Loading...Here is my second post on the use of secretaries in the ancient world, in which I discuss the issue of whether illiterate people (like Simon Peter, or John the son of Zebedee) could have had someone else write their books for them – so that 1 Peter *could* in some sense actually be by Peter even if he couldn’t write, or the Revelation of John by John.
In it I continue to consider ways ancient secretaries worked. Did they compose writings for the “authors”? (To make best sense of this it would help to read the previous post, where I talk about two of the main ways ancient writers used secretaries. But hey, you don’t *have* to read it. It ain’t required!)
Again, the discussion is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press).
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It is Richards‘ third and fourth categories that are particularly germane to the questions of early Christian forgery. What is the evidence that secretaries were widely used, or used at all, as co-authors of letters or as ersatz composers?
If there is any evidence that secretaries sometimes joined an author in creating a letter, Richards has failed to find or produce it. The one example he considers
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Conservative Christians believe it is the Holy Spirit that inspired the writing of the NT documents. Have you ever heard it contended that they were written as kind of a spirit writing, or automatic writing, where Peter (or James, etc.) in a sense possessed someone and had them write their letters, even after they were dead? It would explain a later date for letters like 1st and 2nd Peter, and the supernatural ability of a fisherman to compose sophisticated letters in Greek. (Not that I believe such a far-fetched thing, just wondering if it has been proposed.)
Yeah, that’s been floated about sometimes. And usually it floats off to the stratosphere.
Hi Dr. Ehrman, I read a number of your trade books (inc. How Jesus became God) and found it really interesting that you showed the increasing exhaltation of Jesus towards his current state of being coequal with God.
Your book mentioned the “how” behind this exhaltation process but I wanted to hear from you if you knew the “why”. Why did early christian feel the need to exhalt Jesus to that level? Why not be content with understanding him as a divine servant of God (as what the Synoptics portrayed)? Were there theological difficulties with limiting Jesus to a divine servant?
Great book btw! 🙂
Thanks. My sense is thath as Christians increasingly became amazed at the act of salvatoin Jesus brought they became increasingly convinced that he must have been even more amazing than they had first thought, and there was almost a competition to see who could say the most amazing things about him. That kind of thing happened in other settings as well, where the amazing founder of Rome, Romulus, came to be considered by Romans as more than human, the god Quirinus; and Julius Caesar came to be thought to have been translated up to heaven after his assassination; etc. Sometimes this happened to non-political leaders as well, e.g., with Enoch (made a great angel) or Apollonius (made a divine being). People get more and more important in exaggerated terms once they’re no longer around. I know of some deceased husbands who have become virtually deified after death (when certainly not before!).
Would papyrus, pens/quills and ink only have been in the realm of the wealthy/connected at those times? Was there plenty of it available? Who was Paul’s stationer?
I cannot cite the exact source but a PBS documentary regarding this time period and topic does state that papyrus could be purchased a many shops in major cities, suggesting papyri were common.
If anyone has substantive references, please provide.
I don’t have references, but yes: manufacturing papyrus (as a writing material) was a big business and it wsa widely available.
I don’t see why an imperial rescript couldn’t be the very genre in which the New Testament epistles were written. If we accept it as historical that Jesus promised his disciples they would be enthroned in his kingdom, then it follows naturally that they might adopt the same epistolary conventions used by rulers of their time. Acts (the same book that describes Peter as illiterate) also records that the apostles delegated the daily food distribution so they could devote themselves to preaching. It seems just as reasonable to think they might also delegate the drafting of letters, leaving them to review and authorize the responses to petitions and questions from distant communities, much like emperors did so they could remain focused on their higher responsibilities.
In fact, I recently came across a scholarly study that compared John’s letters to the churches in Revelation with a rescript inscription from Magnesia, attributed to King Darius regarding tax exemptions for the temple of Apollo. The researcher noted striking parallels in structure, style, and terminology- enough to suggest possible direct borrowing. My own view is more straightforward: both texts simply reflect the standard conventions of the imperial rescript genre.
Hi Bart, sorry that this comment isn’t really relevant to the post but I’m not sure how to ask a question without leaving a comment. I wanted to ask you about your belief that some of the Disciples genuinely believed that they had seen the resurrected Jesus. Given your analysis of the New Testament and its flaws (e.g the fact it was written many years after the events it depicts, its lack of direct eyewitness testimony), what is the evidence that has led you to make this claim?
