1.B 04. The First Christian Books
The First Christian Books The first Christian books to form a collection were the letters of Paul. Even "withui the New Testament itself there is proof that they existed as a collection and that they were well known; for the writer of 2 Peter refers to them as if they were perfectly familiar to his readers, even if he does say that they have their difficult passages, and that certain heretical thinkers have twisted their teaching for their own ends (2 Peter 3:16). Clement of Rome writing to the Church at Corinth could say; "Take up the letter of the blessed Apostle Paul" (i Clement 46: i) in the certainty that his readers possessed it, and that they were prepared to grant it respect at least, if not authority. Ignatius can write to the Ephesians reminding them that Paul remembers them in every letter (Ignatius, Ephesians 12:2). Polycarp, writing to the Philippians, reminds his readers that Paul in his absence wrote letters to them by the study of which they can build them up in the faith which had been given to them (Polycarp, Php 3:2). It is clear that by A.D. 100 Paul’s letters had been collected and were widely known and widely accepted.
There is a sense in which this is very surprising. In almost every case Paul was writing to deal with a local and a temporary situation. Dark and dangerous heresies reared their heads, or threatened to arise; practical problems arose; troubles threatened the peace of some Church; and thereupon Paul, not being able to be everywhere personally present, sat down to write a letter to combat the mistaken thinkers, to give guidance for the practical problem, to seek to preserve the peace and unity of the Church.
Paul’s letters were far from being theological treatises composed in the peace of a study or a library. They were meant to deal with an immediate situation in a definite community at a particular time. As Deissmann says: "Paul had no thought of adding a few fresh compositions to the existing Jewish epistles, still less of enriching the sacred literature of his nation... He had no presentiment of the place his words would occupy in universal history, not so much that they would be in existence in the next generation, far less that one day people would look on them as Holy Scripture." At the same time, even when we have said that, it must still be remembered that there is no reason why something produced for an immediate situation should not become a universal possession cherished for all time. Every perfect love poem and love song, such as those of Robert Burns, was written for one person and has yet become a universal possession. The music of Bach was often written for Sunday by Sunday performance by his choir in Leipzig and is yet such that it will be performed so long as men everywhere know what music is. There is nothing unusual in a thing being temporary and local and immediate and yet at the same time having in it the seeds of a universal immortality.
It must be remembered that there are times when Paul goes out of his way to remind his readers that he is speaking as no more than a man. "I speak in a human way,"* he writes to the Romans (Romans 3:5). "Concerning the unmarried," he writes to the Corinthians, "I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy" (1 Corinthians 7:25). "What I am saying," he says, "I say not with the Lord’s authority but as a fool, in this boastful confidence" (2 Corinthians 2:17). There were times when Paul made no claim to infalhbility and made no claim that the divine voice spoke through him.
Still further, it is an astonishing fact that, if we possessed only die book of Acts, we would never have known that Paul had ever written a letter. Luke was the hero- worshipper of Paul, and from Acts 13:1-52 becomes to all intents and purposes the biography of Paul, and yet Luke has nothing to say about Paul the letter- writter. Sometimes Paul was by no means sure that his letters would be read by everyone. "I adjure you/* he writes to the Thessalonians, "by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brethren" (1 Thessalonians 5:27). So little attention was paid to his letters, that we know that many, and in particular a letter which had to do with Laodicea (Colossians 4:16), were lost and vanished from sight.