Paul and the Ancient Letter Form

Written by Stanley E. Porter and Sean A. Adams, eds. Reviewed By H. H. Drake Williams III

The first volume of the Pauline Studies series was published in 2005. Each volume is edited by well-known NT scholar Stanley Porter and is composed of scholarly essays devoted to key issues within the study of Paul the apostle. Previous books in this series are devoted to the Pauline canon, Paul’s opponents, theology, world, and background. This sixth volume compares ancient letter writing with Paul’s epistles.

Each volume within the Pauline Studies series begins with an opening article by Stanley Porter that orients the reader to the topic in question. The subsequent articles provide ground-breaking research in the area of Pauline studies under consideration. Paul and the Ancient Letter Form contains twelve articles and successfully continues the aim of producing ground-breaking, scholarly essays in a field of Pauline research. The book is specifically devoted to results from ancient letter-writing study as an interpretive key to understanding Paul’s letters. It evaluates the nature of ancient letters as well as their individual components. These results are then compared to Paul’s letters to grasp how Paul used and adapted these traditions for his own purposes.

The introductory seven-page essay by Porter and Adams, entitled “Pauline Epistolography: An Introduction,” provides a brief history of this area of research. The examination of epistolary forms was first considered following discoveries of ancient papyri in the Egyptian desert. Adolf Deissmann brought these to the attention of the scholarly world in the early twentieth century. The study of epistolography was revived in the 1970s by a number of scholars such as Robert W. Funk, Nils A. Dahl, and Hans Dieter Betz. During this time, scholars reconsidered NT epistles in relation to the ancient world, detecting various parts of a Pauline letter such as a thanksgiving and body section and the forms used within them. In recent times there is renewed attention being given to comparing ancient Greek documentary papyri with NT documents.

Following this brief history, the opening article highlights key focal points within the volume. Paul and the Ancient Letter Form investigates Paul’s letters in relation to the greater epistolary tradition in the Greco-Roman world, particularly Greek letters but also Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and other letter traditions. These comparisons strengthen Paul’s position within the Greco-Roman world as well as highlight educational and cultural influences upon him. The opening essay also highlights how this volume’s approach follows traditional epistolary study. Rather than assuming that Paul had access to and used rhetorical methods to shape his letters as George A. Kennedy, Hans Dieter Betz, and Robert Jewett suppose, most of the essays in Paul and the Ancient Letter Form follow the mainstream of epistolary study.

Essays within the volume also treat Paul’s letters in terms of traditional topics of letter study, namely, examining opening, thanksgiving, body, parenesis, and closing sections. Whereas some scholars like John L. White and M. Luther Stirewalt are advocating only three parts (opening, body, and closing) and others like Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Jeffery A. D. Weima, and Peter T. O’Brien support four (opening, thanksgiving, body, and closing), this volume provides space for evaluating five sections of Paul’s letters: opening, thanksgiving, body, parenesis, and closing. Individual articles address these five sections of Pauline letter study.

The first essay within Paul and the Ancient Letter Form provides a new venture into epistolary analysis. Stanley Porter’s article entitled “A Functional Letter Perspective: Towards a Grammar of Epistolary Form” examines the stalemate between Pauline epistolary form and other means of speaking of epistolary organization. Drawing upon approaches from the Prague Linguistics Circle, he introduces a new form of epistolary criticism that he calls a “Functional Sentence Perspective.” Using this approach, he attempts to move beyond the sentence as the governing level of exegetical study to broader expanses of the text. This perspective he applies to Romans, Galatians, and Philemon. It is a thought-provoking study that displays many possible avenues for further research.

The remaining articles within Paul and the Ancient Letter Form consider the five epistolary sections of Paul’s letters. Sean Adams and Philip Tite address the letter openings. Sean Adams in “Paul’s Letter Opening and Greek Epistolography: A Matter of Relationship” finds that Paul used shared experiences between his audience and himself to connect with his hearers. He also shows how Paul used titles to further his influence. Tite’s “How to Begin and Why? Diverse Functions of the Pauline Prescript within a Greco-Roman Context” argues that Paul’s letter openings are not to be bypassed on the way to the true message of the letter. Instead, Paul’s openings were used to direct his communication within the letter from the very beginning.

