Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1040: Misreading Scripture and Phoebe the Letter Carrier (and Interpreter?): Dr. E. Randy Richards

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Randy is a world renowned expert on several theological and historical subjects related to the New Testament. In this conversation, we talk about misreading the Bible through western eyes (the title of one of his books) and letter writing and carrying in the ancient world as it applies to the question of Phoebe who might have carried and interpreted Paul’s lengthy letter to the Roman church (Rom 16:1-2).  Randy is the Research Professor of New Testament at Palm Beach Atlantic University, having recently stepped down from being Provost after sixteen years in administration. He has been teaching since 1986, originally at a state university and then abroad at an Indonesian seminary. Upon returning to the States, he served at two Christian universities before joining Palm Beach Atlantic University in 2006. His wife Stacia has joyfully accompanied him from jungles of Indonesia to rice fields in Arkansas to beaches in South Florida and now recently to the plains of Wisconsin. Randy has authored, co-authored or edited nearly a dozen books, from technical books on Greco-Roman papyri to popular books with over 100,000 copies sold.

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And there's other perks for that tier. Gold level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in a Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Raw. My guest today is Dr. E. Randolph Richards. Randy is the research professor of New Testament at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

He's previously taught at several other Christian schools and served as a missionary in Indonesia for, I believe he said, eight years. And he is just an incredible scholar and has written a lot of really interesting books. The one that you might know about the most, I think the one that he sold the most copies of, is Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. He's also written Misreading Scripture with Western eyes. He's also written Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes, and Paul Behaving Badly, Rediscovering Jesus. And the book that I recently read from him is Paul in First Century Letter Writing. So in this podcast, the first like 25 minutes or so, we talk about his book, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, how we as, or those of us who are Westerners, just misread scripture based on

this Western lens that we read it through. Really fascinating. We could have just spent the whole podcast talking about that. But I really wanted to talk about letter writing in the New Testament as it pertains to Phoebe. Phoebe is commended in Romans 16, 1 to 2. People assume she's a letter carrier and therefore the letter reader or performer. We explained the difference at the end of the episode and what implications that might have for the question of women in the church serving as teachers, preachers, and leaders. So fascinating conversation. I could have just kept talking to her for hours, and I think you'll be pretty fascinated as well. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Randy Richards.

E, Randy Richards. Randy, what does the E stand for? It stands for Ernest. So it's Ernest Randolph Richards. Randy, what does the E stand for? Is that a... It's for Ernest. So it's Ernest Randolph Richards. My folks named me and then called me by my middle name. So... Oh, okay. So they chose that.

That was early on when you went by Randy. Yes. So I do go by Randy. And the technical name E Randolph actually came when I started publishing. My first book was published out of Europe. And some friends advised me that Randy doesn't always play well with those with a British accent. And so they recommended I go with E. Randolph. And I didn't know that was going to set me on such a journey, but it did.

Oh, that's funny. Wow. I love it. It's got a great publishing kind of vibe to it when you had the first initial, second name. I think it's great. Makes me sound better than I am. Well, Randy, you have one of the more interesting academic slash missionary journeys. Let's just go back to just, yeah, tell your story, who you are, your cross-cultural experience, your academic experience, and then we'll go from there. Preston, if I don't know anything, I can't blame my education.

I had a chance to study under two of the great Paul scholars of the 20th century, a guy named W.D. Davies and Earl Ellis. a guy named W.D. Davies and Earl Ellis. So I got a great education when I graduated. My wife and I moved to Indonesia. Our sons, Josh, he was two and a half and Jacob was eight weeks old. And we moved 12,000 miles from my parents to Indonesia, which most people think is remote enough, but we actually live in one of the more remote parts of Indonesia. We were in what are called the Eastern Islands or the Outer Islands, along with several million of our closest Indonesian friends. And there, it took me about a month to figure out my job was don't screw anything up. These are wonderful Christian people doing wonderful work. And I was just blessed to work with them.

So I watched and learned a lot. How long were you in Indonesia? And then where'd you go from there? We were about eight years in Indonesia. And then we moved to some rice fields in Arkansas. I joke sometimes that I had bigger culture shock moving to rural Arkansas than I did going to Indonesia. But there I discovered wonderful people. I taught at a small little Christian college there, had a great time, moved from there to a little bit larger Christian school,

Had a great time. Moved from there to a little bit larger Christian school, Washtenaw Baptist University. And from there, I was invited to my current school, Palm Beach Atlantic University. Okay, good, good. I would imagine, let's dive into, well, there's two books I really want to talk about,

two topics that are pretty, there might be some overlap, but they're really different. There's no overlap. There's no overlap. I am a very odd person. There might be some overlap, but they're really different. There's no overlap. There's no overlap. I am a very odd person. So reading scripture through Western eyes, is that the title of it? I had it up here. Misreading scripture with Western eyes. That's basically everything that I learned overseas.

So that was a fun book to write. That wasn't my specialty. You and I started this most recent conversation because my specialty studies on Paul. And so I worked on that. But while I was in Indonesia, I learned a lot. And so people often ask me, you know, what's the genesis of that book on misreading? Because it seems it's, you know, a completely different field. And it really, it started from some interesting experiences. I was in a hut in, I think it was Borneo, actually. I had been speaking at a church and we were having lunch afterwards. I'm with the elders and it's pretty clear they wanted

to ask me something. And so they said, so, pastor, we have a tricky church question. Could you help us with it? Of course, I was a young and dumb missionary, so I thought, sure, I can help you with this. So what's up? And they said, well, we had a couple who committed a very, very grievous sin in their home village. So it was so serious they actually had to flee. And they came to our village. They'd been here about 10 years living wonderful godly lives. And they'd like to join our church, but we're just not sure if we should allow it. And I said, well, are they doing okay now? He said, oh yeah,

they're wonderful people, but it was a very serious sin. And I knew just enough to realize, you know, maybe I ought to know a little more about the story side of sins. Well, what did they do? And they said, oh, you know, it was very serious. They didn't want to, you know, air dirty village laundry in front of the missionary. So they didn't really want to tell me, but I realized I'm not going to be able to answer if I don't know what it is. So I said, so what did they do? And they said, well, they, they married on the run, which in my country we call a Lopey. And so I said, so what's the sin? And they stopped and they looked shocked at each other. And they looked at me and I said, so what's the sin? And they stopped and they looked shocked at each other. And they looked at me and they said, have you never read Paul?

