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Messenger of the Lord

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    Paul’s Several Assistants

    In the New Testament, Paul employed several editorial assistants. Tertius helped prepare the Romans manuscript (16:22). Apparently Sosthenes assisted in writing the first letter to the Corinthians (1:1). Paul, in the Roman prison, dictated his second letter to Timothy, and Luke, his physician, prepared it in written form. 9Testimonies for the Church 4:353.MOL 14.7

    Paul was a consummate Greek scholar, well-recognized by Jewish leaders. But there were plausible reasons why he would employ literary assistants. In prison, his writing capabilities would be severely reduced, but assistants could take his thoughts and write them down much more conveniently. Some feel that his “thorn in the flesh” was poor eyesight (2 Corinthians 12:7-9; Galatians 4:15). Whatever method Paul used in writing his Epistles, those who read these letters (or heard them read) knew they were listening to inspired messages.MOL 14.8

    The significant difference in the Greek style (not necessarily in content) of each of his letters suggests strongly that Paul used different literary assistants with varying abilities to place his messages in written form. 10Comparing Paul’s various letters, we note a substantial difference in literary style. For example, the pastoral letters (First and Second Timothy and Titus) use a vocabulary considerably different from Paul’s other letters. There are 902 different words used in the pastoral letters; of these 206 do not occur in the other Pauline letters. Of the 112 untranslatable particles (enclitics) in the other Pauline letters, not one is found in the pastoral epistles. See William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975, revised edition), pp. 8, 9.MOL 14.9

    Peter referred to his literary assistant by name, Silvanus [Silas], “our faithful brother” (1 Peter 5:12). Why would Peter need editorial help? For several reasons: In addition to not being academically trained, Peter had the same prison restrictions as Paul; and since his mother tongue was Aramaic, he probably was not skilled in Greek. Peter’s first epistle is high-grade polished Greek, the mark of an educated mind, reflecting Silvanus’s assistance. However, Peter’s second epistle is written in a crude literary style, though truth shines through brightly. Obviously, Silvanus was not available on short notice, and Peter either wrote it himself or employed another scribe without Silvanus’s literary skill. 11“Either he [Silvanus] corrected and polished Peter’s necessarily inadequate Greek, or, since Silvanus was a man of such eminence, it may well have been that Peter told him what he wanted said, and left him to say it, and then approved the result, and added the last personal paragraphs to it.... When Peter says that Silvanus was his instrument or agent in the writing of this letter, it gives us the solution to excellence of the Greek. The thought is the thought of Peter; but the style is the style of Sylvanus.” William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, revised edition, 1976), p. 144.MOL 15.1

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