Articles by David W. Pao, Peter Arzt-Grabner, and Raymond Collins pursue further understanding of the thanksgiving section within Paul’s letters. In “Gospel within the Constraints of an Epistolary Form: Pauline Introductory Thanksgivings and Paul’s Theology of Thanksgiving,” Pao looks beyond the thanksgiving section of the letter to see how thanksgiving is repeatedly emphasized beyond a section of Paul’s letters but extends throughout each correspondence. Peter Artz-Grabner’s “Paul’s Letter Thanksgiving” compares Paul’s thanksgivings with those of ancient Greek letters. He finds that Paul does not simply use words of thanksgiving, but tailors his thanksgivings to each situation. In “A Significant Decade: The Trajectory of the Hellenistic Epistolary Thanksgiving,” Raymond F. Collins evaluates thanksgiving in relation to private and royal Hellenistic letters and also the letters to the Maccabees. He considers how these ancient letters correspond with Paul’s thanksgiving section in 1 Thessalonians and also Pauline pseudepigraphers and Rev 2–3.

Two articles specifically focus on the body section of Paul’s writing. Troy W. Martin in “Investigating the Pauline Letter Body: Issues, Methods, and Approaches” studies the history of examining the Pauline letter body. He draws attention to the key works that move conversations on the Pauline letter body section forward, particularly the works by Francis Xavier Exler, Heikki Koskenniemi, John L. White, Abraham J. Malherbe, and Hans Dieter Betz. In “A Moral Dilemma? The Epistolary Body of 2 Timothy,” Cynthia Long Westfall also looks at the letter body, but particularly focuses on the epistolary body of 2 Timothy. Her paper shows how ancient epistolary theory can be integrated with modern linguistics. She considers moral appeals in 2 Timothy within the context of honor and shame motivations, and then calls for a fresh evaluation of this letter on its own merits rather than in relation to 1 Timothy and Titus.

Young Chul Whang and Andrew W. Pitts contribute articles on Paul’s parenetic sections. Whang’s “Paul’s Letter Paraenesis” examines the theological motivations within Pauline parenesis. He believes that parenetic material should be a guiding principle to Paul’s theology and teaching rather than an afterthought. He also raises the question as to whether there is a legitimate parenetic section when ethical material is found throughout the body of the letter. In “Philosophical and Epistolary Contexts for Pauline Paraenesis,” Pitts differentiates between Paul’s letters and Greek philosophical letters, which both contain parenetic material. He then criticizes Abraham Malherbe’s connections between Paul’s letters and ethical letters of Greek philosophy.

Jeffrey A. D. Weima’s “Sincerely, Paul: The Significance of the Pauline Letter Closings” concludes the volume and draws attention to the often forgotten closing section of Paul’s letters. Weima finds that Paul’s closings display a high degree of form and structural consistency, and he concludes that Paul shapes his closing sections to relate to the main themes of the letter.

An evangelical should be aware of a few things as he or she uses this volume. First, these articles are not unified with regard to Pauline authorship. Some contributors hold to seven letters while others thirteen. At times some of the contributors could develop their line of thinking much further if thirteen letters were in view. Second, the field of epistolography seems to represent a lack of consensus. A reader of some articles may be reading only one particular vantage point within this field.

Those who are interested in ground-breaking research in Paul, early Christianity, and ancient historians will want a copy of this volume. All those interested in Pauline studies and the relationship of the NT to the larger literary world, specifically epistolography, and Paul’s relationships with his churches will be particularly interested in these essays.


H. H. Drake Williams III

H. H. Drake Williams III
Tyndale Theological Seminary
Badhoevedorp, The Netherlands

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