Preston, I thought, my goodness, I have a PhD in Paul. I don't know. I think I've read Paul. So obviously they could tell I was confused. And they said, well, you know, Paul says children obey your parents. They said, well, you know, we know that children don't always obey their parents. But in the most important decision you make in your life, surely you ought to obey your parents. And sitting there, I realized in my mind that verse had an expiration date.

You know, that Paul only intended that for people till they reached 18. And I realized, you know, Paul didn't have an expiration date on that verse. And that made me wonder while I was sitting there, have I ever really read Paul? And so it was conversations like that, that made me start looking and listening and thinking about how my culture caused me to see and not see things in scripture. Can you give us several other examples off the top of your head? Sure. I can think of one that comes readily to my impression. I was, you know, given an exam like professors do. I was teaching there in Indonesia and I'm handing back this exam. And the first page was multiple choice. And as I hand it to this sweet little girl,

I noticed she had not answered. She'd left question number two blank. And so I said, you left question number two blank. And she said, well, yeah, I didn't know the answer. And I said, well, you know, you should have guessed. And she stopped and everybody stopped and looked at me. And she said, but what if I guessed right? Then it would imply that I knew the answer when I didn't, and that would be lying. And once again, I stood there dumbfounded. Well, first, I'm grateful I almost opened my mouth and argued her to a lower standard. But I didn't. Because, you know, guessing on a multiple choice test can work pretty good.

My American value of pragmatism had run right over the top of my Christian value of honesty. I love telling that story to my American students because they hate it. Because they want to keep guessing questions on a multiple choice. So it's experiences like that that made me realize I either was seeing something in scripture that wasn't there, like an expiration date, or I wasn't seeing something in scripture. And so this is not a bash the West kind of book, Preston. There's things, there's verses that in the West we read exceptionally well. Our culture helps us to really focus on it and see it. You know, verses on forgiveness, generosity, we tend to read those

really, really well. But then there's some other verses that we don't read well at all. Well, yeah. So the other, like maybe well-known passages that's like, if we just read it through a Western lens, we're just not going to see the full power of this passage or verse. Or we superimpose our culture on it. One of my favorite stories is the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, which we turn into the typical American success story. You know, the boy grows up on a little town on the farm, you know, has to leave there for reasons that aren't great, moves to the big city, overcomes adversity, you know, and then makes it

big. Well, that's what I turned the Joseph story into. So for me, the climax of the story is when he gets promoted to number two in Egypt. And I don't really notice that's only halfway through the story. And so I actually admired Joseph for the things I'm supposed to be appalled about. It's actually a story about inheritance. And I never even saw inheritance issues in it. So now when I teach the story to my students, you know, I say, well, Joseph was the oldest son. And the ones who've read a little bit of their Bible, they've been to Vacation Bible School or something, they'll say, well, no, he wasn't. I say, yes, he was. They say, no, he wasn't. I say, yes, he was the oldest son of the second wife.

And of course, you know, we're taught in our country, well, you know, blended families, everybody's the same. But it's actually an issue of which wife is going to trace the inheritance. So the coat is not that Joseph got a nicer Christmas present than everybody else. It's indicating which wife is going to be the official wife and the inheritance. So that leaves the other brothers out, unless Joseph is going to take care of them, which is what the non-inheriting children, it's one of their big fears is, will the inheritor take care of us? Will he remember us and our families? And so the story starts out by telling us it ain't going to happen. You know, Joseph says,

you know, I had this dream and all you're going to bow down to me. And so they're thinking, okay, it's pretty clear where we're going to stand on this. So all these brothers are grown. They have their own families. So I ask church members all the time, what would you do to defend your children? Well, probably stuff as bad as what Joseph's brothers did to him. So the culmination of the story in the end is Joseph takes care of his brothers like he was supposed to do at the beginning. Wow. So I just I didn't see it. You know, my culture didn't tell me to think about inheritance issues. I didn't see it.

So it went without being said. I like to say the most important things in a culture usually go without being said. So it went without being said. And therefore, since something seemed to be missing in the story from the way I read it, I superimposed my own values on it. So it turns into an American success story.

Did you see a lot of differences living in Indonesia? Because it's an honor-shame culture, right? Yes. Was that kind of a culture shock, ministering in a culture where they're driven by honors? Yes. In fact, I wish I'd had a book. In fact, the reason I wrote the two books in that series was because I sure wish I had had them. I would have made a lot fewer mistakes, I think. Every culture has values in them. And those values usually go without being said. Like in our culture, we value youth. We value efficiency. Those are just cultural values. So we don't think it's unusual at all. And we don't even think about it when in a TV show, the chief of surgery is 36 years old and clearly spends all this time in a

gym. And it doesn't even occur to us, gee, a chief of surgery at a hospital is probably not going to be 36 years old and he'll never have seen the inside of a gym. But because we value youth, it just goes right in. So we have values, and that culture will have tools for enforcing and reinforcing those values, passing them along. So in our culture, we use stories. When I was growing up, it was Aesop's fables, you know, the tortoise and the hare, the early bird gets the worm, the boy who cried wolves. And those stories taught and reinforced those values. Now, we quit telling those stories and started telling Dr. Seuss. And then we complained that kids today don't share our values. Well, we quit. We quit teaching it to them. But anyway,