While I agree that 1 Peter was most likely a forgery, I don’t think the “Cicero was unusual” argument is very strong here. Traditionalists probably also agree with legends that Peter went to Rome late in his life. I rather doubt there were many Aramaic-speaking Romans to talk with there. So if – and this is a big if – if Peter really had converted a bunch of extremely loyal Christians and went to Rome, he might have replicated a lower-class version of the resources Cicero & Josephus had, by dint of devoted followers working for free. In this scenario, was some hypothetical Greek-writing secretary & translator among Peter’s followers? Sure, maybe.
In the current era, a new church popped up nearby where I live (in the US) a few years ago planted by some Brazilian independent church, with slightly culty vibes. The pastor and the first members literally all moved in as a group from a Flordia branch! I’m sure they punched above their financial weight thanks to such donations of free labor from their devotees.
I’m not sure what makes the Cicero case not seem unusual? It’s just the only instance in the ancient record that I can find. To my mind, that pretty much makes it unusual by definition? Even more than that, the Cicero case is markedly different from the writings of the apostles; his letters (for which these things apply) were formulaic and very short, not at all like something such as 1 Peter or James. Of THAT kind of thing there is no evidence that I’ve been able to find. So to say that it’s not unlikely that Peter had followers who did this sort of thing, to me, requires some reason for thinking so other than it’s something that makes sense in a modern context.
That’s especially true when it comes to one person speaking in his native language and someone else listening and composing a highly literate version of it in a different language. It may make sense to us now, but I can’t find a single instance of it happening then.
(That’s true of a lot of things we might think make sense for the NT; if someone wanted to explain that in John’s Gospel Jesus could go back and forth between Galilee and Jerusalem so often because he hired a horse and buggy, we’d want to see if that kind of thing ever happened back then)
How do you interpret Tertius’s note in Rom 16:22—does it suggest more than dictation and minor editorial polishing? If it doesn’t, why do you think this verse is so often invoked to bolster the secretary hypothesis, and what kind of textual or historical data would be necessary to demonstrate genuine compositional authorship by a scribe?
It’s definitely dictation. That’s what that kind of thing always means in antiquity. Why is it invoked to support the secretary hypothesis? Because those invoking it that way have never actually read the ancient sources.
The only thing that would be needed to support the idea of scribes having composed writings instead of taking dictation would be some references to it in ancient sources. The sources do talk about the use of secretaries for other things, but never about them composing anything like a treatise or essay or extended exhortatoin, etc. If there’s no evidence of it generally, then there’s necessarily no evidence of it in specific cases. Whereas there is a TON of evidence both for the use of secretaries for dictation and for authors writing in the name of someone else.
Again, I’m playing the other, perhaps very wrong, side of the coin:
With all the non-canonical and canonical writings we have from the 1st century, how does this suggest how many 1st-century Christians could write? How many of them who could write did write, or write Christian-style letters and books?
How many of them could have been in touch with any of the apostles or other church leaders?
What about the 2nd century? Would these writers count as contributors as well?
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Do any of the non-canonical writings look and sound a lot like the canonical writings? If so, could any of them be by the same author?
If they wrote non-canonical pieces, what makes people think that any of the other texts they wrote should be considered canonical?
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When I think of secretaries taking dictation, I think of shorthand. Was there any such thing as shorthand in the 1st century?
Also, using a pen and inkwell takes a good deal more time than writing with a ballpoint pen or a pencil. Did people have anything like pencils in the first century?
Could people have taken dictation in pencil and then rewritten it in ink?
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I have to rely on other people’s expertise on these things. I’m out of-words-for-this-comment.
One can figure that people had charcoal. Charcoal is still used by artists today. Today’s charcoal smudges and erases fairly easily. However, we do have charcoal drawings that have been well preserved from the Renaissance. We also have charcoal cave drawings from France dating back approximately 12,000 years.
Also, there’s a writing technique that I’ve just found out about, which involves writing with a stylus on palm leaves. It dates back to the 5th century BCE in India and Southeast Asia. People can look this up, just look up > writing on palm leaves <
There's no mention of this having been used in Judea in the 1st century, however, or in the 1st-century Roman Empire.
