Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, by Valentin de Boulogne, Public Domain, circa 1618
The Apostle Paul wrote almost half the New Testament—all in the form of letters. (Although volume-wise, his beloved physician Luke wrote more.)
We might imagine a thoughtful Paul sitting in a chair at a table in a darkened room. A single candle illuminates his workspace, a quill is posed over a piece of parchment. But that’s not exactly the way it worked.
- Paul would not have been alone. Privacy did not carry the importance we give it now, centuries later. The ancient world was dominated by a group mentality. Most importantly, Paul was the leader of a team. He never traveled alone, and most of his letters list a co-author.
- Paul probably did not pen the letter himself. He almost always used a secretary. Paul highly was highly educated and certainly had the ability to write, and a number of his letters mention him writing a few lines in his own hand (see Galatians 6.11 or Philemon 1.19). But a secretary, usually sitting on the floor and writing on his lap, wrote with a trained hand. He had to know how to mix his own ink and cut his own pens. He would also be familiar with rhetoric and form and could help with the style and flow of a letter (if asked).
- The letter would not have been written in one sitting. First, a rough draft was produced, then edited, then rewritten. Several copies would be made. The sender kept one copy, and others were sent to the recipients. Sometimes the same letter would sometimes be sent to more than one place, as with his letter to “the churches” of Galatia.
- The letter would have taken days, if not weeks, to finish. First drafts, collaboration, editing, final versions, several copies—a letter of any length would require days or weeks to complete. These were not notes dashed off in an hour. Tremendous care and thought went into each one.
- The letter would have cost a good deal to produce. For one thing, Paul’s letters were far longer average, as most correspondence of the era was very brief and written on a single sheet of papyrus (think the letter to Philemon).
Randolph Richards, in his book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing, estimates the cost (in today’s dollars) of some of Paul’s letters, depending on the amount of text, the cost of papyrus per copy, and the cost of secretarial labor per copy. Paul’s shortest letter, to Philemon, would cost approximately $100. A medium-length letter such as Ephesians would cost $770, and the letter to the Romans would cost $2,275! Surely Paul did not pay his teammates when they acted as his secretary, and perhaps papyrus was donated to him, or at least discounted. Still, these figures illustrate the enormous time and expense involved. This doesn’t even include the cost of delivery!
Rembrandt, Apostle Paul, Public Domain, circa 1633
By the way, in addition to the 13 letters in the New Testament, there are at least four that did not survive: two more to the Corinthians–the first (see 1 Corinthians 5.9) and a third, see (2 Corinthians 2:4 and 2 Corinthians 7:8–9); one more to the Ephesians (see Ephesians 3:3–4); and one to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16).
The next time you read Paul’s inspired words, think about the time, money and effort that went into them. Perhaps the Pauline epistles give new meaning to the phrase “labor of love.”