About St. John The Early Christians
Writing, Travel, and Letters Among the Early Christians
Many writers on many occasions have perceived and described the
important part which intercommunication between the widely separated
congregations of early Christians, whether by travel or by letter,
played in determining the organization and cementing the unity of
the Universal Church. Yet perhaps all has not been said that ought
to be said on the subject. The marvelous skill and mastery, with
which all the resources of the existing civilization were turned to
their own purposes by St. Paul and by the Christians generally, may
well detain our attention for a brief space.
Traveling and correspondence by letter are mutually dependent.
Letters are unnecessary until traveling begins: much of the
usefulness and profit of traveling depends on the possibility of
communication between those who are separated from one another.
Except in the simplest forms, commerce and negotiation between
different nations, which are among the chief incentives to traveling
in early times, cannot be carried out without some method of
registering thoughts and information, so as to be understood by
persons at a distance.
Hence communication by letter has been commonly practiced from an
extremely remote antiquity. The knowledge of and readiness in
writing leads to correspondence between friends who are not within
speaking distance of one another, as inevitably as the possession of
articulate speech produces conversation and discussion. In order to
fix the period when epistolary correspondence first began, it would
be necessary to discover at what period the art of writing became
common. Now the progress of discovery in recent years has
revolutionized opinion on this subject. The old views, which we all
used to assume as self-evident, that writing was invented at a
comparatively late period in human history, that it was long known
only to a few persons, and that it was practiced even by them only
slowly and with difficulty on some special occasions and for some
peculiarly important purposes, are found to be utterly erroneous. No
one who possesses any knowledge of early history would now venture
to make any positive assertion as to the date when writing was
invented, or when it began to be widely used in the Mediterranean
lands. The progress of discovery reveals the existence of various
systems of writing at a remote period, and shows that they were
familiarly used for the ordinary purposes of life and
administration, and were not reserved, as scholars used to believe,
for certain sacred purposes of religion and ritual.
The discovery that writing was familiarly used in early time has an
important bearing on the early literature of the Mediterranean
peoples. For example, no scholar would now employ the argument that
the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey must belong to a
comparatively late day, because such great continuous poems could
not come into existence without the ready use of writing--an
argument which formerly seemed to tell strongly against the early
date assigned by tradition for their origin. The scholars who
championed the traditional date of those great works used to answer
that argument by attempting to prove that they were composed and
preserved by memory alone without the aid of writing. The attempt
could not be successful. The scholar in his study, accustomed to
deal with words and not with realities, might persuade himself that
by this ingenious verbal reasoning he had got rid of the difficulty;
but those who could not blind themselves to the facts of the world
felt that the improbability still remained, and acquiesced in this
reasoning only as the least among a choice of evils. The progress of
discovery has placed the problem in an entirely new light. The
difficulty originated in our ignorance. The art of writing was
indeed required as an element in the complex social platform on
which the Homeric poems were built up; but no doubt can now be
entertained that writing was known and familiarly practiced in the
East Mediterranean lands long before the date to which Greek
tradition assigned the composition of the two great poems. A similar
argument was formerly used by older scholars to prove that the
Hebrew literature belonged to a later period than the Hebrew
tradition allowed; but the more recent scholars who advocate the
late date of that literature would no longer allow such reasoning,
and frankly admit that their views must be supported on other
grounds; though it may be doubted whether they have abandoned as
thoroughly as they profess the old prejudice in favor of a late date
for any long literary composition, or have fully realized how
readily and familiarly writing was used in extremely remote time,
together with all that is implied by that familiar use. The
prejudice still exists, and it affects the study of both Hebrew and
Christian literature.
In the first place, there is a general feeling that it is more
prudent to bring down the composition of any ancient work to the
latest date that evidence permits. But this feeling rests ultimately
on the fixed idea that people have gradually become more familiar
with the art of writing as the world grows older, and that the
composition of a work of literature should not, without distinct and
conclusive proof, be attributed to an early period.
