About St. Paul St. Paul's Letters
Apart from Acts, the letters of
St. Paul to the churches he had founded or with which he was
familiar are the other main source for our knowledge of his
apostolic work and of course, for the Apostle himself. These letters
also make up for the compressed text of Acts and thus help us to
understand what is missing about his journeys. Written to his
followers at virtually the same time as events with which they deal,
they are the earliest works of the New Testament.
St. Pauls surviving writings constitute a small corpus of nine
letters addressed to particular churches, one private letter, and
three letters to Timothy and Titus, known as the pastoral letters.
Three of these letters were written to communities in Anatolia:
Galatians, Colossians and Ephesians; whilst scholarly opinion is
divided as to whether the latter two are genuine, Galatians is
indisputably so. Acts and the letters seem to be independent of each
other, even though the letters were in existence when Acts was
written.
St. Paul seems to have regarded himself as responsible, in addition
to the churches he established, for all the churches he knew (2
Cor 11:28) and corresponded with them. He may have also visited most
of them once or more. This was a period during which, except for the
military postal service, people had to rely on other people going in
the direction of their letters to correspond with others. In the
social and commercial world of the first century, which did the
Roman, peace there seems to have been no shortage of such people,
make possible.
St. Paul wrote (dictated) his letters in Koine or common language,
the Hellenistic Greek of his day. This was the lingua franca, the
international language needed by any man in public life or one
traveling or writing, spread by the armies of Alexander and the
Hellenistic kingdoms, which succeeded his empire. However, St.
Pauls Greek was not as distinguished as that of St Luke, the author
of Acts and in accordance with the practice of the time professional
scribes composed his letters.
St. Pauls words that there was a letter allegedly from us (2 Thes
2:2) in circulation shows that even his letters were forged. This is
the reason that as he mentioned (2 Thes 3:17) he signed his letters
by his own hand. His drawing attention to the extra large script
(Gal 6:11) to show the authenticity of his letter, was mistakenly
interpreted as his having bad eyesight.
Journeys of St. Paul
About St. Paul
Traveling in St. Pauls Time
City of St. Paul
Antioch on the Orontes
Seleucia Pieria
First Journey
Ministry in Antioch - Orontes
Second Journey
Third Journey
Arrest and Imprisonment
Journey to Rome
Story of Paul and Thecla
St. Paul's Letters