Who carried the Epistles?
Article
31st July 2020
In a world before public postal services, the New Testament Epistles had to be delivered by hand. Dr Peter Head meets the trusted letter-carriers chosen for this important task.
Letters need to be delivered in order to be received, read, and acted upon. And in the ancient world letters had to be transported personally from the sender to the recipient. The physical letter itself, written on papyrus and folded up with a brief address on the outside, had to be carried to the recipient, whether that was someone in the next village, or a distant town, or to a town in a different country. In the first century, at the time the New Testament letters were written, that generally meant finding someone going in the right direction and trusting them either to take the letter to its destination or pass it on to someone else heading the right way (unless you were well enough connected to get letters into the official imperial post, or wealthy enough to have letter-carrying slaves to deliver your mail).
As a result of the missionary impulse of early Christianity, with congregations established all around the Roman Empire, the apostles could not always be present to teach and encourage the churches. Letters provided the apostles, and Paul especially, a means of ministry at a distance.
It is remarkable how much of the teaching of the apostles within the New Testament comprises these New Testament letters (there are 21 letters, and even Revelation has strong epistolary features). Like any other letter these had to be delivered by hand, and it is exciting that we have good indications of the names of some of the people who delivered Paul’s letters in particular.
Letter-writing in the world of the New Testament
Before we turn to these important people who carried New Testament letters, we should mention that letter-writing was very popular in the ancient world and many thousands of letters from antiquity have been preserved down the ages. These include letters preserved in the dry sands of Egypt (6,761 Greek letters on papyrus, according to a recent count), letters preserved in the manuscript tradition of famous Roman letter-writers such as Cicero (more than 800 letters), Seneca (124 letters) and Pliny the Younger (247 letters), and letters contained within ancient histories (Josephus, the Jewish historian includes more than 300 letters in his works) or novels or speeches (not to mention the thousands of letters written by Church leaders of the second to the fifth centuries). This means it is possible to set the letters of the New Testament into their ancient context.
The role of the courier
From that context we can discern some common themes as regards letter delivery. First, trustworthy couriers were sought after and celebrated, but untrustworthy couriers were blamed for many problems in communication! The presence of a courier could prompt a letter, and the personality of the courier impacted the content of the letter. Secondly, the means of delivery had consequences for the way that letters were written — one didn’t simply get to the end of the letter and then think about how it was going to be delivered. Thinking about the means of delivery occurred from the outset of the decision to write a letter. Thirdly, when they are named or introduced within the letter, the courier would generally be expected to supplement the written message with additional word-of-mouth information. That could relate to the situation of the sender, additional oral messages, and would often involve reinforcing the main point of the letter (on behalf of the sender). Fourthly, in these situations it was also normal for the original letter-carrier to return to the sender (we don’t have space to discuss it here, but we get a taste of this in 2 Corinthians 7:5-16, as Paul reports his encouragement at the return of Titus.
In fact, none of the New Testament letters introduce the courier with an explicit comment — “so and so, who is carrying this letter to you, …” (which does occur in some, but only a small minority of letters in antiquity). Paul, however, did often refer to one of his co-workers who is clearly present with him in writing the letter. He introduces them or commends them to the church to whom he is writing, and they are understood to be present with the recipient when the letter arrives. From the time of the early interpreters, and even within the manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, the following have been plausibly identified as the courier for the letter in which they appear: Stephanus, Fortunatus and Achaicus (1 Corinthians 16:17- 18); Titus, with two others (2 Corinthians 8:16- 24); Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2); Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25-30); Tychicus, with Onesimus (Colossians 4:7-9); Tychicus (Ephesians 6:21-22), and probably Onesimus (Philemon 8-16). About the other letters by Paul, and the general Epistles from the other apostles, we are less able to identify the name of the courier (perhaps Titus 3:13; 1 Peter 5:12).
For some of these letter-carriers, our entire knowledge of them is derived from what we can learn about them from these passages (although Titus appears in four different letters, and Tychicus appears in four letters and once in Acts). Why did Paul choose a particular person to carry a particular letter? We don’t know. Perhaps they were heading in that direction for some other reason. Or perhaps they were entirely at Paul’s disposal in service of the mission. He certainly chose letter-carriers who by character, faith and experience where fully involved in his Christian mission. They represented both Paul particularly, and how to be a Gentile Christian more generally. And as he introduces them he shows how suited they are for their role helping the church to receive the letter Paul has sent them. Let’s look at a few examples of that.