In the second place, there is also a very strong body of opinion
that the earliest Christians wrote little or nothing. It is supposed
that partly they were either unable to write, or at least unused to
the familiar employment of writing for the purposes of ordinary
life; partly they were so entirely taken up with the idea of the
immediate coming of the Lord that they never thought it necessary to
record for future generations the circumstances of the life and
death of Jesus, until lapse of long years on the one hand had shown
that the Lord's coming was not to be expected immediately, and that
for the use of the already large Church some record was required of
those events round which its faith and hope centered, while on the
other hand it had obscured the memory and disturbed the true
tradition of those important facts. This opinion also rests on and
derives all its influence from the same inveterate prejudice that,
at the period in question, writing was still something great and
solemn, and that it was used, not in the ordinary course of human
everyday life and experience, but only for some grave purpose of
legislation, government, or religion, intentionally registering
certain weighty principles or important events for the benefit of
future generations. Put aside that prejudice, and the whole body of
opinion which maintains that the Christians at first did not set
anything down in writing about the life and death of Christ--strong
and widely accepted as it is, dominating as a fundamental premise
much of the discussion of this whole subject in recent times--is
devoid of any support.
But most discussions with regard to the origin, force, and spirit of
the New Testament are founded on certain postulates and certain
initial presumptions, which already contain implicit the whole train
of reasoning that follows, and which in fact beg the whole question
at starting. If those postulates are true, or if they are granted by
the reader, then the whole series of conclusions follows with
unerring and impressive logical sequence. All the more necessary,
then, is it to examine very carefully the character of such
postulates, and to test whether they are really true about that
distant period, or are only modern fallacies springing from the
mistaken views about ancient history that were widely accepted in
the eighteenth and most part of the nineteenth century.
One of those initial presumptions, plausible in appearance and
almost universally assumed and conceded, is that there was no early
registration of the great events in the beginning of Christian
history. This presumption we must set aside as a mere prejudice,
contrary to the whole character and spirit of that age, and entirely
improbable; though, of course, decisive disproof of it is no longer
possible, for the only definite and complete disproof would be the
production of the original documents in which the facts were
recorded at the moment by contemporaries. But so much may be said at
once, summing up in a sentence the result which arises from what is
stated in the following pages. So far as antecedent probability
goes, founded on the general character of preceding and contemporary
Greek or Graeco-Asiatic society, the first Christian account of the
circumstances connected with the death of Jesus must be presumed to
have been written in the year when Jesus died.
But the objection will doubtless be made at once--If that be so, how
can you account for such facts as that Mark says that the
Crucifixion was completed by the third hour of the day (9 a.m.,
according to our modern reckoning of time), while John says that the
sentence upon Jesus was only pronounced about the sixth hour, i.e.
at noon. The reply is obvious and unhesitating. The difference dates
from the event itself. Had evidence been collected that night or
next morning, the two diverse opinions would have been observed and
recorded, already hopelessly discrepant and contradictory.
One was the opinion of the ordinary people of that period,
unaccustomed to note the lapse of time or to define it accurately in
thought or speech: such persons loosely indicated the temporal
sequence of three great events, the Crucifixion, the beginning and
the end of the darkness, by assigning them to the three great
successive divisions of the day--the only divisions which they were
in the habit of noticing or mentioning--the third, sixth, and ninth
hours. Ordinary witnesses in that age would have been nonplused, if
they had been closely questioned whether full three hours had
elapsed between the Crucifixion and the beginning of the darkness,
and would have regarded such minuteness as unnecessary pedantry, for
they had never been trained by the circumstances of life to accuracy
of thought or language in regard to the lapse of time. Witnesses of
that class are the authority for the account which is preserved in
the three Synoptic Gospels. We observe that throughout the Gospels
of Mark and Luke only the three great divisions of the day--the
third, sixth and ninth hours--are mentioned. Matthew once mentions
the eleventh hour (20:9); but there his expression does not show
superior accuracy in observation, for he is merely using a
proverbial expression to indicate that the allotted season had
almost elapsed. A very precise record of time is contained in the
Bezan Text of Acts 19:9; "from the fifth to the tenth hour"; but
this is found only in two MSS, and is out of keeping with Luke's
ordinary looseness in respect of time and chronology; and it must
therefore be regarded as an addition made by a second century
editor, who either had access to a correct source of information, or
explained the text in accordance with the regular customs of Graeco-Roman
society.
The other statement, which is contained in the Fourth Gospel,
records the memory of an exceptional man, who through a certain
idiosyncrasy was observant and careful in regard to the lapse of
time, who in other cases noted and recorded accurate divisions of
time like the seventh hour and the tenth hour (John 1:39, 4:16,
4:52). This man, present at the trial of Jesus, had observed the
passage of time, which was unnoticed by others. The others would
have been astonished if any one had pointed out that noon had almost
come before the trial was finished. He alone marked the sun and
estimated the time, with the same accuracy as made him see and
remember that the two disciples came to the house of Jesus about the
tenth hour, that Jesus sat on the well about the sixth hour, that
the fever was said to have left the child about the seventh hour.
