“In My Own Hand”: Grapho-Literacy and the Apostle Paul I. “In My Own Hand” That the apostle Paul was a literate individual is well-established and beyond doubt (1). However, in the ancient world as today, “literacy” was not a homogeneous entity but rather existed in shades and gradations. The present essay is thus concerned not with Paul’s literacy per se, but rather the degree of literacy Paul held in Greek, and, more importantly, how he employed and displayed his literate status in a rhetorical fashion. Recent research in the school papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt has yielded new insights into the process by which individuals learned to read and write in the Greco-Roman world, insights that shed new light on five passages where Paul (or someone writing in his name) (2) highlights the fact that he has written in the epistle with his own hand. I will suggest that these passages enhance Paul’s arguments in the epistles, and social position in the congregations, by underscoring not only his literacy, but his grapho-literacy; and not only his grapho- literacy, but his ability to avoid using it. 1. The Texts In five passages within his epistles, Paul draws attention to the fact that he has signed the epistle himself and written a short greeting or oath. These texts are 1 Cor 16,21, Gal 6,11, Col 4,18, 2 Thess 3,17, and Phil 19, and are briefly presented here in canonical order (3). (1) Inter alia, see B. WITHERINGTON III, The Paul Quest. The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus (Downers Grove, IL 1998) 89-129. (2) The Pauline authenticity of the texts does not affect the following argument. Even as deutero-Pauline epistles, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians would remain as evidence. That these epistles include the exact same formula in 1 Cor 16,21 demonstrates that their authors recognized the importance of asserting that Paul signed the epistle himself and replicated that claim. “Paul” will thus be used in this article in order to indicate the author of the epistle, even if that was not the apostle Paul. (3) G.J. BAHR, “The Subscriptions in the Pauline Letters”, JBL 87 (1968) 27- 41, suggests other passages that Paul may have written. E.R. RICHARDS, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul (WUNT 2.42; Tübingen 1991) 189, claims, “Both [2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians] probably have autographed postscripts” (see