How Did Paul’s Letters to the Churches Become a Collection?

 

We can only speculate. But we do have some evidence to go on.

Our best evidence indicates that the book of Acts was widely circulated among Christians around A.D. 90. Acts tell us all about Paul’s life as a travelling missionary for Christianity. These tales of Paul’s journeys, his adventures, his hairbreadth escapes, his hardships and suffering as he sought to spread the Christian faith must have been exciting reading for the early Christians!

Many of them would have known little or nothing about Paul. But when the book of Acts was published, they wanted to know more about him. Then, when they discovered that he had died a martyr for the faith, those Christians would have recognized that here, indeed, was a Christian hero!

It has been pointed out that the Book of Acts could guide a person interested in collecting Paul’s letters to seven of them. If some early Christian had the Letter to the Colossians and the Letter to Philemon, then the Book of Acts would tell him or her where to find the remaining letters to the churches.

So, the reasoning goes, some Christian at Colossae or Laodicea, who would have known about Colossians and Philemon and possibly Ephesians (which most scholars think was meant to be read by the whole church and not just in Ephesus), set out to track down the other letters and, having done so, assembled them into a collection like we have today.

Detectives need corroborating evidence for their theories, of course. This particular one is strengthened by the fact that though Luke was not acquainted with the collection of Paul’s letters, the author of the Revelation of John (writing not long after Acts was published) was very familiar with them. He addresses his book to “the seven churches that are in Asia.” This choice of seven churches can hardly have been a coincidence.

Author: Smith, C. M., & Bennett, J. W. (2005).