If Paul Dictated His Letters, How Can We Know What He Said?

[00:00:00] If Paul dictated his letters, how can we know what he said? [00:00:05] By Bart Ehrman read by Mike Johnson I have been asked to comment on whether we can get back to the original text of Pauls letter to the Philippians. And I have begun to discuss the problems not just of getting back to the original, but also of knowing even what the original was. In my previous post, I pointed out the problems posed by the fact that Philippians appears to be two letters later spliced together into one. And so the first problem is, is the original copy, the spliced together copy that Paul himself did not create, or is the original the product that Paul himself produced, the two letters that are not transmitted to us in manuscript form any longer, to which therefore we have no access except through the version edited by someone else. [00:00:56] But there are more problems here. Ill detail them in sequence as they occur to me in what I am going to be saying now. I will simplify things by assuming that, contrary to what ive been arguing, Philippians is just one letter produced by Paul, not two letters later edited together into what we now have. At every point you should be reminding yourself that the problems I am now addressing are doubled or, or worse. If, in fact, as many critical scholars think, Philippians is two letters that have been modified and joined together. [00:01:31] But lets talk about the letter as if it were just one letter. What would it mean to speak of its original? The same will apply to all of Pauls letters. Would the original letter be the letter that Paul himself produced when he sat down and put pen to papyrus one day to address some problems and issues that had arisen among his christian converts in the city of Philippi? That would be unproblematic enough. Then all the later copies of the letter would ultimately go back in a kind of genealogical line to that letter that Paul produced. But theres a problem. There is solid and incontrovertible evidence that when Paul produced some of his other letters, he actually dictated them to a scribe who wrote them down. This is clearly the case of his letter to the Romans, which, which includes a verse that almost certainly has puzzled readers over the years. Romans, chapter 16, verse 22 I, Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord Tertius. I thought Paul wrote the letter. Well, yes, Paul composed the letter, but Tertius is the one who wrote down the words that Paul composed. Paul dictated the letter to him. The same applies to the letter to the Galatians. [00:02:48] There is that otherwise confusing verse 611 see with what large letters I have written in my own hand. [00:02:58] Whats he talking about. Theres actually not much dispute about the matter among scholars. Paul has dictated the letter and at the end he is writing the final few lines himself, so that his readers know that it comes directly from him. Why is he writing in big letters about that? There are various opinions and views. Maybe he was going blind and couldnt see well enough to write in a small script. Was blindness the thorn in the flesh that he complains about in two corinthians chapter twelve, verses seven through nine? Or maybe he was not trained as a scribe and so had an amateurish style of writing. Or maybe he just wrote large loopy letters or something else. [00:03:42] In any event, it appears that Paul customarily dictated his letters. And what's that have to do with the question of what the original text is? Well think about the complications for a second. They have to do with the practicalities of the situation. [00:04:00] What if Paul was dictating and the scribe copying what he said, misunderstood a word or two and so wrote the wrong word down? We know that happened commonly enough with ancient secretarial practices. Sometimes two words would sound the same and the scribe would write the wrong one. [00:04:19] Or he simply misheard what was said, or someone coughed in the room and so he didnt hear something properly. Or the one dictating wasnt speaking loudly or clearly enough. Or the scribes mind wandered. Or pick your scenario. Mistakes could be made at the outset. [00:04:38] Now its true that in ancient letter writing practices, often the person dictating would read over what the scribe wrote and make corrections before the letter was sent out. The scribe would then make a fresh copy and send it. [00:04:53] At this point you should start seeing complications, absolutely amassing when it comes to talking about the original text. Which of the multiple forms of the text is the original? What the author meant to dictate what he did dictate what the scribe heard, what the scribe wrote, what the author corrected after the scribe wrote it, what the scribe wrote when he produced the first copy. And who gets to choose which of these is the original? [00:05:25] Consider these options in further detail. [00:05:28] Suppose when the scribe makes a fresh copy, after the person dictating corrects the first copy, he miscopies a line or a word or two. Which is the original? The fresh copy or the copy revised by the one doing the dictating before the fresh copy was made? If the revised copy from which the fresh copy was made, there are huge problems. All later copies of the letter would be made from the fresh copy, which was not the original. So before any copies of the letter were made, there are already changes or push the problems back further. If the scribe miswrote what Paul dictated and Paul corrected the mistake for the fresh copy, which is the original, the words the copyist wrote or the words that Paul changed when he corrected it? It is the former set of words that were originally written. If they arent the original form of the text, then the original form of the text is not the first thing written, but the corrected form of the text after the originals were written. So the original is not actually the original. [00:06:37] I will continue pursuing these matters in my next post.