I want to speak now more particularly of the language which Paul used, for a misunderstanding of that language has caused more misapprehension as to the meaning of Paul's letters than any other one thing.
When I began to study the Greek Testament there were about 550 words which were marked in the Lexicon as "biblical" or "ecclesiastical." That is, they were words which were found only in the New Testament and not in Greek secular literature at all. Greek scholars had to guess at their meaning. The theory was that the sacred writers, being directly inspired, felt that the language of ordinary speech was not sufficient or appropriate or, perhaps, holy enough to use, and so they employed certain words not in ordinary usage which had a peculiarly sacred or theological meaning. So in the case of Paul's letters it was considered that he wrote in a peculiarly elevated style to denote the sacred nature of his writings, a sort of ecclesiastical jargon, bearing about the same relation to the Greek of his day that the language of the Authorized Version bears to the language of the ordinary letter writer of to-day. But by what was really an accident, it has been proved that this was not so, but that Paul in his letters really used the language of the common people. So the fact that we find words in Paul's letters which do not occur in secular literature is not due to the employment of an elevated style, but to the use of the vernacular—language so colloquial that it was not found in the classical writing of the day.
The discovery came about in this way: In the time of Paul, the ordinary writing material of the common people was papyrus, strips of papyrus reed, flattened out and pasted together. From time to time from the seventeenth century, documents written upon this papyrus were discovered in Egypt where they had been preserved by the dry climate. Their significance was not recognized and they were kept as curiosities in museums. But finally, in a crocodile cemetery, used as stuffing for the crocodile mummies, enormous quantities of the papyri, as they are called, were found. They were for the most part non-literary documents, manifestly reflecting closely the every day life of the time. They include legal documents such as wills, contracts and receipts; official documents, such as imperial rescripts, judicial reports and petitions; thousands of private letters of every description; business documents, such as accounts, market reports, shop reports, the records of the steward of a farm, of a school, of a large official residence; and miscellaneous items, such as a certificate of membership in a club, a recipe for toothpowder, advice on how to avoid the income tax, and so on.
With this wealth of material available, scholars really began to study the papyri. They compared their language with that of the New Testament, and they found that almost all of those unknown so-called mystical, sacred words were found in these papyri in actual use by the common people for the purpose of ordinary life. They, therefore, came to the inevitable conclusion that the New Testament writings were composed not in a specialized ecclesiastical style, but in the every day language of common life, the language best understood by the people.
Because of this discovery, the writings of the New Testament, and particularly the letters of Paul, have been endued with a new vividness and significance. We are now able for the first time to know just what the language of Paul's letters must have meant to his hearers. They could not possibly have read into those words the theological implications with which we have surrounded them, or with which they have been surrounded for us. They could only have understood the words as they themselves used them in common speech. And this must have been the way that Paul meant them to be understood.
Just to show the character of the material which has been discovered, I want to give an illustration of one of the letters found among the papyri. This is a letter from an Egyptian boy named Theon to his father, also named Theon. Evidently, his father had taken a trip without taking the boy with him, greatly to the boy's displeasure. He writes:
"Theon, to Theon, his father, Greeting: You have done well, indeed. You have not carried me with you to town. If you will not carry me with you to Alexandria I will not write a letter to you, nor speak to you, nor wish you health. If you go to Alexandria without me I will not take hand from you nor greet you again. If you will not carry me, these things come to pass. My mother also said to Archelaus (evidently his slave) 'He drives me mad: away with him!' But you have done well. You have sent me great gifts—locust beans. They deceived us here on the 12th day when you sailed. Finally, I beseech you, send for me. If you do not send I will not eat or drink. Even so. Farewell, I pray."
This is a real schoolboy's letter,—no grammar, no spelling. And this is the sort of thing from which scholars have dug out new meaning for the letters of the Apostle Paul.
A good example of the change of flavor in Paul's letters which the new discoveries have effected, is given in the 4th Chapter of Philippians, beginning with the 15th verse. In this epistle Paul seems to reach the height of his love. It is written in a correspondingly elevated style. At the end, however, Paul begins to speak about money. This seems always to have been a thing about which Paul was a little self-conscious. He wanted to be independent, but the Philippians had given him money, so he here acknowledged it in a jesting way, using many of the technical business terms current at the time. If we read verses 15 to 19 in the Authorized Version, we get no idea of the playful and colloquial nature of what Paul says. The Authorized Version says, verse 15[,] "No church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only." But Paul puts this in a very businesslike way. It mught be translated, "No church but yourselves had any financial dealings with me." These words he uses are "debits" and "credits," two words which are found again and again in the papyri at the head of the accounts of grocers or other small shopkeepers of the time. Then the Authorized Version says, "You sent once and again unto my necessities." Paul really says, "You sent money for my needs." Then he goes on, "It is not the money I am anxious for. What I am anxious for is the interest"—again a technical term—"that accrues"—the banking term. That gives much more of an indication of what Paul said than the authorised translation: "I desire fruit that may abound to your account." Then the Authorized Version says, "For I have all and abound; I am full." Paul really uses the term "paid in full," which appears again and again on receipts that have been found among the papyri. Then the Authorized Version says, "But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory." But the word "supply" is again a colloquial word, "pay." The very language which he employs playfully as between the Philippians and himself, he extends without hesitation to God.
We have thus far been engaged in taking note of some of the sociological circumstances which conditioned Paul's writings and to a certain extent determined their character. We have looked at his Hebrew training, at the Greek life which surrounded him and left its impress upon him, at the character of the people he was addressing, at the language in which he wrote to them. All these things left their marks upon his letters, but they do not explain them, as we shall see.