to Damascus (Acts 9:2)? Did the Corinthians compose
‘epistles’ or merely send ‘letters’ of approval? (1 Cor. 16:3). To the
uninstructed, it would seem quite obvious that the French word
demandez should be translated by the
English word ‘demand’, but that is not so. The English word has developed a
peremptoriness that is absent from the French, and so
demandez is better translated by the word
‘ask’.
So while on the surface ‘epistle’ appears to be the normal translation of
epistole, it is too formal a word and
many times the more homely word ‘letter’ must be used. The question therefore
before us is, are Paul’s epistles to be considered as ‘epistles’ in the formal
sense or ‘letters’ in the homely sense? The following quotation from Deissmann’s
Bible Studies will express the difference
that we must make between ‘letters’ and ‘epistles’.
‘Men have written letters ever since they could write at all. Who the first
letter-writer was we know not. But this is quite as it should be: the writer
of a letter accommodates himself to the need of the moment; his aim is a
personal one and concerns none but himself, - least of all, the curiosity of
posterity. We fortunately know quite as little who was the first to experience
repentance or to offer prayer. The writer of a letter does not sit in the
market-place. A letter is a secret and the writer wishes his secret to be
preserved; under cover and seal he entrusts it to the reticence of the
messenger. The letter, in its essential idea, does not differ in any way from
a private conversation; like the latter, it is a personal and intimate
communication, and the more faithfully it catches the tone of the private
conversation, the more of a letter, that is, the better a letter, it is. The
only difference is the means of communication. We avail ourselves of far-travelling
handwriting, because our voice cannot carry to our friend: the pen is employed
because the separation by distance does not permit a
tête-à-tête. A letter is destined for
the receiver only, not for the public eye, and even when it is intended for
more than one, yet with the public it will have nothing to do: letters to
parents and brothers and sisters, to comrades in joy or sorrow or sentiment -
these too, are private letters, true letters. As little as the words of the
dying father to his children are a speech
- should they be a speech it would be
better for the dying to keep silent - just as little is the letter of a sage
to his confidential pupils an essay, a
literary production; and if the pupils have learned wisdom, they will not
place it among their books, but lay it devoutly beside the picture and other
treasured relics of their master. The form and external appearance of the
letter are matters of indifference in the determination of its essential
character. Whether it be written on stone or clay, on papyrus or parchment, on
wax or palm-leaf, on rose paper or a foreign postcard, is quite as immaterial
as whether it clothes itself in the set phrases of the age; whether it be
written skilfully or unskillfully, by a prophet or a beggar, does not alter
its special characteristics in the least. Nor do the particular contents
belong to the essence of it. What is alone essential is the purpose which it
serves; confidential personal conversation between persons separated by
distance. The one wishes to ask something of the other, wishes to praise or
warn or wound the other, to thank him or assure him of sympathy in joy - it is
ever something personal that forces the pen into the hand of the
letter-writer. He who writes a letter under the impression that his lines may
be read by strangers, will either coquette with this possibility, or be
frightened by it; in the former case he will be vain, in the latter, reserved,
in both cases unnatural - no true letter-writer. With the personal aim of the
letter there must necessarily be joined the naturalness of the writer’s mood;
one owes it not only to himself and to the other, but still more to the letter
as such, that he yield himself freely to it. So must the letter, even the
shortest and poorest, present a fragment of human
naivete - beautiful or trivial, but, in
any case, true.
Here are two ‘letters’ taken from a collection of papyrus discovered in
Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and dating from or near the same period in which Paul wrote
his epistles.
Letter of recommendation from Theon
to Tyrannos
About A.D. 25
‘Theon to his esteemed Tyrannos, many greetings. Herakleides, the bearer of
this letter, is my brother. I therefore entreat you with all my power to treat
him as your protégé. I have also written to your brother Hermias, asking him
to communicate with you about him. You will confer upon me a very great favour
if Herakleides gains your notice. Before all else you have my good wishes for
unbroken health and prosperity.
Good-bye’.
Address: ‘To Tyrannos, dioiketes’.
Letter of consolation from Eirene to
Taonnophris and Philon
Second century
‘Eirene to Taonnophris and Philon, good cheer. I was as much grieved and
shed as many tears over Eumoiros as I shed for Didymas, and I did everything
that was fitting, and so did my whole family, Epaphrodeitos and Thermuthion
and Philion and Apollonios and Plantas. But still there is nothing one can do
in the face of such trouble. So I leave you to comfort yourselves.
Athyr 1’.
Address: ‘To Taonnophris and Philon’.
Coming to the question of the true nature of Paul’s epistles, we further
quote from Deissmann:
‘The written words of a letter are nothing but the wholly inartificial and
incidental substitute for spoken words. As the letter has a quite distinct and
transitory motive, so has it also a quite distinct and restricted public - not
necessarily merely one individual, but sometimes, according to circumstances,
a smaller or larger company of persons: in any case, a circle of readers which
can be readily brought before the writer’s mind and distinctly located in the
field of inward vision. A work of literature, on the other hand, has the
widest possible publicity in view: the literary man’s public is, so to speak,
an imaginary one, which it is the part of the literary work to find’.
At first sight there is confessedly a great difference between the epistle to
Philemon, with its personal appeal, and the epistle to the Romans with its
logical presentation of fundamental doctrine. Both are, however, true letters
written to known readers, without any thought of posterity, without any idea
that a wider public would ever read them. That they prove to be a part of all
Scripture which is given by inspiration of God, in no wise alters the personal
intention of the original writer.
Instead, therefore, of conceiving of Paul writing ‘epistles’ with an eye to a
future public, we have the privilege and the sacred joy of seeing him dealing in
private with the problems of the infant Church. Had the Lord intended that we
should learn Doctrinal and Dispensational Truth in a formal manner, Paul could
have most surely framed the most complete and authoritative compendium of
Christian doctrine that the mind of man could conceive and the Church demand. As
it is, we have to exercise faith, patience and prayer, and can only piece
together as the spirit of wisdom and revelation is granted to us, the majestic
doctrine that underlies, but is never fully expressed in the ‘epistles’ of the
apostle to the Gentiles. See the
CHRONOLOGY OF THE ACTS for the relationship that exists between the affairs
of the Church at the time, and the epistles that were prompted by those selfsame
times.
