•

epistolography

•

the study of letter writing

•

letters were their means of circulating news, requests, and communicating ideas

•

what kind of letters existed in antiquity

•

business letters

•

notes to lovers

•

children to parents asking for things

•

letters of condolence

•

letters of advice

•

letters are found both in literary form and non-literary, i.e. non-studied

•

it's difficult to figure out the aim and tone of a letter if you don't know its context

•

materials

•

vellum (calf skin)

•

parchment

•

ostraka (potsherds)

•

wood

•

most frequently we find letters preserved papyrus letters, i.e. letters written on reeds

•

pen made of reed

•

ink made of crushed minerals

•

the quality of the materials tells us about the wealth or poverty of the author

•

has the piece of paper been washed and reused?

•

is the writing squeezed in the margin?

•

is the letter written in hand-writing styles indicating that a scribe did some of the writing

•

sending a letter in antiquity

•

there was no post office or publicly funded mail system

•

although there was an imperial system for sending messages

•

most people relied on friends, acquaintances, or even a stranger to carry your letter, both slaves and free persons

•

we meet some letter carriers in Paul's letters

•

a letter to the Philippians mentions Epaphroditus [ay-PAF-rah-DIGH-tus], as Paul mentions him "my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need"

•

we learn that he didn't only carry the letter but there was some anxiety about his sickness

•

at the end of the letter to the Romans, a woman named Phoebe is mentioned

•

we learn that she not only had a letter of recommendation from Paul but that she had an honored status and was a leader within the community

•

who wrote ancient letters and how did one learn to write letters?

•

letter writing was taught at the secondary stage of education by a teacher called a grammaticus

•

we have handbooks from antiquity that give examples of how to write a good letter

•

papyri has been found that shows that children must have been practicing as well

•

Oxyrhynchus [ahk-see-RING-kus] in Egypt is the most important archaeological site ever discovered in terms of finding documents

•

letter from father to his son imploring him to take him to Alexandria

•

women were trained to write letters as well

•

e.g. Isias to husband Hephaestion, complains about this absence from their family and about financial hardships

•

she writes in her own hand the farewell, but someone else scribed the letter

•

there were professional letter writers who served in government

•

form of an ancient letter

•

prescript (superscriptio, adscriptio, salutation)

•

thanksgiving

•

e.g. to a god

•

body

•

the main issue

•

please send me money

•

someone is sick

•

ending

•

farewell formula

•

listed greetings from others

•

Paul uses this similar format that Isias wrote to her husband

•

letter to Philemon [figh-LEE-man]

•

it is often called a private letter, yet the greeting at the end includes several people

•

the address include a house

•

personal matters as well as business matters

•

how Paul's letters were sent

•

we don't have any autographs of Paul's letters, nothing from his own hand

•

we can learn about the earliest networks of Christ's followers

•

Paul sometimes used scribes

•

Romans 16: "I, Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord."

•

Paul sometimes wrote the letters himself

•

1 Corinthians: "I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand"

•

Galatians 6:11: "See what large letters I make when I'm writing in my own hand"

•

Paul sometimes writes in response to others' letters

•

1 Corinthians: "Now concerning the matters about which you wrote."

•

his letters sometimes are substitutes for visits

•

shows various ways of ancient writing with Annemarie Luijendijk

•

ancient papyri

•

shows piece of modern papyrus

•

shows papyrus plant

•

shows how they folded the papyrus plant with address on front, something like a folded envelope

•

people could tear out a fiber and wrap up the envelope

•

different qualities of papyrus

•

bones

•

pottery

•

tree bark (in England, the size of postcards in Latin from Roman military there)

•

shows ancient papyrus in glass, from 1st century