C (6:16)
Yeah, I started to study the letters of Paul quite early because my dissertation was on letters of Paul. I also had attended several Seminars during my graduate studies on Paul. So that was kind of natural to be specialized on that with papyrus letters. I already mentioned this first class we gave for students in ancient Greek on papyrus letters and letters of the New Testament. And during that time, it dawned to me that if I were living in ancient times, these papyri, they are the best source to tell me what my own life would have been like. And I really got fascinated in that. So as a boy, of course, I was dreaming about when I had lived in ancient times. I could have been Alexander the Great, maybe not so much Julius Caesar, because the way how he ended, maybe Augustus or some Cicero or whoever, see one of the great philosophers or emperors or. Or whatever, but that's far from reality. I grew up as the son of a working man who was working as a nurse in the hospital. My father, my mother was staying at home raising us kids, and later on working in a bakery. So just thinking about my own life and then looking back, back to life in antiquities, I immediately saw, oh, these are the sources telling me what my life could have been like and the life of my colleagues, my friends, et cetera, et cetera, and especially the papyrus letters. They are such a vivid source. We have so many papyri covering ancient everyday life. We have, for instance, we have tax receipts. All of them are kind of similar. So if you know the different types of tax receipts, different types of taxes, the rest is something like repetition. So kind of all text received for the poll tax looks the same. But letters, every letter is an individual letter. Every letter is a single artifact. It's different from contracts. As wonderful as it is to study contracts, like marriage contracts, divorce contracts, all kinds of deeds, leases, etc. Etc. Etc. The letters, it seems to me, they cover most intensively the life as it was, the everyday life with all the problems that people had in those days. And when you look at those, you realize that the human problems, the human situations, they haven't changed a lot in the past 2,000 years. So the time from the time from which we have these papyrus documents, it's the same problems in families who should inherit something. It's the problems with love and marriage. We have love letters, but we also have letters by husbands having an argument with the wife or the other way around, you see? And so you can really study this material and already learn how in antiquities, people were dealing with their affairs, and if they were dealing with that in a very fortunate way or in a way that was quite ineffective, and that's what, in general, we could learn from History. So there's nothing new on the planet, let's say. Yes, we have computers, we have the Internet, et cetera. The Internet is a marvelous tool for papillology with so many artifacts, images and databases online. But the problems that we have as human beings, quite the same. There was a particular papyrus letters that especially caught my interest and started my research. And that was the papyrus from the Berlin collection. It was published in the first volume of the Berlin, which is abbreviated BGU number 423. It's a letter of a soldier. So of course, Ridman papyrus, originating from the 2nd century CE from a soldier who was of Egyptian origin, but after traveling over the Mediterranean, finally arrived in Misenum, so in the port, or next to Rome, of the Imperial Navy. So he joined the navy there. And after his arrival he wrote a letter and sent it back to his father back home in Egypt, where the letter was found, excavated in modern times and edited. And in this letter there is a particular topic that was picked up most famously by Adolf Tysman. So this is a very important pioneer of the field that I'm studying now. Adolf the who was among the earliest paprologists who got interested, interested in comparing this documentary papyrus or also papyrus letters with the text of the New Testament. So letters with New Testament letters, et cetera. And in this letter of this Egyptian soldier, Roman Egyptian soldier, this guy whose name was Appion, mentions that he is thanking the Lord Serapis for this God saved him from trouble at sea, so that he eventually arrived safely at Misenum in Italy. And Deismann wrote about that. So here we have the perfect analogy to Paul's thanksgiving passages at the beginning of most of his letters. And I looked at that and I realized, oh no, that's not a parallel, it's not the same. Because when we look at Paul, we have this greeting at the beginning of a Paul and letter. And when there's a thanksgiving following the opening greeting, it's very formal, like Paul expresses his thanksgiving to God for the good situation. So the faith of the community, of the Christ group, they're helping each other, their love among each other, etc. And here we don't have the Thanksgiving in Appian's letter, not right at the beginning after the greeting, but he informs his father what was happening. And in the middle of the letter, and in a very free way, he mentions that he thanking the Lord Serapis because he saved him from trouble at sea. So I realized, well, maybe there's something to do about it. Maybe I should look about this particular Topic again. So thanksgiving phrases in papyrus letters and in Paul and compare them with each other. And I found there are parallels, but not the one that Deismann had already identified. This doesn't work. But there are thanksgiving phrases exactly at the same place where Paul introduces them. So right after the opening reading. And they are all related to an individual situation, which means a thanksgiving in a papyrus letter cannot be introduced in any letter. It depends on a particular situation. And the situation is the current letter writer has previously received a letter from his letter partner. And in his letter partner's letter he was informed that the other guy is doing well, he is healthy and doing well, sometimes that he was ill, but now he is healthy again. And now the current letter writer writes, I am thanking the Lord Serapis, maybe again, or I'm thanking the gods after receiving your ladder because you're healthy, because you're doing well. And so I checked with Paul, is there a similarity in Paul's letters? And I found out, yes, there are. It's the same place in Paul's letters. But I also realized, so that's not as a formula, it's not part of the letter opening, it's already part of the opening of the letter corpus. The letter corpus where Paul already addresses the current situation of the letter. The current situation of him writing the letter now, not a different letter, the letter to Corinthians, for example, or to Philemon, whatever. In his current situation, he has received news from the community and these were good news. And because of the good news, he thanked now, of course, not the Greek or Roman gods, but his God. And for the well being now with Paul, of course, for the faith, for the spiritual well being, let's say, of the community. And interestingly enough, in every Paul and letter where we have this Thanksgiving, we find somewhere in the letter a mention that Paul actually received good news. So the most important or most vivid example is Romans. We all know that Romans was not addressed to a community that Paul already knew in person. We can be pretty sure that Paul did not receive a letter from Roman Christ troops before writing his letter to Romans. But when you look at the Thanksgiving, Paul explains, I thanked God and then it is mentioned. Because your spiritual well being is heard all over the world. It's heard in the entire cosmos. So in this way, Paul again uses this convention to express thanksgiving to a God, Paul receiving good news about the recipients in the entire cosmos. It is heard that you are so wonderful people. Of course, Paul got this good news as well. So that was kind of really my first Important article. My second important article. Then I wrote. And as you know, this topic never left me. I'm still excited about that. And so in this new series, Papyrus in the New Testament. It was kind of a natural development evolution that after so many decades that I've been working and studying these papyrus letters, I wanted to put everything together, you see into one book. So the essence of that. And also present several papyriv letters.