Apostolic Letters

[Era Might]

Do you think there were a lot more letters written by the Apostles than what we have in Scripture? I think most of the Apostles were ministering for decades, depending on when they were martyred, so it seems that they would have written a lot of letters during that time. Or do you think we have most of their letters? Of course, God made sure that we have all the letters we need, in terms of Revelation. I'm just curious from a historical point of view how many letters the Apostles would have written.

[kafka]

I think that its a reasonable speculation that the Apostles would have written more letters than the one, found in the NT, yet these letters in my opinion would not have been inspired by God, as the letters of the Canon of Sacred Scripture are. They would not be Divine Revelation.

[CatherineM]

Our bishop writes lots of letters everyday, but most are about routine business. When it is something important, it is read in all the churches. I suspect it worked like that during the Apostles time as well.

[Nihil Obstat]

There's no reason to believe that none were lost. I'm sure the majority of early Christian writing was lost.
God works with what survived though.

[LouisvilleFan]

It wasn't cheap or easy to make written records in those days. There are some letters that are known to be missing, but I've never heard in any class or instruction I've taken on New Testament that we're missing very many letters. I think we have most of the letters that were passed among early Christian churches, both canonical and non-canonical. If an apostle went through the trouble to write a letter, it was preserved at nearly all costs.

[cmotherofpirl]

Pauls 1st letter to the Corinthians is missing.

[Era Might]

[quote name='LouisvilleFan' post='1796473' date='Mar 3 2009, 03:38 PM']It wasn't cheap or easy to make written records in those days. There are some letters that are known to be missing, but I've never heard in any class or instruction I've taken on New Testament that we're missing very many letters. I think we have most of the letters that were passed among early Christian churches, both canonical and non-canonical. If an apostle went through the trouble to write a letter, it was preserved at nearly all costs.[/quote]
You're probably right that the letters would have been carefully preserved. But I find it hard to believe, for example, that St. Peter wrote only 2 letters in 30 years.

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1796800' date='Mar 3 2009, 10:36 PM']You're probably right that the letters would have been carefully preserved. But I find it hard to believe, for example, that St. Peter wrote only 2 letters in 30 years.[/quote]

Not sure... remember, writing letters wasn't on the A-list of priorities. For one, oral tradition was still a very integral part of society at the time, and two, Christians were often more concerned about growing the Church and seeking protecting from persecutors. Writing letters was a bit of a luxury.

There may have been other letters that served a more functional/business purpose than spiritual, and thus were never speculated to be divinely inspired. Would be interesting to hear a biblical scholar comment on this topic.