are Pauls writings Letters or Epistles?
The distinction, first given clear articulation by Adolph Deissmann early in the 20th century, is this: epistles, so goes the argument, were carefully crafted artistic and literary works intended for a wider public, with a view to being preserved for posterity; letters, on the other hand, were hurriedly sent to address specific situations or problems and were not intended by their author to be refined, literary compositions. This distinction can be taken too far. Whereas Paul’s writings were indeed occasional (they were ‘occasioned’ by some special circumstance either in the life of the author or the addressees), they were “not merely private individual letters. Paul wrote them as an apostle, and he expected them to be read in and obeyed by the Christian community (1 Cor. 14:37; 1 Thess. 5:27; 2 Thess. 3:14). Indeed, even though Colossians addressed a specific situation, Paul thought its message would be helpful to the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16). Apparently Paul believed that his specific
Related Questions
- In all Paul’s writings (there are 13 of his letters in the New Testament, though some may not have been by him) there is virtually no information about Jesus’s life, apart from his death and resurrection. Wasn’t Paul interested in these stories?
- Why did St Paul write letters to the Coliseum?
- Is Hebrews better than Pauls letters?
