Paul's Greek

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jul 31 14:29:45 EDT 2002


At 6:06 PM +0000 7/31/02, Mark Wilson wrote:
>I am not aware of any NT document written by Paul
>personally. I suppose one could speculate that he
>wrote one or more, but it would be just that, speculation.
>
>Note the open of Romans:
>
>PAULOS DOULOS CRISTOU IHSOU....EUCARISTW...
>
>Here is an epistle that directly states it is from
>Paul, and yet we are explicitly told that Paul did
>NOT write it...  EGW TERTIOS hO GRAYAS THN EPISTOLHN
>
>We might ask how well did Tertius know/write Greek, or how
>well he reduced the thoughts of Paul to writing in Romans. I believe
>there are a few lines here and there that Paul said he
>personally wrote, but they are too few to assess his Greek. In
>short, I think the Pauline epistles reflect the thoughts of
>Paul, but not his Greek.
>
>My thoughts,
>
>Mark Wilson
>
>
>What is remarkable is the level of consistency that we do
>see among the Pauline epistles, written by who knows how
>many different writers.

Regardless of who the amanuensis or the amanuenses was/were, I don't doubt
that Paul dictated those letters--and I do think that the use of the word
GRAFW here refers to the putting down of the characters upon the writing
material, not the composition.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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