Out of the Earth
By Professor EM Blaiklock MA Litt D
CHAPTER SIX
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE EPISTLES
Letters and Letter-Writing in the Ancient World
The papyri again-letters in ancient literature-letters in the non-literary papyri-the range of ancient correspondence— Theon, the spoilt boy the schoolboys Thonis and Aurelius
—the formalities of ancient letter writing-the language of the papyrus letters, and the light it throws on the New Testament-the common Greek of the first century-illustrations.
CONSIDERATION of the light thrown on the epistolary literature of the New Testament by archaeological discovery brings us back again to the Egyptian papyri. The fact that people in the ancient world wrote letters was, of course, well enough known from Latin literature, before the Egyptian documents came to light.
The letters of Cicero provide invaluable information on that stormy generation which saw the end of the senatorial rule and the establishment of that autocracy which we call the Roman Empire. The letters of Pliny show Roman society at its best at the turn of the first century of the Christian era. Its surviving books contain Pliny's official communications with the Emperor Trajan when the writer was governor of Bithynia, and contain much information, as we have seen, about the first clash between the State and the Church.
The letters of both Romans survive in their own right as literature. The surprise of the papyri has been the vast extent of ancient literacy, and the volume of the everyday correspondence between private persons on all manner of subjects of daily interest. The letters of the New Testament, although at times they touch the heights of literary power, have as their prime object information and exhortation in the plain and simple speech which "the common people hear gladly." And the discovery of Egypt's mass of proletarian correspondence, besides providing much linguistic information, has shown the class of writing to which the letters of Paul, Peter, John, Jude and James belong.
Consider for example the breadth of the subject matter.
The papyrus letters cover the whole range of life. Many are not without humour and intense humanity. There is, for example, little Theon. Who was Theon? A mere boy, who has the honour of a catalogue reference in the Loeb collection of select papyri: Theon (spoilt boy), letter of, p. 297."
Theon, at any rate, wrote a letter to his father, sixteen hundred years ago, and from it one may judge:
Theon to Theon his father greeting. You did a fine thing not taking me with you to town. If you won't take me with you to Alexandria, I won't write you a letter, or speak to you, or wish you good-day. And if you go to Alexandria I won't hold your hand, nor speak to you ever again. If you won't take me that's what's up! Mother said to Archelaus, "He upsets me, take him away!" It was nice of you to send me presents, big ones, beans, on the 12th, the day you sailed. Send me a lyre, please do. If you don't, I won't eat, and I won't drink. There now! I pray for your health.
And after that he signs himself by his pet name, Theonas.
"Your little Tommy," so to speak! Did Theon starve to death, or did his father send for him? Probably, we can safely picture "Theonas" in the boulevards of Alexandria, free from inhibitions and developing his little ego.
Several schoolboys appear in the papyri of the same century. There is one from a neglected little lad named Thonis. The exquisitely human touch in the closing words seems to bring him very close to us:
“To my lord and father Arion, from Thonis, greeting.
I pray for you every day. Look, this is my fifth letter to you, and you have written to me only once, nor have you come to see me. You promised me saying, "I am coming," but you have not come to find out whether my teacher is looking after me or not. And he himself asks every day saying, "Isn't he coming yet?" And I just say,
"Yes."
. Try then to come quickly, that he
may teach me as he really wants to do. And when you come, remember what I have often written to you about.
Good-bye my lord and father, and may you prosper many years along with my brothers, whom may the evil eye harm not. Remember my pigeons. To Arion • from Thonis.”
In another family it was the father not the son, who worried about the fees. It is easy to imagine what sort of a letter from home young Aurelius was answering, when he addressed his "very sweetest father." "I pray for you," he continues, "every day to the local deities. Do not be worried, father, about my studies. I am working hard and taking relaxation. It will be all right with me. I greet my mother . . .”
The letter then proceeds for a dozen lines with enthusiastic greetings to friends and relatives, a safer subject. Aurelius senior would doubtless have preferred some assurance about the relaxation.
There were other parents prepared to cut their worrie at the root. There is a famous papyrus which is comment on the grim, hard world to which Christ came with a charter for children. Hilarion, in search of work Alexandria, writes to his wife Alis at Oxyrhynchus:
“Hilarion to Alis, heartiest greetings. Know that we are still even now in Alexandria. Do not worry if, when all the others return, I remain here. I beg and beseech you to take care of the little child, for soon as we receive wages I will send them to you. If good luck to you— you bear a child, if it is a boy let it live; if it is a girl, expose it. You told Aphrodisias 'Do not forget me' How can I forget you? I beg you not to worry.”
There is something peculiarly horrible about the casual directions for the murder of a babe, in the midst of an affectionate letter. It was written right at the beginning of the Christian era.
From schoolboys and husbands away from home we might move to soldiers on campaign, officials on circuit, absent friends, and the host who, in any year, use pen and paper to record their thoughts.
To pigeons, presents, and school fees, we might have added the problems and concerns of anxious wives, busy builders, solicitous hosts, and grateful guests. And does not Paul himself range in subject from delicate irony over Corinthian pretensions, to stern rebuke for heresy, and from news of friends to the warm cloak he left at Troas, and some precious books?
There is no perceptible difference between the style of the private letters of the first and the fourth century.
They are innumerable, and repay the careful examination of the New Testament scholar. It is revealed, for example, that Paul observed with some care the forms of polite address common in his day. There is an opening word of salutation, followed by thanksgiving and prayer for th person or company addressed. Then comes the special subject of communication, greetings to friends, and perhaps a closing word of prayer.