The letter-carrier of Acts
There is only one occasion within the New Testament when we can observe something of the role of the letter-carrier. In Acts 15 the leaders of the church met in Jerusalem and, under the leadership of James, they resolved that Gentile converts did not require circumcision. They sent a letter (recorded in Acts 15:23-29) which actually spends almost as much time on the letter-carriers as the actual resolution: Judas and Silas, along with Barnabas and Paul are sent with the letter, and they “will tell you the same things by word of mouth” (Acts 15:27b) — reflecting a very widespread convention for named letter-carriers.
The account in Acts records that they delivered the letter to the believers in Antioch, who read the letter and rejoiced (Acts 15:30- 31). Then Judas and Silas added their own words of encouragement to supplement the written letter (“through many words” — Acts 15:32), and later Paul is recorded as doing something similar (Acts 16:4). Incidentally, this account, where the letter-carrier delivers the letter, the recipient reads it, and the letter-carrier helps the reception of the letter with additional oral encouragement, is entirely congruent with the evidence from antiquity that never depicts the letter carrier as actually reading the letter out (despite the popularity of this view among some students of the New Testament).
The letter-carrier of Philippians
The Philippians had sent aid to Paul in prison through Epaphroditus (Philippians 4:18). He had come with money and time — money to support Paul’s missionary activities and time to support Paul personally in prison. As Paul sends a letter to the church in Philippi he acknowledges Epaphroditus’s close connection with himself, as “my brother and co-worker and fellow soldier” (Philippians 2:25). He re-introduces Epaphroditus to them as someone who had risked his own life for the sake of others, even “to the point of death”. He had been extremely ill, but God had had mercy on him and restored him to health and service (Philippians 2:27, 30). In the context of the letter to the Philippians, Epaphroditus models the same self-giving love that Paul saw in the Lord Jesus (Philippians 2:5-8) and sought in the Philippian Christians (Philippians 2:1-5; 4:2-3); and he also had had a similar experience of God’s merciful rescue from being near death as Paul had experienced (Philippians 1:12-26). Paul hopes that as Epaphroditus arrives with this letter of joy, the church will rejoice in his arrival (Philippians 2.28f); and as they consider the appeal contained within the letter, they will honour Epaphroditus in his attempts to help them respond to that appeal, because by character, faith and experience, God had qualified him for that particular ministry.
The letter-carrier of Romans
Paul writes to the Romans to introduce himself and his Gospel message, to appeal for their unity in Christ (which is threatened by distrust and suspicion), and to urge them to support his planned mission to Spain. After explaining some of his plans (Romans 15:14- 29), and appealing for their prayers (15:30-33), he introduces Phoebe (16:1-2) before instructing them to greet one another (listing 24 individuals by name alongside several other groups of believers).
It looks like she may have some personal reason for travelling to Rome (“help her in whatever she may require from you”, 16:2), but she is also introduced as a believer and Christian worker who has a close connection with Paul. She is “a deacon of the church at Cenchreae” (16:1). Cenchreae was the port city close to Corinth and it is likely that the church there was established from, and shared substantially with, the church at Corinth (from where Paul writes this letter, Romans 16:23). She will have been taught the traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus known in the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 7:10; 9:14; 11:23-26), and seen, perhaps at a slight distance, the struggles that the fellowship experienced over the authority of Paul and the unity of the church. As a “benefactor of many” she will be used to handling the competing demands placed upon her by a variety of relationships. We can see that she is the perfect person to represent Paul in Rome, to help the church in Rome receive Paul’s call to unity in Jesus the Risen Messiah, and to facilitate the “greet one another” which Paul commands as the first concrete expression of the welcome to which he calls the church — especially given the large number of women involved in Gospel work in Rome (Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, and others mentioned in 16:3-16).
The New Testament letter-carriers were undoubtedly key figures in the early Church, who performed an important role. Sending the Epistles with trusted envoys allowed the apostles’ great confidence in their written communications. The couriers represented the author and reinforced the message of the letter. Any verbal message, the couriers carried in their hearts, exclusively for the recipients in that place and at that time. The written message they carried in their hands, not only for the congregations of the ancient world but for all Christians in all places, down the millennia.