St. Paul and the Mechanics of Letter Writing

Folks, I first stumbled upon this essay by Brother John Samaha, titled, St. Paul: The Apostle of Letter Writing on a homiletics journal and then hurried to find it on the web. I invite you to read it because in it Brother John discusses how the ancients wrote letters, and how involved, complicated, and time-consuming the process was. Here’s an excerpt describing the mechanics of letter writing:

The actual composition and writing of the letter posed some difficulty. Determining the content of the message, plus the length of the text, required considerable effort, writing space, and time. On average each papyrus sheet held about 140 words. To write three syllables required about one minute, and an hour's work produced about 72 words.

St. Paul 's earliest letter, the oldest text in the New Testament, is the First Letter to the Thessalonians. Scholars estimate that this required about 11 sheets of papyrus and 20 hours of writing. His letter to the Romans, his longest, needed 50 sheets and 100 hours to complete. His shortest letter con­tains 335 words to Philemon, but required three sheets and more than four hours. Letter writing was not an easy task. But it was a labor of love.

Because writing was a tedious task, only two or three hours in a working day could be devoted to a letter. It is estimated that the Letter to the Romans must have occupied Paul and his secre­tary at least 32 days at three hours a day, or a maximum of 49 days at two hours a day.

Writing a letter back then was a labor of love. Fascinating.

- Read St. Paul: The Apostle of Letter Writing by Brother John Samaha