they don't share our values. Well, we quit teaching it to them. But anyway, so we have ways of doing that. Another tool we have in our culture is guilt. My grandmother was a pro at using guilt to teach and reinforce values. Well, collectivist cultures, which are the opposite of individualist cultures, collectivist cultures, which is most of the world and all of the biblical world, collectivist cultures have their own values and they have their own ways of enforcing and reinforcing those values. So in collectivist cultures, the three most common values, they're just elephants in the room, are kinship, patronage, and what's called brokerage or mediation. Now, what's fascinating, we not only don't value those, we actually think negatively of them. In our culture, we have negative terms for all those. For kinship, we call it nepotism. For patronage,

it's already a negative term. And for mediation, the middleman, we want to get rid of them. turn. And for mediation, the middleman, we want to get rid of them. But they're always behind probably every biblical story, one or more of those things. And then the ways they enforce and reinforce those values, they use honor and they use shame. Shaming would be a better term than shame. They use honor, shaming, and boundaries to teach, enforce, and reinforce those values. So they have different values, and they have different ways of enforcing those values. I think it helps us in the biblical story to know those things are usually going on behind most stories. That makes sense. I threw a lot at you there. No, I've got just a lot of follow-up questions

or thoughts. When I started being introduced to honor-shame cultures, and I've never lived, well, I lived in Israel for four months, been to Nepal several times, and I mean, been to many different countries, but more on the short-term basis. But this conversation has always fascinated me because even just being alert to what an honor-shame culture is, been to many different countries, but more on a short-term basis. But this conversation has always fascinated me because even just being alert to what an honor-shame culture is, you go back and read the Bible and honor-shame language is everywhere. It's everywhere. So let me give a fun example. Honor, shame is not the opposite of honor. Dishonor is the opposite. Oh, okay.

Honor, shame is not the opposite of honor. Dishonor is the opposite. Oh, okay. Honor, and then you have shaming, which is a related but different tool. Honor is, you know, we'll talk about our face, but it's the reputation that I have, but I am a we. You know, I'm part of a group. So it's the reputation that we have. And in the biblical world and in just about all of the rest of the world, their honor is like a pie. So you have a slice and I have a slice.

And if I get more honor, my slice got bigger. So what happened to your slice? It got smaller, right? It got smaller. So what happened to your slides? It got smaller, right? It got smaller. So there's no such thing as getting more honor without it coming from somewhere else. So public questions in the biblical world were never for information.

It was always an honor contest. So that's why in the Bible, they'll usually indicate if the question was public or not. So they'll say Jesus was teaching. And then when they went in the house, the disciples asked questions. What was all that about? It's because they want us to know they were not in an honor contest with Jesus. They actually wanted information. Nicodemus comes at night because it's not an honor contest with Jesus. He wants to find out information.

But when it's a public question, it's a contest for honor. So that's a lot of Jesus' disputes with the Pharisees and Sadducees? Yeah, they kill him over honor. So Jesus wasn't the first nor the last honor killing, but they kill him over honor because he's been taking honor away from them with all of these public confrontations. Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah, they'll kill him for preaching love one another.

Wow. And even the whole crucifixion like that, we think of it through the lens of pain, and obviously that's there, but the shame that brings to you and your family and your whole, anybody related to him, right, would have had perpetual shame because they have a member of the family who was crucified? He's scoring the shame of the cross, meaning that it's really fascinating. You know, Jesus does things that occasionally the disciples thought, well, he lost that honor contest. And Jesus doesn't bother to straighten it out because he thinks they'll figure it out later. So like, even with the shaming on the cross, he doesn't worry about it. They'll figure it out

later. I mean, that, you know, in honor cultures, when you explain that, people think, wow, that's amazing that he felt so secure in his own sense of honor that he didn't worry about. So when Jesus clears out the temple in John 2, the crowd, they're kind of neutral because this is probably the first year they had moved the merchants inside the temple. So there were probably some people thinking God's not going to like this. So Jesus's actions do kind of look like a prophet, you know, the sort of thing Elijah or somebody else might do. So the question in John is kind of neutral. Give us a sign that says you have the right to do this. And basically, Jesus does it. Now, he says, tear this temple down and in three days I'll raise it up. it. Now he says, tear this temple down and in three days I'll raise it up. Well, everybody thinks he's talking about the temple, the Jerusalem temple. So when they hear that, they think that's no, I mean, we're not going to tear the temple down to see if he can do it. So in their

mind, that was a, that was a dead of a sign. Whether a sign is sufficient or not, the crowd decides. John in the story doesn't tell us what the crowd decides there. He just tells us, well, later after the resurrection, when we remembered what he said, then we understood he meant his body, and then we believed him, meaning at the time they didn't believe him. So when Nicodemus comes, he's genuinely confused because he knows Jesus has been doing signs. He says, Rabbi, we know that your teacher come from God because no one can do the signs that you're doing unless God. So Nicodemus knew Jesus had been doing signs. So he's mystified. Why didn't Jesus do a sign in the temple? In his mind, would it really matter?

It is interesting. Jesus doesn't explain himself to Nicodemus. Yeah, yeah. Wow. He endured. What's Hebrews 12? He endured the shame of the cross. Oh, that's one of your references.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's just fascinating how much this language is woven throughout the main thread of the cross. Oh, that's when you're referring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's just fascinating how much this language is woven throughout the main thread of the Bible. And because we don't live in an honor-shame culture, we don't really... Honor is woven throughout it and patronage is woven throughout it. Can you explain that? Can you explain patronage? Yeah. The easiest way to do it is to use an illustration. You're a wealthy patron. You're a wealthy person. You live in the city of Philippi. You made your money on the gold mines that are in the mountains surrounding Philippi. I am a baker because my dad was a baker. My granddad was a

baker. My great granddad was a baker. Well, one day my bakery burns down because I didn't put the fire away carefully that night. Now, all my baker friends would say I must have irritated the goddess of bakers. And so she has burned my bakery down. Well, I could try to borrow the money to rebuild my bakery, except that my collateral is now in ashes. So I can't borrow the money. So one of my friends says, I have a friend. By the way, the word friend in scripture means lots of things except a buddy. It never means a buddy. A patron could be called a friend. The clients of a patron could be called a friend. So my neighbor says, I have a friend, in air quotes, you know, I have a friend who might be willing to help you, meaning you. So the next morning,

when he lines up with all the other friends of you, the wealthy gold merchant, when he gets his turn, he's asked for whatever he needs or whatever. And then he says, my friend here has a problem. So I explained my situation. You are not obligated to help me in any way. It's considered virtuous to help someone, but you don't have to help me. You can't help everybody. But for whatever reason, you decide to help me and you say, OK, I will give you some money to rebuild your bakery. I have friends who own mud brick.