Even Thonis' letter to Arion reveals some of th stereotyped forms, and they are almost universal. Here
is a second-century letter which shows strikingly the Pauline style in brief:
“Ammonous to her sweetest father, greeting. When I received your letter and recognized that by the will of the gods you were preserved, I rejoiced greatly. And as at the same time an opportunity here presented itsell, I am writing you this letter being anxious to pay my respects. Attend as quickly as possible to the matters that are pressing. Whatever the little one asks shall be done. If the bearer of this letter hands over a small basket to you, it is I who sent it. All your friends greet you by name. Celer greets you and all who are with him. I pray for your health.”
One other point of some importance emerges from a study of the papyrus letters, and that is the presence and function of the scribe. Letters were dictated, and even men and women quite capable of adding a signature and postscript in their own hand appear to have employed a professional letter-writer for the body of their note. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul, in closing, took the pen from the scribe, and "in large characters" (6: 11) paid the church he had so sternly reprimanded the delicate compliment of a personal postscript above the signature which authenticated the whole.
It has been suggested that a capable scribe, aware of his employer's mind, may have been entrusted, like any capable secretary today, with the supplying of some of the phraseology. Slight differences of style (as, for example, between the first and second epistles of Peter) might easily be accounted for by this habit. One important lesson, therefore, from the non-literary papyri, is the limitations of stylistic criticism.
It is in the sphere of language that the papyri have given most light to the student of the New Testament epistles. They have revealed that Paul and his fellow-writers used the vernacular of the day, the racy speech of common intercourse. What else should be expected? A Cockney agitator in a recent best-seller remarks auto-biographically: "
... I practised talking the way they did, for use when necessary. There's a whole lot of people don't seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he'll take you seriously." The aim of the New Testament is to be taken seriously, and its writers deliberately talk in the daily speech of ordinary mankind. Luke begins his Gospel with a literary introduction worthy of Thucydides. He then rounds off his sentence, puts sophistication aside, and adopts the vernacular.
The same vernacular, recovered from the papyri, was the speech of the Epistles. It is not without grace and power; it is not incapable of poetry; it is flexible and expressive; but it is at the same time, in "the full stream," as Moulton put it, of contemporary Greek. And it is the vocabulary of that contemporary language which again and again throws light on passages in the Epistles. The papyri, have, in fact, added a sizeable appendix to the Greek lexicon.
Here are some illustrations. "I have all, and abound," runs Phil. 4: 18 in the Authorized Version. But why did Paul use a compound form of the verb "to have," which, in Classical Greek, carries a meaning which would not make sense in the passage quoted, any more than it would in Matt. 6: 2, 5, and 16? "Verily," Christ said,
"they have their reward." In translating the Aramaic, Matthew used the same compound of the verb " to have" Matthew's meaning was plain enough, from the other Gospels, but why such a strange word? Then hosts of bills were found in the rubbish heaps of an Egyptian town only some of them paid. The formula for receipt was the verb in question—" he is quit." Matthew was again at the receipt of customs when he penned his verse. Whimsically he pictured the hypocrite's bill, his claim on God paid in full in earthly glory, spot cash; "he is quit." And Paul is saying: 'I give you a receipt in full for all your kind-ness." How much more vivid the passage becomes by the recovered metaphor.
So, too, does Heb. 11: 1 when a papyrus document reveals that the word so vaguely translated " substance," was a word for "title-deeds." Title-deeds give us secure possession of that which we have not necessarily seen, and faith firmly places in our hands the unseen wealth of a spiritual world. For the same world Paul counted all worldly advantage "loss" (Phil. 3: 8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,). His expression gains strength when a papyrus uses the same word for bones cast out for the dogs.
When the Jews of Thessalonica complain that " those who have turned the world upside down" have arrived to disturb their peace (Acts 17: 6), they use a word Paul himself employs of those who are "unsettling" the folk of Galatia (Gal. 5: 12 I would they were even cut off which trouble you.) This is the very word Theon's mother uses in the first letter quoted above. "He upsets me," quotes the bad boy sarcastically.
The new light from the papyri suggests, in consequence, numerous more exact translations. For example, read
"originator," for "captain" in Heb. 2: 10, "debating" for "doubting" in I Tim. 2: 8, and "I have guarded my trust" for "I have kept the faith" in II Tim. 4: 7.
Examples might be multiplied, but enough has been quoted to show that, with the discovery of the papyri, the language of the New Testament has truly risen from the dead. It was the German scholar Deissmann who first saw the extent and the significance of the new world of language which was awaiting exploration, and if
Deissmann went too far in developing the social implications of his discovery, his name, none the less, must stand with Ramsay's for the worth of his contribution to the understanding of the New Testament as a living book.
As a footnote, another linguistic or literary detail from the Dead Sea Scrolls may be added. Hebrews 1:6 quotes the Old Testament: "Let all the angels of God worship Him." It was difficult to locate the quotation, and Psalm 97:7 was generally chosen as the nearest Old Testament utterance. True, Deuteronomy 32: 43 had the exact words, but only in the Greek version, the Septugint.
In the traditional Hebrew text they were not clearly to be found. In commenting on Hebrews 1: 6 one therefore had to choose between inexact and unauthenticated quotation.
The Qumran fragment of Deuteronomy contains the exact words in a Hebrew text.