If you are asked why you write letters to other people, you may answer that you do it because you want to keep in touch with them and you want to communicate your needs and thoughts to them. Sometimes you may write to someone you have never met because you hope that person may be able to help you or perhaps you may be able to do something for that person. A letter is a substitute for what would be your part in a conversation or discussion if you were not separated by distance from those to whom you are writing.

The letters of Paul should be understood as real letters, written to particular people in specific situations, separated from Paul by distance. All the letters of Paul show deep concern for those to whom he writes; whether he is expressing encouragement, warnings, affection and love, anger, sympathy, or presenting his readers with deeper insights about their new faith and way of life. In every letter he wrote to a life-situation, with all its problems, complexities and opportunities. Almost certainly, Paul never expected anyone else but the people to whom he wrote to read his letters. He followed the customs of his time about the way in which letters were written. He almost certainly used the services of a professional scribe or secretary to whom he dictated his words. We often get the impression when reading Paul's letters that when Paul's thoughts were moving fast the scribe had to work hard to keep up with the rush of words. Paul's letters were rarely like carefully planned essays in which ideas are followed through to logical conclusions; they reflect his spontaneous and fast-thinking response to the needs and complexities of the Christian communities scattered over the eastern half of the Mediterranean area. When he received a letter from the Christians at Corinth to ask for his advice about marriage, celibacy and whether Christians should eat the meat of animals which had been sacrificed to pagan gods, Paul answered straight to the point (1 Corinthians 7 and 8). He told his friends exactly what he believed they should do, and explained why they should do it. His reply was intended to meet their particular situation; it was not a general essay on marriage or celibacy or paganism.

The scribe who wrote for Paul followed the common style of letter- writing of the time, so that we find Paul's letters having the same construction as other letters which survive from that period. It was customary for a letter to begin with the name of the person sending followed by the name of the person to whom it was addressed. A brief greeting and then a word of gratitude for the good health of the person addressed, followed. After this opening came the main part of the letter before ending, the sender might give personal news or general greetings. The letter ended with a brief word of farewell.

Papyrus, made from the plant of that name, was the common w material on which the scribe wrote with ink. After the letter was fin, on the sheet of papyrus, it was rolled up and tied into a little scroll. Paul's time there were no public postal services and all letters had' sent by personal messenger or by some helpful traveler going in the right direction. It was quite a serious business to send or receive a letter and this does explain why some of the letters which Paul sent to various Christian communities were carefully kept. It is likely that Paul more letters than those which are preserved in the New Testament was obviously his custom to keep in touch with the many Chris communities that he knew by writing letters. It is possible, for ex from the evidence of the first and second letters to the Christian, Corinth, to trace quite an extensive correspondence between the Corinthians and Paul, with letters going backwards and forwards bet them. It is likely that the leaders of the newly established churches often wrote to Paul for further advice, but none of their letters survived. It is possible, however, from the content of Paul's letter to the churches, to work out what kind of matters church leaders would write to Paul about. We have already noticed three specific issues about which the Christians at Corinth had written. Establishing a new sty life was certain to bring problems and cultural conflicts; each community faced its own particular questions.

Paul's letters are extremely important in the way they bring us direct contact with the life and faith of the early Church during period between about A.D. 50 and Paul's death. They are also our direct source of information about the character, work and thought of himself.

Paul's life, work and character, from his letters If we did not have the book of Acts to provide a general framework into which we can set Paul's work as the tireless evangelist of the early Church, we should find it rather difficult to construct such a framework from his letters. The reason for this has already been indicated, namely that each of his letters is intended for particular people in a specific situation. We may learn a lot about those people from a letter, but there may not be any reference to any other of the many communities which Paul knew. When Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth, or anywhere else, he had no need to say much, if anything, about himself and what he had been doing because his Christian friends already knew about this. However, there are passages in his letters where, for various reasons, he makes references to himself and from these we realize that there are many gaps in our knowledge of his life and work, even with the information provided by Acts. For example, he summarizes the hardships he had faced in his work, in 2 Corinthians 11 :23-29, and although we can identify several of the experiences as corresponding to incidents also described in Acts, there are others about which we know nothing. When did Paul survive three shipwrecks, and when was he in danger from floods, and from robbers? We just do not know; these incidents are not in the record of Acts. The record of Acts is important in providing a setting for Paul's work but it is not a complete record of what he did and we realize that there may have been aspects of Paul's life and work about which Luke did not know. But this need not surprise us. How much do you really know about anyone else? If you decided to write the detailed life story of another person, even someone whom you know very well, you would find that there were things you did not know and things which you might consider too unimportant to write about. Luke records that Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, but he tells us little about what happened to Paul in Corinth. Paul stayed for two years in Ephesus and although Luke tells us about some incidents which took place there, obviously much of Paul's experience there was not recorded. Luke's record of Paul's work is dominated by his interest in showing how Paul finally reached Rome, the great capital of the largest empire which the world had known. In maintaining this interest, he selected what he told about Paul. There is no evidence from Acts that Luke read any of Paul's letters. We should also remember that Luke did not have firsthand knowledge of the early days of the Church in Jerusalem during the period of Paul's conversion and his first Christian activity.