They'll help you. And I have some friends who are car mud brick. They'll help you. And I have some friends who are carpenters and they'll help you and we'll get your bakery rebuilt. Well, at that point, I am now your friend, air quotes again, meaning now I'm part of your household. They would call it that. I'm part of your household. From now on, when I bake bread, I bake it for you and I bake for all of your, quote, friends. And you'll make sure I get a fair price for my bread and I don't charge too much for bread and all that. So from now on, we're in a relationship. That gift you gave me had a special term for it.

And then I'm supposed to respond by being loyal to you. And because I'm now a member of your household, that had a special term. The gift you gave me was called charis. And the response of loyalty I gave you was called pistis. We translate those grace and faith. The only time they're ever used together is in patronage. So when Paul says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith, everybody would say, oh, patronage. Oh, so God is like our patron. Exactly. So Paul used an illustration everyone understood to explain something they didn't understand, just like he used the other one he uses as adoption. So patronage is the image that God uses for our relationship with God. So every morning from now on, I line up with all of your other

friends in the morning time and I wait my turn. And if I need something from you, I'll ask it, and I'll ask you, do you need anything? Do you need me to do it? And so in the same way, Scripture says we should line up at our Father's house every morning and ask Him, does He need anything of this day? Wow. Are you familiar with John Barclay's work on grace? I think he really developed... Yes. Is that... So is he, because didn't he kind of develop that idea, the grace? He was part of a movement of, in fact, right before that book came out, John Barclay and I were speaking in Beirut on honor, shame, and patronage. And now here's what's fascinating at that conference on patronage. The only people, all of the Westerners there except me, all the Westerners there were speaking about patronage in negative terms.

None of the Middle Easterners were. I think it's like the air you breathe. What are you going to do about it? It's just the way it is. But they wouldn't necessarily see it as negative. Scripture sees patronage in a very positive term. God is our patron. Typically, you never called him a patron.

You called him a father or a shepherd or a king. Those were the kinds of terms that were commonly used for a patron. What about, I mean, like in the Greco-Roman system, the patron client, it was a massive status difference, right? Like, is there something within the Christian version of it that they didn't follow certain protocol that's common in the Greco-Roman world that was very much a hierarchical, this person's way better than this person? Oh, well, and it's just a power differential, which was a status differential, just it was a power differential, which was a status, but it was a power differential. So they were friends, but nobody was confused about who was the friend in power and who was the client. The only time Jesus uses the term friend, well, he uses it twice.

Once in a parable where someone is messing up going to a wedding and the host of the wedding says friend. And it was a patron client relationship. And the client was not doing right in that parable. The other time clients were called friends. If you freed your slaves, they were called friends. So Jesus says on the night before he's betrayed, I used to call you slaves, but now you're friends. And we think, wow, I'm like Jesus's buddy. No, that's not what he meant.

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Sleep better, pray more, and meditate on God's life-changing word with a bite. Let's talk about letter writing. So this is, is this your PhD or did you just happen to write a book on it? I did my dissertation on the role of secretaries in Greco-Roman antiquity. And so in the work on secretaries, you know, I was writing about letter writing and all of those kinds of things. And so that's how I got interested in it. So I read over 10,000 Greek and Latin letters. Oh, wow. Back before they had database and search engines. So if anybody knows something about first century

letter writing and secretaries and you're the guy um so my i ultimately want to get to phoebe in romans uh 16 verses one to two um and let me frame the question now more for for our audience you know you know where i'm where i go with this but then i want to circle back and have you just give a good historical overview of letter writing and letter performing but the you know where I'm going with this, but then I want to circle back and have you just give a good historical overview of letter writing and letter performing. But the main question is you have Phoebe, a woman who most likely, or at least most scholars say she's the letter carrier. And the assumption, or as the argument goes, letter carriers read the letter, or not just read as kind of a modern term, but performed a letter, which had some kind of interpretive explanation built into it. So as the argument keeps getting developed, Phoebe, a woman, would have exegeted or explained

or stood in the gap between Paul and the male and female audience, which is one of several arguments that people use in favor of women having some sort of teaching role in the church. I mean, there's a lot of assumptions here, but I found it to be a really fascinating argument. And I did a little bit of research on it, obviously read your book and a few other books and articles. So that's where I ultimately want to go. But let's start with, what do we know about the letter? Let's just start with letter writing. So secretaries, letter writing, letter carrying. Give us a good kind of one-on-one class on that. Let's start with literacy. We usually define literacy as the ability to read slash write.

You know, we act like those are the same thing, you know, just different directions, read slash write. But technically, literacy in the ancient world was the ability to read. It was not necessarily the ability to write, because writing, as any first grade teacher will tell you, is a matter of practice. And so someone who is literate could technically write, but it would be like if you picked up the ink pen in your opposite hand, you can write something down, but the writing, the handwriting would be terrible. It'd be awfully clumsy and everything else. Well, it's not because you're not literate. It's just your hand doesn't know how to write. Well, in antiquity, it was the same thing. People did not typically write. On writing involved, first you had to have writing materials, which people, most people didn't carry around with

them. You had to know how to mix your own ink, how to cut your own pens, how to keep them sharp. You had to, what they call score, so you scratch lines across the writing surface so that you could write somewhat straight. We write on top of the line, they would write underneath the line, and just how to actually form the letters. So your typical person was not, they could be literate, but not be able to write things down. They consider that secretary's work. It reminds me nowadays almost everyone can type. But my old professor, he couldn't type. He wrote things out on a sheet of paper.

