Bible studies, contributions chiefly from papyri and ... - Predestination

193, 194] LETTEES AND EPISTLES. 7
much matter of indifference as whether it is good or bad, or
whether it finds purchasers or not. Book, literature, in the
widest sense, is every written work designed by its author
for the pubhc.^
3. The book is younger than the letter. Even were the
oldest letters that have come down to us younger than the
earliest extant works of literature, that statement would still
be true. For it is one which does not need the confirmation
of historical facts—nay, it would be foolish to attempt to give
such. The letter is perishable—in its very nature necessarily
so ; it is perishable, hke the hand that v^ote it, like the eyes
that were to read it. The letter-writer works as Httle for
posterity as for the pubhc of his own time ; ^ just as the
true letter cannot be written over again, it exists in but a
single copy. It is only the book that is multiplied and
thus rendered accessible to the public, accessible, possibly,
to posterity. Fortunately we possess letters that are old,
extremely old, but we shall never gain a sight of the oldest
of them all ; it was a letter, and was able to guard itself and
its secret. Among all nations, before the age of literature,
there were the days when people wrote, indeed, but did not
yet write books.^ In the same way people prayed, of course,
and probably prayed better, long before there were any
service-books ; and they had come near to God before they
wrote down the proofs of His existence. The letter, should
we ask about the essential character of it, carries us into
the sacred solitude of simple, unaffected humanity ;
when we
ask about its history, it directs us to the childhood's years of
the pre-hterary man, when there was no book to trouble him.
1 Birt, Buchwescn, p. 2 : " Similarly the point of separation between a
private writing and a literary work was the moment when [in antiquity] an
author delivered his manuscript to his own slaves or to those of a contractor
in order that copies of it might be produced ".
2 A. Stahr, Aristotelin, i., Halle, 1830, p. 192 f.
•' Wellhausen, Israelitische itiid Jildisclie Gescldchte, p. 58: "Already
in early times writing was practised, but in documents and contracts only
also letters when the contents of the message were not for the light of day
or when, for other reasons, they required to be kept secret ". Hebrew litera-
ture blossomed forth only later.
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