AUTHORSHIP PAUL'S LETTERS

1. 
   What do we discover about authorship in the prescripts?
2. They teach us something really important about
3. letter writing in antiquity.
4. We call these the letters of Paul, and they are.
5. But if we look more closely, they aren't just the letters of Paul.
6. Influenced by our own circumstances, we might think about writing as
7. something that occurs in solitude, a person alone at her laptop.
8. But in Paul's letters, other figures begin to emerge as authors.
9. Their names add something to our historical knowledge of these earliest
10. communities in Christ, Silvanus, Timothy,
11. Sosthenes, Tertius the writer.
12. As we study Paul's letters in the context of the first century, and as
13. we ask the question, "What was going on as these letters were produced and
14. then first read aloud among the ekklesia?" the room slowly begins to
15. get more crowded, the picture more exciting and complex.
16. There's more than one author, often, of the letters of Paul.
17. For example, from the prescripts, in a scrap of information at the end of the
18. letter to the Romans, we meet a writer, Tertius, a scribe, perhaps a
19. slave, since many slaves were trained as writers.
20. And also meet co-workers at the end of that letter.
21. A community begins to emerge.
22.