One time he needed something in a different language and his secretary couldn't write it. So he was doing the, you know, the two fingered hammering. And I thought it would take him forever to write a couple of sentences. So it's just because it was considered secretary's work. So writing was considered secretary's work. We have lots of original letters from the ancient world, and we see it's written in a nice handwriting. And then at the end, the sender of the letter would write, if he could write it all, he might write just the word goodbye, or he might write, I wish you well, or I greet you, or something, depending on how literate they were if they were a little more literate they might write additional stuff uh down and then sometimes they couldn't

even write their own name and so they would get a friend who would write on behalf of the sender of the letter who was not the secretary that wrote it down so it could get kind of complicated so you could end up with something in three or four handwritings before you finish. And that's how we could tell. We could look at the handwriting in original letters. So since Paul had secretaries, should we assume that Paul didn't know how to write or no? Well, he's literate. He knows how to read, and he tells us that he can write.

He just writes with large, clumsy letters, and that's because he doesn't write very often. So it's fairly common the handwriting of the sender would be larger, blockier letters because they're not a secretary. They're not a professional writer. So Paul tells us, and the common phrase was, I'm writing this in my own hand. That would be, to some extent, the equivalent of what we call a signature. They would write something in their own hand, like I said, even if it's just goodbye. better if you would summarize something in the letter, particularly if it's a little more businessy. So there's a famous example where a guy is selling a weaving loom to someone else and says the loom is so many cubits tall and so many cubits wide and has so many strings and it's selling for this. And then when it gets to the end, the person says, I'm writing this on my own hand. I'm selling the loom for this amount.

That was a little bit of the summary. So we see in Paul's letter to Philemon, it's all so delicate and so rhetorical and all that. Paul picks up the pen in his own hand and says, you know, you owe me your very soul. And then he, you know, so it's a little blunt. He gets to the point. soul. And then he, you know, so it's a little blood. He gets to the point. And so we're used to, when we think of letters, we think of Paul's letters, which are incredibly long. Like most letters were more like Philemon than Romans, right? In the ancient world? Yeah. Third John was a typical letter. Philemon is a trifle long.

In today's dollars, it would cost about a hundred bucks to write the letter to Philemon. The great letter writers in antiquity were Seneca and Cicero. These are Roman letter writers. They wrote letters so much longer. Most letters were about 80 words. They wrote about 2,500 words, incredibly long. Paul averaged about 7,500. Oh, wow. So Paul's letters were three times longer than the longest known letter writer. So when Corinth got their letter, the first thing that would have stunned them was the size of it. They would have thought, the guy sent us a book, not a letter. So his opponents, it works in Greek as well as in English when they say, Paul's letters are waiting.

They're making fun of the length of his letters. Okay. So walk us through, give us a historical reconstruction. Since we're going to get to Romans, let's go to Romans. Paul's in Corinth, and he's there with a secretary, right? Is it Tertius? He has some reason, some opportunity to write the letter. And to some extent, sometimes it's opportunity. Someone needs to go, someone is going to Rome, and so he's got an opportunity. He also has a need. We think in the case of Romans, he wants to introduce himself to the church in Rome. So someone is going to Rome, he has an opportunity. And those who argue that Phoebe is the carrier of the letter would argue

that Phoebe needed to go to Rome. She asks Paul for a letter of introduction. Those were very common. They were called letters of commendation, recommendation letters. In the ancient world, it was actually until really just 20 or 30 years ago, it was a common way. If you moved to a new area, you took letters of introduction, years ago, it was a common way. If you moved to a new area, you took letters of introduction, letters of recommendation with you. So Paul has this opportunity and he's going to write a letter. He has in Romans is the one letter we have where the name of the secretary is actually used. I Tertius, it says, right. Who's writing down this letter. It's extremely rare for a secretary to put their name in a letter. The only other example I could find was in a letter of Cicero,

where the secretary, Cicero's famous secretary, knew the recipient of the letter. And so he inserts his personal greeting in. It wasn't considered just overly proper, I don't think. So we have to assume Tertius was known to the church in Rome. And so he sticks his name in. Now, he may have had other skills as well. It's even possible Tertius was a professional secretary with more than the average amount of skills. It's quite possible. So I picture Paul pacing back and forth in a room. Tertius is there with a ink pen and parchment. And is he just dictating what Paul is saying? Or does he have a hand in what Paul is saying? Is there anybody else? So let's just pick a different letter. Like say he's writing to, um, Thessalonica or something. Um, he would go down to the marketplace,

find a, the secretary stall, say, I want to write a letter and now, you know, they'd pick it up. Oh, you know, cause they're expecting a little short, Hey mom, I made it to, to Athens safe and sound. He said, no, no, no. I want to ride a longer one. So come to my place. So the next day or whenever the secretary would show up with a stack of wax tablets, that was the usual way they would work, to write a draft down. So they would sit in the atrium of the house where there's enough light to see what you're doing. And Paul would start dictating now, writing to Thessalonica, it tells us from Paul, Silas, and Timothy. They did not include names for niceties sake. So the three of them are writing a letter to Thessalonica. There's probably

going to be other people in the House who are probably going to give their two cents worth of opinion about things. And so it's a much more communal action. The secretary is going to write some notes down as best as he can. He's going to leave and come back with a draft the next day or the next week or whenever. He's going to read the draft. Paul's going to make changes to make sure it's exactly what he wants. And then he may add additional material. He may have something that some song or some snippet of a song that seems really appropriate at some spot. And so he'll say, Hey, put this, um, put this in right there. And the secretary would probably take it with them and insert it in the next draft. So we would assume it went through

multiple drafts and would keep going through drafts until Paul was happy with the result. So is that why, I mean, you read a letter like Roman, I mean, most of Paul's letters really, but like, let's just take Romans. It's so just well-crafted. It's, it's like, it's like a, it seems like it's been through multiple drafts. Like that's not just him just scratching down some thoughts. Like it's not dash it off in the flurry of the moment. Now, some of your listeners will say, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's that line where Paul says, I'm so glad I didn't baptize any of you. Oh, wait, I did baptize the house of Stephanas. That sounds like a spontaneous correction. That's intentional. We find those in Cicero's letter too, and they're very rhetorical.