All those little details, entirely unimportant in themselves, were
remembered by a man naturally observant of time, and recorded for
not other reason than that he had been present and had seen or
heard.
It is a common error to leave too much out of count the change that
has been produced on popular thought and accuracy of conception and
expression by the habitual observation of the lapse of time
according to hours and minutes. The ancients had no means of
observing precisely the progress of time. They could as a rule only
make a rough guess as to the hour. There was not even a name for any
shorter division of time than the hour. There were no watches, and
only in the rarest and most exceptional cases were there any public
and generally accessible instruments for noting and making visible
the lapse of time during the day. The sun-dial was necessarily an
inconvenient recorder, not easy to observe. Consequently looseness
in regard to the passage of time is deep-seated in ancient thought
and literature, especially Greek. The Romans, with their superior
endowment for practical facts and ordinary statistics, were more
careful, and the effect can be traced in their literature. The lapse
of time hour by hour was often noted publicly in great Roman
households by the sound of a trumpet or some other device, though
the public still regarded this as a rather overstrained
refinement--for why should one be anxious to know how fast one's
life was ebbing away? Such was the usual point of view, as is
evident in Petronius. Occasionally individuals in the Greek-speaking
provinces of the East were more accurate in the observation of time,
either owing to their natural temperament, or because they were more
receptive of the Roman habit of accuracy. On the other hand, the
progress of invention has made almost every one in modern times as
careful and accurate about time as even the exceptionally accurate
in ancient times, because we are all trained from infancy to note
the time by minutes, and we suffer loss or inconvenience
occasionally from an error in observation. The use of the trumpeter
after the Roman fashion to proclaim the lapse of time is said to
have been kept up until recently in the old imperial city of Goslar,
where, in accordance with the more minute accuracy characteristic of
modern thought and custom, he sounded every quarter of an hour.
But it does not follow that, because the ancients were not
accustomed to note the progress of the hours, therefore they were
less habituated to use the art of writing. It is a mere popular
fallacy, entirely unworthy of scholars, to suppose that people
became gradually more familiar with writing and more accustomed to
use it habitually in ordinary life as time progressed and history
continued. The contrary is the case; at a certain period, and to a
certain degree, the ancients were accustomed to use the art
familiarly and readily; but at a later time writing passed out of
ordinary use and became restricted to a few who used it only as a
lofty possession for great purposes.
It is worth while to mention one striking example to give emphasis
to the fact that, as the Roman Empire decayed, familiarity with the
use of writing disappeared from society, until it became the almost
exclusive possession of a few persons, who were for the most part
connected with religion. About the beginning of the sixth century
before Christ, a body of mercenary soldiers, Greeks, Carians, etc.,
marched far away up the Nile towards Ethiopia and the Sudan in the
service of an Egyptian king. Those hired soldiers of fortune were
likely, for the most part, to belong to the least educated section
of Greek society; and, even where they had learned in childhood to
write, the circumstances of their life were not of a kind likely to
make writing a familiar and ordinary matter to them, or to render
its exercise a natural method of whiling away an idle hour. Yet on
the stones and the colossal statues at Abu Simble many of them
wrote, not merely their name and legal designation, but also
accounts of the expedition on which they were engaged, with its
objects and its progress.
Such was the state of education in a rather humble stratum of Greek
society six centuries before Christ. Let us come down eleven
centuries after Christ, to the time when great armies of Crusaders
were marching across Asia Minor on their way to Palestine. Those
armies were led by the noblest of their peoples, by statesmen,
warriors, and great ecclesiastics. They contained among them persons
of all classes, burning with zeal for a great idea, pilgrims at once
and soldiers, with numerous priests and monks. Yet, so far as I am
aware, not one single written memorial of all those crusading hosts
has been found in the whole country. On a rock beside the lofty
castle of Butrentum, commanding the approach to the great pass of
the Cilician Gates--that narrow gorge which they called the Gate of
Judas, because it was the enemy of their faith and the betrayer of
their cause--there are engraved many memorials of their presence;
but none are written; all are mere marks in the form of crosses.
In that small body of mercenaries who passed by Abu Simbel 600 years
before Christ, there were probably more persons accustomed to use
familiarly the art of writing than in all the hosts of the
Crusaders; for, even to those Crusaders who had learned to write,
the art was far from being familiar, and they were not wont to use
it in their ordinary everyday life, though they might on great
occasions. In those 1700 years the Mediterranean world had passed
from light to darkness, from civilization to barbarism, so far as
writing was concerned. Only recently are we beginning to realize how
civilized in some respects was mankind in that earlier time, and to
free ourselves from many unfounded prejudices and prepossessions
about the character of ancient life and society.
