Paul's Large Letters: Paul's Autographic Subscriptions in the Light of Ancient Epistolary Conventions by Steve Reece (review)

The subtitle of this monograph tells the reader what Reece considers the important delimitation of his study. As it happens, his careful delineation opens the door to a dimension of Paul's letter to the Galatians that he may not have anticipated.

Reece is a classical philologist, and he examines here the statement in Gal 6:11 about Paul's large letters ("See with what large letters I write in my [own] hand"), asking about the reasons for Paul's adding an autographic subscription, the reason for his explicit mention that he is doing so in his own hand, his reason for using large letters, and the reason for his observing that the letters are large. R. rehearses earlier commentators' interest in probing the mind of Paul and wants to supplement their views with attention to the wider epistolary conventions of Paul's culture. He studies print publications of papyrus letters that date between 300 b.c.e. and 300 c.e. Finding them limited in some ways (e.g., in regard to precision and thoroughness), he has also employed the Papyrological Navigator (http://papyri.info/), which, while displaying its own limitations as it evolves, is nevertheless a formidable resource through which he examines a representative sample of papyrus letters bearing autographic subscriptions.

Part 1, "Paul's Autographic Subscriptions," includes attention to the laboriousness of letter writing in antiquity (chap. 2), then in succession the Greek, Latin, and Jewish literary letter-writing traditions (chaps. 3–5), Paul's letter writing in the light of contemporary epistolary conventions and the function of autographic subscriptions in ancient letters (chap. 7). Part 2, "Paul's Large Letters," discusses the phrase "with what large letters" in Gal 6:11 (chap. 8), letters in various languages excavated in eastern Judea (chap. 9), Latin letters excavated in northern England (chap. 10), and Greek letters excavated in Middle and Upper Egypt (chap. 11). In chap. 12, he reports his conclusions and asks further questions.

There is an appendix dedicated to various translations of Gal 6:11, and one that summarizes pertinent commentators' remarks on Gal 6:11. This appendix epitomizes three groups of commentators who differ on the extent of Galatians covered by Paul's statement. R. defends the plausibility of the opinion of the first group, who hear Paul refer to the size of his handwriting in 6:11 and perhaps extending through v. 18. Appendix 3 calculates the total number of published documentary letters from antiquity. Appendix 4 is a demographic survey of those who write subscriptions on documentary letters in large hands. Appendix 5 discusses evidence of shorthand writing in antiquity. Then follow a list of (photographic) figures, works cited, and indexes of subjects, proper names, ancient passages, inscriptions, ostraca, papyri and tablets. This scholarly feast is more than enough to feed the historical tapeworm.

Among R.'s conclusions is the assertion that Galatians' subscription should be understood to function in a way analogous to affidavits in legal documents, and that explicit mention of such subscriptions is common in letters pertaining to legal issues. He is not convinced that the largeness of the letters as such has been explained by various biographical reconstructions, theological exegeses, or psychosocial extrapolations. Rather, he sees the large letters as asserting very strongly the authenticity and authority of the Galatian letter.

In the literary arena, R. has joined the consensus of modern scholarship that Paul's statement about his letters in Gal 6:11 refers to the alphabetic letters of that verse and perhaps the following verses to v. 18 but not to the letter as a whole. One of R.'s numerous achievements in the historical arena is the collection of parallels such as those on p. 208, wherein Cicero, employing a scribe, adds final parenthetical remarks to clarify a point made earlier in the letter (Ad Familiares 9.6.1).

Reece has...