Chris Keith, «'In My Own Hand': Grapho-Literacy and the Apostle Paul», Vol. 89 (2008) 39-58
Recent research in the school papyri of Egypt, especially Oxyrhychus, has illuminated our understanding of the pedagogical process in the Greco-Roman world. Particularly interesting in this respect is the acquisition and social function of grapho-literacy (i.e., the ability to compose writing). Since few were literate, and of those few, fewer could read than could write, understanding how one gained grapho-literacy, who gained grapho-literacy, and how that literacy was employed in day to day life shines new light on passages such as 1 Cor 16,21, Gal 6,11, Col 4,18, 2 Thess 3,17, and Phlm 19. In these passages, Paul draws attention
to the fact that he has personally written in the text. This paper will argue that these passages are not merely interesting asides, but rather significantly heighten the
rhetorical force of the text. They draw attention not only to Paul’s grapho-literacy, but also to his ability to avoid using it.
46 Chris Keith
personal standing behind his words†(38). The question that remains,
however, is: How did Paul holding the reed reinforce his point? That is,
can one be more specific about how personal handwriting would place
Paul’s “full weight†behind his points and, more broadly, his epistles?
The above suggestions are all plausible explanations for why Paul
wrote in his epistles with his own hand. This article does not intend to
contradict any one of them, but rather will move these observations one
step further by adding an important nuance. I here suggest that these
passages in the Pauline corpus functioned rhetorically in a much more
significant manner than simply highlighting an “importance†or merely
conforming to an epistolary norm, be it a signature or a method of
authentication or both. Paul’s inclusion of his own handwriting in some
of his epistles underscored not just what Paul said but who Paul was
and why he was in a position to say it — they demonstrate that Paul
was capable of writing, what I here refer to as “grapho-literacyâ€.
II. Grapho-Literacy in the Ancient World
In the world of the apostle Paul, illiteracy was the rule of the day.
Thus, to acknowledge Paul as literate at all is to place him among the
elite stratus of first-century Jewish (and Greco-Roman) culture.
Further, even amongst those who could read, not everyone could write.
Both of these realities have recently been proven demonstrably by the
studies of Raffaella Cribiore on the Greco-Roman school papyri of
ancient Egypt (39). To these issues I now turn.
1. General Low Literacy
William Harris’ Ancient Literacy famously asserted a generalized
10% literacy rate for the ancient world (40). More recent works on
(38) DUNN, Epistles, 339.
(39) Though one must leave open the possibility that education differed in
small manners from one geographical location to another, and thus not assume
that the Greco-Roman Egyptian evidence is entirely illustrative of Roman Judea
or elsewhere, the uniform nature of education throughout the Empire is now
widely recognized. See W.V. HARRIS, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA 1989)
281; M.L.W. LAISTNER, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Later Roman
Empire (Ithaca, GA 1951) 25; T. MORGAN, Literate Education in the Hellenistic
and Roman Worlds (Cambridge Classical Studies; Cambridge 1998) 44-45, 66-
67.
(40) HARRIS, Ancient Literacy, 22.
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