They used wooden tablets covered with wax. They wrote with a pointed stylus, and you could smooth over the wax when you were done and reuse the tablet. We have both descriptions and actual surviving examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_tablet
Palm leaves are still used in some places in SE Asia for ritual purposes. I’ve seen Balinese examples. They would be very poor for the Latin alphabet because horizontal lines can split them. A lot of SE Asia scripts (Burmese, Tamil, Singhalese, etc) are mostly curlicues for this reason.
Thanks for the info.
I’m trying to figure out:
How many of the people who heard Jesus talk could write? – – – maybe 1 in 100 or 150?
How many of those who could write, did write?
How would they have gone about it?
How soon after hearing him talk or seeing an event did things get written down?
Could they have done it on the spot? The same day or the next day? Weeks, months, and years later? Decades later? Or a combination of all of these?
Thanks for your comment, and thanks again for the information.
Dr Ehrman,
Don’t we have examples in the Bible of scribes writing on behalf of others: ‘I Tertius’ interrupts Romans, letting us know that he is writing on Paul’s behalf. Similarly, Paul seemingly (?) adds a bit at the end of Galatians in his large writing to prove his ultimate authorship.
If there are examples of secretaries, even in the new testament, can we be so sure it is so rare as to be unlikely?
Ray
How likely is it that Peter, James, or one of the other apostles knew of someone who was writing to a particular Christian group and asked them to send along their greetings to them?
Their greeting was placed at the top of the letter, after all, it was from an apostle. Then, somehow, it got misconstrued or mis-copied to look like the entire letter was from the apostle?
Just a thought.
We don’t see any evidence of that.
I’m going to think about it for a bit.
Maybe it could have happened once. – Maybe more. – Maybe not at all.
Do you know of anyone who has written anything on this subject?
Not off hand. The problem if something in history has happened only once then it’s difficult to show that it happened once. Takes a good bit of evidence, since very little that happens is unique, especially when we’re talking about quotidian matters.
25 years ago, I thought that the great global preachers modern day works were lost in translation.
so I tried to find most original writings, such as G Campbell MORGAN or Andrew Murray [scotland, s Africa].
I heard of Martin Luther’s powerful preaching on Romans, but wouldn’t that be lost now also in translation & utter different living conditions?
I recall beforeY2k, I living in Shanghai [far from the futuristic Metropolitan it is now], conditions then were far more as Jesus times than I ever lived in the USA. SO how can we understand NT times if we only know of our lives in modern USA. Far be it!!
also educated scribes & romans wrote & determined the nt, not the working class fairly illiterate original disciples ir even of Pentecost! experiences w/Jesus or early cultish survival …
And then I have always lived in global superpowers, and the Christian writers I read were of nations that were global hegemony [- s Africa; what difference was it?
I do recall my living in Hong Kong [doesn’t like to think it part of China] & that was a different life than in Shanghai or sister city san francisco
Professor Ehrman,
Do you think that Junia, mentioned in Romans 16:7 historically was actually a woman apostle in the early church who served prison time with Paul?
Absolutely. (Is there some reason to think he’s making it up?)
Dr. Ehrman,
There is a claim that versions of Romans with only the first 14 chapters circulated early. Origen and Tertullian refer to a 14-chapter edition of Romans. Paul’s doxology is located in various places in different manuscripts – is also of interest. Do you think there is anything to this? If so, is Junia just a mere interpolation?
The fullest study of this is Harry Gamble’s book (dealing more with ch. 16, but with the broader issues), and he compellingly shows that all 16 chapters were originally part of the book. Remind me though: where do Origen and Tertullian explicitly say it was only 14 chapters? (They couldn’t put it that way, of course, since our chapter divisions weren’t invented in until modern times)
Dr. Ehrman,
The information is from Wikipedia, but they do have footnotes to scholars; Gamble, Longnecker, and BeDuhn. Yet if Gamble is the leading expert, and he says that Rom. 16:7 is legitimately from Paul himself, then that’s what we should go with, correct?
No, you should never go with a view on the basis of who says it.
Dr. Ehrman,
On the topic of textual criticism, the experts consider it to be a major difference between i,e, P46 which indicates that Rom. chapters 1-5:17 are literally “missing” vs. a circumstance in which a certain text was apparently once there but cannot currently be seen due to some type of degradation, is this correct?
P46 is a fragmentary manuscript of Pau’s leeters in which many pages and parts of pages are missing; among those missing are the ones that held 1:1-5:17. I don’t believe anyone thinks that the copy did not originally have those pages.