No. 1. >> Hello, Professor Lewis. My name is David. And I've been looking forward to this course for some time. Romans is my personal favorite of all of the epistles. If memory serves me correctly, an epistle is basically a letter. Would a letter in the First Century be similar to a letter we might write today? >>PROFESSOR DAVID I. M. LEWIS: Hello, David. And I would first like to thank you for your interest in this course and for the enthusiasm that you're showing right off at the beginning. Romans is also one of my personal favorites of all of the books of the New Testament. And also because of Romans place in the New Testament, this is the one epistle where the Apostle Paul most clearly and in an organized and systematic way presents his theology and his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And so, David, because of this, not only is Romans one of my favorite books of the New Testament, but also, it's a very important book for us to study. And so this study on the epistle of Romans is a good thing for us to do. So I thank you for your interest and for your enthusiasm. Now, David, first you began by asking about what literary form that the book of Romans is. And your basic understanding that an epistle is a letter is a correct assumption. Yes, an epistle is a letter which means that it is a written correspondence that is sent from one person or one group of people that is to be delivered, received, and then read by another person or another group of people. And so in this sense, letter writing in the First Century when the Apostle Paul wrote Romans pretty much has the same idea and the same basic principles as letter writing today. One person or group of people wants to communicate, correspond with some other people who do not live in the same area. They can't correspond face to face. The people they want to speak with are a distance away. So they commit to writing their correspondence. And then they send it, have it delivered, so it can be read by those people to whom they wish to communicate. Now, of course, when it's possible today, we often try to communicate face to face or via telephone. And now we have the radical revolutionary means of communication called e-mail which speeds things up. But today we still correspond with letters, as well. And it is the same idea. Now, letter writing was a very common means of communication in the First Century. And so it had been for many years going back. There's evidence of letter writing going all the way back to the early civilizations of Mesopotamia. But really we get a large degree of letter writing first in the era of the Persian empire. Now, when Persia ruled the Middle East, the official language that was spoken everywhere was the language of Aramaic. David, you might know Aramaic is a sister tongue to Hebrew. So when correspondence took place in the age of the Persian Empire, letters would be written in Aramaic. And in fact, we have a few examples of these Aramaic letters in the Old Testament. You'll find examples of these in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel. Read through those books and you'll find places where there are letters, official correspondence that were sent. And those letters appear in the Old Testament in the language of Aramaic. Well, in the Fourth Century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire. And at the time there was a spread of the culture of the Greeks. What we call Hellenism. And at this point Greek began to replace Aramaic as the language of official correspondence in the Middle East. Then when the Roman Empire united the Mediterranean world, Greek, not Latin, but Greek, remained the official language of correspondence. So there emerged what scholars call a specific literary form or genre which is called the Greek letter. You'll see sometimes this is called the Hellenistic letter or the Greco-Roman letter. But for our purposes here we will call this the Greek letter. And the epistles in the New Testament are all examples of this literary form. Epistles or letters that were written in Greek and the basic idea, of course, is that one person or group of people committed this communication to writing in the form of a letter. And then this was delivered, received and then read by another person or group of people to whom they wanted to communicate. And the idea of letter writing was the same as it is today. I want to say something to somebody but that person lives at a distance from where I am. And so what I do is I commit my words, what I want to tell that -- those people, I commit that down to writing. And then I send this as a letter that is to be received and read by them. Now, David, at this point it should be of great interest for us to actually look at the New Testament Canon. And I would like to point out to you that of the 27 books that are in the New Testament, 21 of those books are these epistles. These letters. And when you actually measure that for the content of what was written in the New Testament, epistles make up about 35% of the New Testament. So you can understand why understanding this particular literary form is key if we want to understand the New Testament. Beyond those 21 letters I could also make mention that there is an epistle in Acts 15 in the narrative of the Book of Acts. And also, the book of Revelation, although we usually classify it as Apocalyptic literature, it was also sent in the form of an epistle from John to the seven churches that were in Asia. And so this literary form, the epistle, the letter, is a very important one as it was used in the New Testament. And now you may wonder why is this literary form so key in the New Testament. Why were epistles important in the early church? And again, the answer here would be because this was a very common way to communicate to people from a distance. Again, imagine this is a world with no telephones, no opportunity for e-mail. If I want to communicate a message to people who live 100 miles away, the only way I can do that is to either send an ambassador who'll give them my words with their words or commit what I want to say down to writing and then have that message delivered to them. Now, David, consider how the church began and how it grew. If you're familiar with the Book of Acts, Acts Chapters 1 through 12 tell how the church began in Jerusalem and then spread out from Jerusalem into Judea, Samaria and throughout the land of Palestine. Well, during this time if the leaders of the church in Jerusalem wanted to communicate a message to people in Judea, Samaria or beyond, well, one means to do that would be by writing an epistle and having it delivered to those people. So Acts 15 there is a Council in Jerusalem that deals with the issue of how Gentiles can become Christian. And they decided that Gentiles do not need to observe the torah of Moses. However, they do give the Gentile Christians some recommendations for things to avoid so that they would not offend their Jewish brothers and sisters. Well, this decision was committed down to a letter, an epistle, and then this was sent from the elders and the apostles in Jerusalem