He acts like he just, oh, I'd forgotten about this. So Paul says, it's not important who baptized who. I can't even remember who I baptized. But he doesn't want to insult a very important member of that congregation. So he says, oh, wait, I did baptize this guy. That's it's rhetoric. Just like Paul will say to the Corinthians, well, those other teachers, they're powerful in their rhetoric. And, you know, my my rhetoric isn't very strong. And yet it's written in such a rhetorically powerful way.

He's running circles around them while saying, you know, I'm not skilled like they claim to be. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, so with Thessalonians, Paul, Timothy, and Silas, you're saying Timothy and Silas had a hand in that letter. That's not just Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church. No, and it's interesting. At times there's the we, like in 1 Corinthians 1 through 9, there's twice as many we's as i's and then in chapter 10 uh he says i paul actually the second i paul and then from there it's uh twice as many eyes as our we's so i think

that the we there is not some sort of royal or editorial we um there's probably times when one of his team members would insist on something being in. Paul's a collectivist. He wouldn't think of an I. It's a we. Now, it's very clear who's in charge of that team, you know, and we could be very confident there is not a single word in that letter that Paul would not have agreed with. But it is a team effort. For those of us who hold a very high view of inspiration like I do, we need to remember that Paul's letter to the Corinthians is inspired. It's not that Paul's inspired, but Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, is inspired. It's not that Paul's inspired, but Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians is inspired. So if Paul wrote a letter home to his mom, it wasn't a lost, inspired document out there floating around. Right, right, right. Can we assume, and we have

13 letters of Paul, if you take Pauline authorship, can we assume he wrote hundreds of letters, thousands in his lifetime, or was it not, was it, was writing a letter, even, even writing to his mom still fairly rare? It was, well, in antiquity for a letter to survive today, if it's written, it either has to be in a place that stayed completely dry all the time. So our letter remains archaeologically. We find in the deserts of Egypt, the deserts of Judea, and a few other places. It had to be for the last 2,000 years continuously dry for that material to survive and not rot. Or the other option would be if it landed someplace that was soggy, and if it stayed soggy continuously for the next 2,000 years, then that would survive.

So there aren't very many places in antiquity where something could survive. Does that make sense? But in both those places, we find thousands and thousands and thousands of letters. So, I mean, in theory, Preston, it could be those were the only two places in the world where people wrote letters, but it's just not going to be the case. People wrote letters all the time. Now, they didn't dash them off like we do text messages or emails because there was an expense. But as people traveled, they wanted to send word home that they had made it. So I do think Paul wrote, we know he wrote more letters than we have because he mentions the letter to the Laodiceans. He mentions two other letters besides R2 to Corinth. So we know there are some other letters. I don't think Paul was spinning them out nonstop, but presumably there were other

letters. So let's go back to Romans. So he has dictated this to Tertius. Tertius has written, gone back, had several edits, whatever. There may have been other people kind of in the room, coming in, coming out, maybe chiming in. Finally, the letter's done. He's happy with it. Do you think Phoebe carried... Let's talk about ending the letter. They normally would not do the closing until they were ready to send it because something could happen. Somebody could show up or some terribly evincative. So they generally didn't do the actual signature till the end. Once it's done, so the secretary would make a nice copy because you don't want to send some

rag to a church. That wouldn't look nice. So the secretary would make a nice copy. Paul would sign it. Generally, if there was enough time, he would have the secretary make a copy for him to keep. Really? Because, yeah, letters get lost. And we have lots of examples in antiquity where somebody, a letter would get lost and the sender would send another copy because he kept a copy. another copy because he kept a copy. In fact, I mentioned Seneca and Cicero are big letter writers. Their sets of letters came from their set of copies. So we typically think Paul, the usual thought is when it's time to collect Paul's letter, someone went to Corinth and someone went to Philippi and someone, no, they probably got the copy from Paul's set of documents.

Okay. Okay. Did the letter carrier, which, yeah, maybe these are two questions, not sure which order to go in, but did the letter carrier, I read somewhere that it was common for the letter carrier to have a voice in the, or no, no, no, no, sorry, sorry. Well, sorry, three things. Did the letter carrier often contribute to the content of the letter, number one? Number two, if not that, did the author of the letter go through the content of the letter with the carrier so that they can know how to perform it to the audience? ways you can get a letter from here to there. If you were an official Roman government person, they had the ancient Roman version of the Pony Express. So they could cover 50 miles in a day, that sort of thing. But that was only available to official government people. Most folks use what I call the happenstance carrier. They found out someone is headed to this town. And so they would

write a letter and get it over to that person. And that person would take a sack of letters with them when they went. That was the most common way for letters to get from here to there. I think that's probably how Paul's initial letters on his early letters got sent. Someone was going that way. so he would send letters along with them. The problem with that is they don't always get there. That's one problem. Second, the person who's carrying the letter would have no idea what's in the letter. Okay. So like with Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he said, when I told you not to associate with immoral people, I didn't mean the world.

You know, so that's the sort of simple clarification. Someone who knew the contents should have been able to clarify. So I think early on, Paul sent the letters with what we call a happenstance carrier. So it happened to be going that way. But after a little while, Paul realized there's challenges with that. For one thing, someone can't vouch for his letter, that this is an authentic letter of Paul. And we know in the Thessalonians letter, Paul says, there are forgeries out there claiming to be letters from me. There are forgeries out there claiming to be letters from me.

