The Use of Amanuenses
The Use of Amanuenses
The value of papyrus and the low level of literacy meant that many ancient letters were dictated to trained scribes. The use of such scribes (or amanuenses) by New Testament authors is clearly indicated in Romans 16:22, where Tertius identifies himself as the one who "wrote down” the letter. It was typical, when an amanuensis had composed the letter, for the writer to add a final greeting in his own hand (see 2 Thess. 3:17 and Gal. 6:11). While we have no way of knowing for sure, it seems likely that most of the New Testament letters were produced in this way.
A crucial and debated question is the degree of freedom that a letter writer might give to his or her scribe in the choice of wording. 68 A reasonable conclusion is that the freedom given to an amanuensis would have differed depending on the skill of the
amanuensis and the nature of the relationship between the writer and the amanuensis. 69 It may be, for instance, that when Paul used a close and trusted companion for his amanuensis, he gave to that person some degree of freedom to choose the exact wording of the letter—Paul always, we can assume, checking the letter over and attesting to its accurate representation of his thoughts with his closing greeting. Many scholars think that the differences between the Greek of the Pastoral Epistles and Paul’s Greek elsewhere could be explained by such a hypothesis (Luke, perhaps, being the amanuensis in this case; see 2 Tim. 4:11).