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authorship

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in Paul's letters, other figures begin to emerge as authors

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e.g. Silvanus, Timothy, Sosthenes, Tertius

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what was going on as these letters were produced and first read aloud among the ekklesia?

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in some letters we see that a community begins to emerge

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prescripts

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a prescript consists of three parts

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superscriptio: the name of the sender

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adscriptio: the name of the addressee

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salutatio: the greeting, often followed by prayer or well wishes to addressee

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e.g. Philippians 1:1

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prescripts are X-to-Y greetings and they don't seem particularly interesting, something like modern day e-mail headers: to someone, from someone, regarding something

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but if you look closely, you can find exciting details in these prescripts

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authorship isn't so simple: it's not just Paul writing, he and others co-send the letters

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audience isn't straight-forward either

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the author Paul presents himself in different ways to different audiences, in one as a slave, in another as an apostle, in another a captive

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time and language of letters of Paul

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Paul's letters were the earliest texts written in the Christian canon, or the New Testament

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Paul wrote roughly between 49 and 57 CE

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CE stands for Common Era, BCE stands for Become the Common Era

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this is a more academic, less religiously-inflected and more neutral way of talking about time

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often people say AD, which means Anno Domini or "Year of our Lord" and BC means "Before Christ"

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in different religions, people have different ways of dating history

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we know that Paul wrote more letters than the ones contained in the New Testament

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we know that communities wrote back to him, but none of those letters survive

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Paul's letters were written in Greek

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Latin was the primary language of those in power

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Aramaic and Hebrew, among other languages, were in use among Jews and others in Roman province of Judaea

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Greek was the common language of the Roman Empire

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we don't know if Paul knew Hebrew, Aramaic or Latin

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the Greek in which Paul wrote was called "koine" [koyn-AY]

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the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during Hellenistic period and Roman antiquity

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had developed and spread following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC

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it was the common language of the time, not the more literary versions of Greek that imitated the stylus of the classical period of Greece like Demosthenes or Plato

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audience

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in all the prescripts, except the letter to the Romans, we find the word ekklesia

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it's where we get the word ecclesiatical: of or relating to the Christian Church or its clergy.

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ekklesia usually is translated as "church", but with Paul's letters ew're handling the very earliest materials in the New Testament, materials that existed before churches were built, and before the term Christian had emerged and had been coined

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if we simply translate ekklesia as church, we might forget these facts

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it's about 300 years later that we get church structures

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if we use the word "church", we might retroject a Gothic cathedral, or storefront sanctuary, or a Lutheran church building into the mid first century CE

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in the first century CE, those who "were in Christ" had no built structures for worship or gathering, only 300 years later do we find church architecture

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what did the term ekklesia mean to those who heard it?

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1. a translation of the hebrew term qahal, which signals a cultic congregation or assembly of Jewish thought

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2. indicated that the earliest communities in Christ were like voluntary associations, like workers' guilds or religious clubs

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3. the best definition is a political and civic assembly, a term which had been used since the Classical period, e.g. 5th century BCE in Athens to refer to the assembly of the city

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we find the term ekklesia mainly in Paul's letter and in the Acts of the Apostles

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in choose to meet and assemble, these earliest communities in Christ aren't unique

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Jewish groups, groups of artisans, followers of Dionysus, and others all choose to meet, live, engage in worship, sing hymns, and engage in conversations about ethics, philosophy, theology and the best way to live their lives

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was the ekklesia a place of democratic debate and deliberative discourse

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in all cases but one, Paul addresses a city or region

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we get an urban perspective into the ancient world

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key cities of travel and trade in the Eastern Roman Empire and to a community in Rome itself

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Paul wrote his letters as occasionally and each with a specific purpose

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he didn't write them with the purpose to be in a unit as they are now

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he appeals to each ekklesia's different situations

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there are some letters to which Paul refers which we no longer have

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in general, in history, the remains of those who were poor often do not survive

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Paul referring to himself

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apostle, slave, captive

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these are powerful mini biographies and help to frame what he was writing and to whom

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his letters aren't composed as a systematic theology, or as a unified corpus of literature

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each letter is aimed a different community with a different situation