So I think by the time probably Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 Corinthians may have been by happenstance carriers. Because Paul got bit a little bit by using happenstance carriers, he decided, let's just send someone to carry the letter. A dedicated carrier. Usually only the wealthy did that, but I think Paul was invested enough, and there's enough Christian traffic going back and forth that Paul realizes, I can assign someone to carry this letter. Okay. Second thing I'd caution us about, Preston, is we tend to think of letter carrier singular. But they would always travel in groups. So I think there would be a group going anywhere. It's just too dangerous to travel otherwise. And most people were not as brave as Paul to travel. Paul was a bit of a rarity in antiquity. Most people didn't travel as much as he did or as often as he did or anything else. So when Paul sends a letter back, he says,

Epaphroditus is carrying this letter. Well, there's probably other people with Epaphroditus, but he's vouching for that person in some particular way so that brings us to uh phoebe i don't think phoebe would be traveling by herself right so she'd be part of some group going um and it's possible she actually had other business in in going to rome and so Paul's writing, you know, she probably asked Paul for a recommendation. Then she gets this massive Romans letter and thought, good Lord, I just needed a little half page recommendation letter. What in the world is this? So now she is likely, if she's not the courier, then she's probably part of the group that's bringing the letter, because it doesn't do any good for the recommendation letter to not be with the person that it's recommending.

Does that make sense? So she'd have to be with it in some way. Is there something intrinsic to the way she's commended in Romans 16, 1-2, that would suggest she is the primary carrier? Or is it speculation? Because I think I checked 10 different commentaries and they all assume she's the carrier. No, it's not worded in any way to suggest she's the carrier. It's actually worded like a recommendation letter. Yeah. But recommendation letters were carried by the person she was recommending. So that's why we conclude

she was likely the carrier of the letter. Now, it's already kind of a weird hybrid because, I mean, Paul didn't send a little half-page recommendation letter. And I assume Paul wrote recommendation letters for people. So he's chosen to attach the massive letter to the Romans to it. So I assume he's commending her to the church, but in a way he's also commending himself to the church. The letter is really a introduction letter for him. She is called by language that typically means a patroness. And that word often means like an official host, someone who would welcome people into their home. That commendation matches an actual inscription we have in Corinth of someone who was actually in Kincrea, of someone who was a host or guest.

So she is being commended because she's a person of some means likely who's a patroness, perhaps someone who has welcomed and hosted Paul. So he speaks well of her. Now, the question is, is she the one performing the letter? We just don't have any way of knowing. We don't have any way of knowing if the carrier typically performed the letter. Paul does in his letter to the Colossians, he commends the carrier and says, you can ask him about me. So and Paul does that. It's a tricky thing. He wants them to know he's not ashamed of the fact that he's in prison.

So he says, ask him, you know, I'm not hiding it. He's not spilling the beans on me when he tells you I'm in prison. I want you guys to know that. I'm not ashamed of my chains. So Paul is commending Phoebe, whether or not she's the one performing the letter. I personally don't think there's enough evidence one way or the other, but there wouldn't be a problem with it. Women had roles like that in antiquity. It varied somewhat by the culture. Certain parts of the empire, you find women in the inscriptions for government officials and women holding offices, that sort of thing. And then in other parts of

the empire, you don't tend to find those things. So it tended to be a little bit subject to the culture at the time. But Paul didn't seem to have any trouble with it. So it is purely – so I thought in the very limited study I did that it was common for the carrier to perform the letter. Is there any evidence of that? No. Okay. No, but there wouldn't be any problem with it. In general, the crowd would like someone who's familiar with the letter to read it, at least the first time.

I mean, it's going to get read lots of times. Right. And we use, I think I invented the term performing the letter. We use, I think I invented the term performing the letter. It's a little bit that way because it takes a bit of practice to read something because they don't use spaces in the words. And, you know, if you ever had anybody do a, lead a reading in church, you probably told them practice it before you get up there. You know, just so that, you know, you read it well. Paul would, he seems to care about the impression that it gives. He wants people to understand. So he's going to want it,

someone there. So if Phoebe wasn't the one standing there reading it, he would nevertheless feel very comfortable with her explaining any questions they had. Hey, did you think Paul meant this or that? If she had an idea, I think she would share it. They were very communal. Real quick. So it would be more likely that with a letter this long and this significant, that somebody who was familiar with it ahead of time would have performed a letter. So whether it's Phoebe or somebody who... Say there's four or five people that came with Phoebe, let's just say. It's more likely that somebody in that entourage that was familiar with the content of the letter ahead of time

would have performed it. Is that a valid assumption? I would think probably so. Likely they would want to ask that person. Now, ancients cared about these things a lot. There were people who were official readers. The term was a lector. So they would be skilled at reading aloud something.

So if someone in the church was a any questions, be familiar with it so that he would do a good job when he actually read the letter. I mean, we have this idea like we do. We get a letter, we tear it open and we read it immediately. They would get a letter, send word out that, hey, this is going to be read maybe next Thursday at so-and-so's house who's hosting us for a meal. So come on Thursday and hear the letter from our friend Paul. Okay. So you're saying even if we don't know whether she read the letter or not, given the fact that she's commended, named, is high status, is a, you know, what's the word?

Protastist or something? Or translated benefactor, patron to many, that they would have, would they have looked to her for, hey, can you help us understand what Paul's saying here? Or how's Paul doing? And what is it? Oh, absolutely. I think they would, I mean, Paul has just commended her. So they would, they know they can trust what she says. So they're going to ask her and they're going to ask all kinds of questions about how Paul's doing. How's the ministry going? Where is he headed next? What's up? I mean, you know, they're, they're very interested.

So she's going to be filling in all kinds of details around the edges. The fact that Paul commends her says, you know, a lot immediately. And I don't want to be anachronistic, but like, so can we say there's a good or there's a good chance that she would have like interpreted the letter for the people? And again, I don't want, you know. Right. Well, we don't know her educational background. Well, we don't know her educational background. We don't know how much background familiarity she had with Old Testament scriptures. Romans is steeped in it.

So I don't know what her personal comfort level would be. We don't know her personality. Maybe she's very outgoing. Maybe she's retiring. But she has been commended as someone worthy of being a resource. We don't know what level, but she's the one Paul commended. He didn't commend someone else. I mean, we're going on a lot of assumptions, but based on – we have tons of evidence. So letters and letter carrying.