to the Gentile believers in Antioch and Syria. And so we see that they did make means of this form of communication. What is more the epistle of James was probably written during this same time period. And in this epistle James probably the brother of our Lord based in Jerusalem sent a circular letter to Jewish Christian communities. Probably throughout Palestine and maybe into the Greco-Roman world beyond. Now, when we consider Acts Chapters 13 through 28, here the focus is upon the Apostle Paul and his missionary work. This narrative tells how Paul founded churches in Asia Minor, present day Turkey and then later Macedonia and Greece. And now as Paul was traveling around founding churches, if he wanted to communicate to a congregation he had already founded, one means of doing that would again be through committing his word down to writing in a letter and having that delivered. And so we know that Paul actually did this. And of the 21 epistles in the New Testament, 13 are ascribed to the Apostle Paul. So we see that Paul was a very prolific writer. He made use of this means of communication to communicate with those congregations that he founded. And sometimes also we know to communicate with individuals who were in close association with him in his apostolic work. Now, David, you ask were letters then similar to letters today. And on one hand, yes. It's the same basic idea. I want to talk to somebody who lives a distance from me. I want to give them my word in a very immediate way so that when they read what I write, they'll see that it's coming from me. That I am speaking to them. Well, it's the same basic principle. You commit your words down to writing. That writing is sent, received and then read by the person or people you want to talk with. And when they read that letter, they are actually reading you, they are actually hearing you speaking. In fact, when we read the letters of Paul, even today we get great insight into that man's heart and mind and personality. Because it really is Paul speaking through those written words. Speaking to the Corinthians then. But then when we read I and II Corinthians, he's speaking to us today. For this sake we ought to be very thankful for this means of communication that we now find in the New Testament that it gives us great insights into the personality, the faith, the beliefs, of the Apostle Paul. But there are also key differences between letter writing today and then. Just a few of these I would like to point out. No. 1, the material that was used. Today if you want to write a letter, you use paper, stationery. Usually derived from wood. We can very easily put our messages down, fold this up, put it in an envelope, seal that envelope, address it and then count on that being delivered to whoever it is we are trying to talk to. In the First Century, the most common material for writing letters was a material called papyrus. Now, papyrus was not derived from wood. It was derived from the leaves of the papyrus plant that grew in the delta of the Nile River in northern Egypt. Now, the papyrus leaf was such that one side provided a very good material for writing. The other side not so well. And so papyrus leaves would be processed for writing. Usually cut into squares. And then these would be sown together and form a scroll. And so an epistle would be written on this material. And then it would be scrolled up and delivered as a scroll to the people who were supposed to receive and read this letter. And now, David, you might note that it would not be so easy to take a scroll and place that in an envelope. And so if I wanted my correspondence to be official, I would have to seal that scroll, usually with wax. And maybe put my stamp in that seal. And so the people who receive that correspondence would know that no one else has read that when they see it sealed and that the seal is not broken. This is kind of -- this -- we find this coming out in the book of Revelation Chapters 4 and 5 when the lamb Jesus is presented a scroll that has seven seals that only he can break. Another difference in letter writing then as compared today was that letter writers would often use a professional scribe, what is technically known as an amanuensis. Paul used a professional scribe when he wrote Romans because this scribe actually identifies himself in Romans 16 Verse 22. His name is Tertius. And often these professional scribes would some time in the letter themselves kind of speak on their own terms and greet the people who were receiving the letter. Now, this professional scribe would often be used because they were trained in letter writing. Even a literary person like Paul could not necessarily write in good organized usually small script. And so these professional scribes would be the ones who would actually write down the letter writer's thoughts. And they had varying degrees of freedom. Sometimes they might purely dictate what the writer was saying. Other times they might be free to develop the author's thoughts in their own style. A good chance that what Paul did was have -- he had his professional scribes dictate. And then one of Paul's own unique signature marks is he would often usually at the end of the epistle then write in his own handwriting so those who had received this epistle would see that it is, indeed, from the man they know to be Paul, the apostle. And then finally, one other point of difference would be in how these letters, epistles, were delivered. Today we can pretty much count on the fact that if we stamp the envelope, put it in the mailbox, the United States postal service will deliver that to the people to whom we're sending this correspondence. If we really want it to get there we might use Fed Ex or UPS. In those days there was no organized postal service. The Roman Empire had its own postal service but that was only for military dispatches and for official government correspondence. They did not handle public mail. Rich people and businesses might hire professional messengers sort of like the First Century Fed Ex or UPS to deliver their correspondence. But the poor and more private citizens, if it they wanted to send correspondence, they had to entrust that to a friend, a relative or an acquaintance who happened to be traveling in the direction in which they wanted this epistle to go. And this seems to be the means by which the Apostle Paul sent his correspondence. He wrote the letters wherever he was. And then he would entrust them to one of his friends or aides. Someone like Timothy. And then this person would hand deliver this message to the recipients. Then they would receive it, read it. And thus, Paul would be able to speak to them from a distance through the communication, the correspondence that he committed down to writing. And so in conclusion, yes, David, the epistles were basically letters. Very different from how we send letters today. But the basic principles are the same. I want to say something to somebody from a distance. I put my words down in writing. It's delivered and read by them. And they receive those words as if it is me speaking to them myself.