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

20 BIBLE STUDIES. [206, 207
The term true letter is therefore used here, after the example
of writers^ who are well able to teach us what a letter is.
AVhen a true letter becomes literature by means of its
publication, we manifestly obtain no new species thereby.
To the historian of literature, it still remains what it was
to the original receiver of it—a true letter :
even when given
to the public, it makes a continual protest against its being
deemed a thing of publicity. We must so far favour it as
were we to separate it in any way
to respect its protest ;
from other true letters which were fortunate enough never
to have their obscurity disturbed, we should but add to the
injustice already done to it by its being published.
A new species is reached only when we come to the
letter published professedly as literature, which as such is
altogether different from the first class. Here also we meet
with various designations in scientific language. But the
adoption of a uniform terminology is not nearly so im-
portant in regard to this class as in regard to the true
letter. One may call it literary letter,'^ or, as has been done
above for the sake of simplicity, epistle—no importance need
be attached to the designation, provided the thing itself be
clear. The subdivisions, again, which may be inferred from
the conditions of origin of the epistle, are of course unessen-
tial; they are not the logical divisions of the concept epistle, but
simply classifications of extant epistles according to their
historical character, i.e., we distinguish between authentic
and unauthentic epistles, and again, in regard to the latter,
^ E. Reuss, Die Geschichte der h. Schriften N. T." § 74, p. 70, uses the
expression trtie letters, addressed to definite and particular readers. Von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen, ii., p. 393; cf. p. 394: real
letters; ibid., p. 392, letters, 4in(noKai in the full sense of tJie word. The same
author in Ein Weihgeschenk des Eratosthenes, in Nachrichten der Kgl. Gesell-
schaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, 1894, p. 5 : true private letter.—Birt
also uses—besides the designations private ivrilmg {Buchwesen, pp. 2, 20, 61,
277, 443) and incidental letter (pp. 61, 325)—the expression true correspondence
(wirkliche Conespondenzen, p. 326). Similarly A. Westermann, De epistolarum
scriptoribus graecis 8 progrr., {., Leipzig, 1851, p. 13, calls them
" vcras epistolas, h. e. tales, quae ab auctoribus ad ipsos, quibus inscribuntur,
homines revera datae sunt".
'•^ Von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ein Weiligesclwnk des EratosiJwfws. p. 3.