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ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT) 401
parts of the rupee where civilization and educa- tion had existed before the Roman conquest. The Imperial government made no attempt at, and never even seems to have thought about, carrying the correspondence of private persons, or facilitat- ing such communication between them. The post, as we have seen, was absolutely confined to Im- perial and strictly official needs. Private letters could be sent only by special messengers, or by the hands of friends or acquaintances, or by some other chance opportunity. Such opportunities were, it is true, more numerous when the number of travellers was greater; but this led to no per- manent development of the idea. Such statistics as are preserved seem to show that the trans- mission of private letters continued slow, irregular, and uncertain: see p. 383.
It is probably true that a larger number of private letters has been preserved of the Imperial period than of an earlier time; but this is due to the naturally more nearly complete destruction of the memorials of the older period in the longer lapse of time, especially inasmuch as private let- ters were written for the most part on perish- able materials, which survive nowhere and in no climate except in Egypt.
Only in one respect was there any real develop- ment of epistolary communication between private individuals under the Roman Empire; and this development was not so much in the frequency of letter-writing as in the purpose and character of letters written by private individuals. The Chris- tians developed the letter into new forms, applied it to new uses, and placed it on a much higher plane than it had ever before stood upon. In their hands communication by letter became one of the most important, if not the most important, of all agencies for consolidating and maintaining the sense of unity among the scattered members of the one universal Church. The scattered congregations had for centuries no real unifying and directing centre of life: Jerusalem had been in some degree such a centre at first; but whether or not it could otherwise have maintained that authoritative position, all chance of its continuing to be the head and centre of the universal Church disap- peared with its siege and capture by Titus and the changes that were forced on by that event ; and no other city took, or could take, its place for several centuries. The unity of the separate and equal congregations was kept alive by travel and by correspondence. By such means the congrega- tions expressed their mutual affection and sym- pathy and sense of brotherhood, asked counsel of one another, gave advice with loving freedom and plain speaking to one another, imparted mutual comfort and encouragement, and generally ex- pressed their sense of their common life. Thus arose a new category of Epistles.
Deissmann, following older scholars, has rightly and clearly distinguished the two older categories, the true letter—written by friend to friend or to friends, springing from the momentary occasion, intended only for the eye of the person or persons to whom it is addressed—and the literary epistle— written with an eye to the public, and studied with careful literary art. But he has erred in trying to reduce all the letters of the NT to one or other of these categories. Though he shows some vague sense of the insufficiency of the two older cate- gories, yet he has not seen with sufficient clear- ness, nor stated with sufficient precision, that in the new conditions a new category had been developed— the general letter addressed to a whole class of per- sons or to the entire Church of Christ. Letters of this class are true letters, in the sense that they spring from the heart of the writer and speak direct to the heart of the readers; that they rise
EXTRA VOL.—26
out of the actual situation in which the writer conceives the readers to be placed; that they ex- press the writer’s keen and Tein sympathy with and participation in the fortunes of the whole class of persons addressed ; that they are not affected by any thought of publication for a wider public than the persons immediately addressed. On the other hand, the letters of this class express general prin- ciples of life and conduct, religion and ethics, applicable to a wider range of circumstances than those which have called forth the special letter ; and the letters appeal as emphatically and inti- mately to all Christians in all time as they did to those addressed in the first instance. Such letters have a certain analogy to the edicts and rescripts by which Roman law grew, documents arising out of special circumstances but treating them on gene- ral principles. As expressing general truths and universal principles, those letters must have been the result of long and careful thought, though the final expression was often hasty and called forth by some special occasion. This more studied character differentiates them from the mere hasty unstudied expression of personal affection and interest.*