So it's not like we're just like flipping a coin saying maybe this, maybe that. My thought is he at least put her in a position where she would have on some level kind of rep is representing Paul. Is that the best language to use? Like she's, I think if she felt comfortable doing it, um,

then Paul has put her in a position where she can. He has not restricted her. His commendation does not restrict her in any way. But he just unfortunately doesn't tell us enough. You know, as we like to say all the time, Preston, when we're reading these letters, we're reading someone else's mail. Right. And so there's just stuff we don't know. Wow.

She may be from that town originally. She may have family in there. You know, it just, we just don't know. Yeah, yeah. And then I saw, I read an article recently, it was in Tyndale Bulletin. It was a little bit speculative, but it was, again, based on pretty valid

historical reconstruction that, you know, the only church that's actually mentioned is Priscilla and Aquila. Then you also have those who are of the household, but Ecclesia, I think is only used at Priscilla and Aquila. And given their wealth, their status, that might've been kind of the first big, bigger gathering where the letter was read. And then maybe they took it to different kind of house communities that weren't able to meet there, but there was kind of a primary hub that would have been, like you said, the big event where the letter would have been. And they likely would, you know, there'd be some discussion as to who gets it next.

Because the house churches were probably 30 to 50 people. Okay. And so it would have to move around. And, you know, people would want to compete for the honor of being next to read the letter. They'd also want to host the meal. You know, they'd want to invite their friends to come and hear this great letter from this important person. So there's a lot of dynamics. And the Spirit in His wisdom uses those social dynamics as a way of spreading the gospel.

Can you, we've said this, I should have defined this way early on, but like the difference between reading and performing, that was a fascinating way I looked into that. There's been a lot written on this, but can you explain the difference between reading and performing? Right. In antiquity, people did not read silently to themselves. That actually has to be taught. An elementary school teacher will explain that that has to be done. So people would, even if it was to them, if they were the only one, they would read aloud the letter. And in reading it, they would hear it. And when they heard it, they would understand it. The way I learned this with oral cultures, I had a student named Johnny who turned in something with his name.

Johnny spelled a certain way. So I wrote it in the gradebook. Next time he turned something in, he spelled it differently. So I scratched it out, changed it. Third time, spelled differently again. I scratched it out, changed. I asked him, I said, is that your name? He said, Johnny. Yes. So I said, so is this your name? It's not this. He said, Johnny.

No, that's my name. I said, they're not the same. You look up. Yes, they are. I said, no, they're not. He said, yes, they are. Johnny. Johnny.

That's my name, Johnny. And it took me a minute to realize he was hearing it. Johnny. And it took me a minute to realize he was hearing it. And so all of those sounds produced the same, all those letters produced the same sound, Johnny. So in antiquity, when the reader read it, people are listening to it. That's when they're hearing the letter read and, you know, reading it clearly and carefully. In Luke's gospel, it says at one point, let the reader understand that you're not supposed to read that part aloud. That's a warning to the reader. Be careful what you read next. Make sure there aren't any Roman authorities who are going to get mad about it.

So you're supposed to stop and look around and make sure it's okay to read that part. Interesting. So those were notes. And they would have other notes too. And I read some stuff in Cicero that like, it's expected that they would, you know, hand gestures and emotion, and they're not just monotone, they're not just conveying the content. They are very much involved with embodying the thing that's being read. Is that correct?

involved with embodying the thing that's being read. Is that correct? The better the lector was trained, the closer the reading of the letter would come to like a speech, a rhetorical event, where cadence, the use of syllables, intonation, all that was considered part of the experience. Now, did every time one of Paul's letters get read, did it get a really great experience? I kind of doubt it. Okay. But, you know, as much as they could, they would want to try to have it done well. Which even that is an act of interpretation. Right.

I mean, in an oral culture, especially, we're putting the emphasis or your cadence and what you slow down with a group of biblical storytellers and and we're doing the story of ruth and i said did you notice how they keep calling her the moabite they said yeah i said you're supposed to say that with like a disgusting taste in your mouth every time the moabitist you know um i said you remember every time. The Moabitess. I said, you remember, every time they talk about their god, they would say the detestable god of the Moabites. That's the point you're supposed to get. And they keep hitting us over the head. She's a toy Moabite. So it's exactly that sort of sense, the nonverbals that are being presented when you read it. Absolutely.

So let me summarize and let me know if this is what we know. There's a likelihood that Phoebe was the letter carrier as part of a group. Possible if she had the skills and literacy that she might have read the letter, but that is possible. Maybe, maybe not. We just don't. There's no positive evidence for that. Most likely it was somebody in the entourage that would have read it, not somebody in the congregation.

And given the language of Romans 16, there's a really good chance that if, not if, but when people in the congregation had questions and whatever the explanation that they would they would have looked to her primarily to help fill in some of those gaps is that i would say you have summarized it well the only place i would because it's going to rome um then it's possible if there was a professional reader in the group, but then it, it gets to the same point you want to make anyway, that reader would have interviewed the people who brought the letter to find out everything he could find out so that he would read the letter. Well, if Phoebe didn't read the letter, maybe she's not that literate or whatever. If she didn't read the letter,

then she would still be part of that group. In some ways, it's our individualist that wants, you know, we want to pick this person out. But I think she would have said, where are we? We brought the letter, you know, and we read the letter and we want to say, yes, but which one of you brought the letter? She'd say, we brought the letter. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Well, Randy, uh, thank you so much for your time. I, I mean, I could keep talking for hours. So yeah, thank you for filling in some gaps in my thinking and, uh, really appreciate your work, man. I love, I love your, your books are so like scholarly and academic, but so easy to read. That's a rare combination. So yeah, thank you for your work.

Well, Chris and I'm honored to be invited. I've been one of your fans for quite some time. So I'm happy that I finally got an invitation. And like I said, I'm honored and pleased. Thank you so much. this show is part of the converge podcast network