Literature and history

history come.

Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 79, the Pauline Epistles.

This program is on the 14 books of the New Testament that have traditionally been attributed to

St. Paul.

These being Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephsians, Philippians, Galatians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Galaians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus,

Philemonian, and Hebrews.

These books of the New Testament, which include the oldest parts of the New Testament, are letters

written from Paul to various Christian churches and communities in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Paulian Epistles bear various features standard to published letters in the world of Greco-Roman

Antiquity.

These kinds of letters included formal identifications of senders and addressees, opening greetings,

and opening and closing prayers and exhortations to deities.

Due to the uncertainty of letters reaching their intended destinations in the ancient world,

it wasn't uncommon for senders to retain copies of the letters they wrote, and over time to expand and develop

these as writers like Cicero, Ovid, and Seneca did in order to transmit them to posterity.

And something like this happened to Paul's letters as well. to all over Asia Minor, mainland Greece, and even to the island of Crete.

The period of their composition stretches 15 or even 20 years from earliest, the latest.

The earliest of them, first Thessalonians, written from Corinth to the mainland region

of Thessalonika, warmly greets Paul's congregation there and discusses the afterlife as the earliest

Christians were beginning to formulate it.

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