The cumbrousness of the materials on which ancient writing was
inscribed may seem unfavorable to its easy or general use. But it
must be remembered that, except in Egypt, no material that was not
of the most durable character has been or could have been preserved.
All writing-materials more ephemeral than stone, bronze, or
terra-cotta, have inevitably been destroyed by natural causes. Only
in Egypt the extreme dryness of climate and soil has enabled paper
to survive. Now the question must suggest itself whether there is
any reason to think that more ephemeral materials for writing were
never used by the ancient Mediterranean peoples generally. Was Egypt
the only country in which writers used such perishable materials?
The question can be answered only in one way. There can be no doubt
that the custom, which obtained in the Greek lands in the period
best known to us, had come down from remote antiquity: that custom
was to make a distinction between the material on which documents of
national interest and public character were written and that on
which mere private documents of personal or literary interest were
written. The former, such as laws, decrees and other State
documents, which were intended to be made as widely known as
possible, were engraved in one or two copies on tablets of the most
imperishable character and preserved or exposed in some public
place: this was the ancient way of attaining the publicity which in
modern time is got by printing large numbers of copies on ephemeral
material. But those public copies were not the only ones made; there
is no doubt that such documents were first of all written on some
perishable material, usually on paper. In the case of private
documents, as a rule, no copies were made except on perishable
materials. Wills of private persons, indeed, are often found
engraved on marble or other lasting material; these were exposed in
the most public manner over the graves that lined the great highways
leading out from the cities; but wills were quasi-public documents
in the classical period, and had been entirely public documents at
an earlier time, according to their original character as records of
a public act affecting the community and acquiesced in by the whole
body. Similarly, it can hardly be doubted that, in a more ancient
period of Greek society, documents which were only of a private
character and of personal or literary interest were likely to be
recorded on more perishable substances than graver State documents.
This view, of course, can never be definitely and absolutely proved,
for the only complete proof would be the discovery of some of those
old private documents, which in the nature of the case have decayed
and disappeared. But the known facts leave no practical room for
doubt. Paper was in full use in Egypt, as a finished and perfect
product, in the fourth millennium before Christ. In Greece it is
incidentally referred to by Herodotus as in ordinary use during the
fifth century BC. At what date it began to be used there no evidence
exists; but there is every probability that it had been imported
from Egypt for a long time; and Herodotus says that, before paper
came into use on the Ionian coast, skins of animals were used for
writing. On these and other perishable materials the letters and
other commonplace documents of private persons were written. Mr.
Arthur J. Evans has found at Cnossos in Crete "ink-written
inscriptions on vases," as early as 1800 or 2000 years BC; and he
has inferred from this "the existence of writings on papyrus or
other perishable materials" in that period, since ink would not be
made merely for writing on terra-cotta vases (though the custom of
writing in ink on pottery, especially on ostraka or fragments of
broken vases, as being cheap, persisted throughout the whole period
of ancient civilization).
Accordingly, though few private letters older than the imperial time
have been preserved, it need not and should not be supposed that
there were only a few written. Those that were written have been
lost because the material on which they were written could not last.
If we except the correspondence of Cicero, the great importance of
which caused it to be preserved, hardly any ancient letters not
intended for publication by their writers have come down to us
except in Egypt, where the original paper has in a number of cases
survived. But the voluminous correspondence of Cicero cannot be
regarded as a unique fact of Roman life. He and his correspondents
wrote so frequently to one another, because letter-writing was then
common in Roman society. Cicero says that, when he was separated
from his friend Atticus, they exchanged their thought as freely by
letter as they did by conversation when they were in the same place.
Such a sentiment was not peculiar to one individual: it expressed a
custom of contemporary society. The truth is that, just as in human
nature thought and speech are linked together in such a way that (to
use the expression of Plato) word is spoken thought and thought is
unspoken word, so also human beings seek by the law of their nature
to express their ideas permanently in writing as well as momentarily
in speech; and ignorance of writing in any race points rather to a
degraded and degenerate than to a truly primitive condition.
| 7 Churches Church in Ephesus Church in Smyrna Church in Pergamum Church in Thyatira Church in Sardis Church in Philadelphia Church in Laodicea
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About St. John
St. John and The Seven Churches
Letters to Seven Churches
Map of Seven Churches
The Book of Revelation
The Early Christians
The Gospel of St. John