Travis B. Williams
I am a professor of Religion at Tusculum University (Greeneville, TN), specializing in the ancient Jewish and early Christian traditions. One of my primary areas of research are the Catholic Epistles. I have written two monographs and numerous articles/essays on 1 Peter, and have just completed a commentary for the International Critical Commentary series (with David G. Horrell, 1 Peter: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, ICC. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2023). Apart from my work in New Testament studies, I am also involved in concentrated study on the Dead Sea Scrolls. A few years ago, I wrote a monograph that considers the portrait of the Teacher of Righteousness from the perspective of memory theory (History and Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Remembering the Teacher of Righteousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), and I recently co-edited a volume (with Chris Keith and Loren T. Stuckenbruck) that explores the Dead Sea Scrolls in the context of ancient media culture (The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 144. Leiden: Brill, 2023).
At the moment, I am working on a monograph related to authorship and letter-writing in antiquity. The purpose of this study (tentatively entitled, "The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Secretaries in the Composition of New Testament Letters") is to determine whether the literary and documentary sources from the Greek and Roman worlds indicate that, at times and under particular circumstances, a secretary was afforded the freedom to contribute an equal (or even greater) amount to the style, content, and structure of a letter than the actual author. Through an extensive survey of secretarial practices in ancient literary and documentary sources, the study challenges the validity of the amanuensis hypothesis (i.e., the theory that explains the style and content of certain New Testament epistles based on the use of secretaries during the letter-writing process) and encourages scholars to reimagine how the epistles of the New Testament were composed.
Phone: Office: 1 (423) 636-7300 (ext. 5272)
Address: Tusculum University
60 Shiloh Rd.
P.O. Box 5052
Greeneville, TN 37743 (USA)
At the moment, I am working on a monograph related to authorship and letter-writing in antiquity. The purpose of this study (tentatively entitled, "The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Secretaries in the Composition of New Testament Letters") is to determine whether the literary and documentary sources from the Greek and Roman worlds indicate that, at times and under particular circumstances, a secretary was afforded the freedom to contribute an equal (or even greater) amount to the style, content, and structure of a letter than the actual author. Through an extensive survey of secretarial practices in ancient literary and documentary sources, the study challenges the validity of the amanuensis hypothesis (i.e., the theory that explains the style and content of certain New Testament epistles based on the use of secretaries during the letter-writing process) and encourages scholars to reimagine how the epistles of the New Testament were composed.
Phone: Office: 1 (423) 636-7300 (ext. 5272)
Address: Tusculum University
60 Shiloh Rd.
P.O. Box 5052
Greeneville, TN 37743 (USA)
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Books by Travis B. Williams
The importance of secretarial usage lies in the mediatorial nature of the practice. When someone solicits the assistance of a third party to compose a letter, the content could be recorded in a variety of ways. A secretary could transcribe the dictation of an author verbatim, making sure to record every word in the exact order in which it was spoken. Conversely, an author might allow a secretary considerable latitude, granting them the freedom to decide what to say and how to say it. But was this the case in antiquity? If the letters of the New Testament were composed through secretarial assistance, as many scholars have argued, what processes were employed, and how might they help us to better evaluate the authorship claims of the epistles?
For centuries, the authorship claims of certain New Testament epistles have been defended through an appeal to secretaries. The best-known form of this approach, which has been particularly popular within more conservative circles of New Testament scholarship, is the amanuensis (or secretary) hypothesis. This theory was first postulated in response to critics who suggested that stylistic discrepancies in certain New Testament epistles undermined their authorship claims. For instance, since the vocabulary, syntax, and even theology of the Pastoral Epistles is, in some places, markedly different from the authentic Pauline epistles, critics have claimed the letters could not have been written by Paul. According to advocates of the amanuensis hypothesis, however, this objection holds little weight in light of the use of secretaries in the letter-writing process.
The amanuensis hypothesis is grounded in two key premises related to the frequency and function of secretaries in the Greco-Roman world, viz. that secretaries were commonly employed in the letter-writing process and that they were sometimes afforded extensive compositional license to shape the style, content, and structure of the letters they transcribed. The significance of these claims lies in their potential to adjudicate modern debates on the authorship of disputed New Testament epistles. If ancient secretaries performed (or, at least, were allowed to perform) an active role in epistolary composition, then proponents of the amanuensis hypothesis maintain that it invalidates a common interpretive approach within critical scholarship: making authenticity judgments based on the style or content of a given letter.
There are two ways in which the authenticity of disputed New Testament epistles receives support from ancient secretarial activity. First, it establishes the possibility that there could be variation in the stylistic character of letters sent by the same author, for the shape and content of any given correspondence would depend on who was serving in the role of secretary. Such a consideration would be crucial for assessing the differences between the so-called ‘deutero’-Pauline epistles and the rest of the Pauline corpus. If secretarial license was prevalent in antiquity, it would require a re-evaluation of the types of stylistic arguments commonly used to challenge the authenticity claims of letters such as Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Second, the amanuensis hypothesis offers a new lens through which to assess the stylistic quality of a letter purported to have been written by an author who lacked the requisite linguistic and/or literate abilities. This would be especially pertinent with regard to the Catholic Epistles. Scholars have long noted that the letters of James, 1–2 Peter, and Jude contain some of the most highly stylized Greek in the New Testament, leading many to question whether they could have been produced by Galilean peasants. Nevertheless, when secretarial freedom is factored into the equation, one must account for the possibility that the epistles were commissioned by the ascribed authors but actually composed by educated individuals who were much more capable in the Greek language.
The amanuensis hypothesis has received a variety of responses from critical scholars, ranging from casual dismissal to qualified acceptance. But despite their pushback, critics have yet to discredit the theory because of the apparent strength of the two premises upon which the theory rests. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to test the merit of each of these claims. What I will attempt to demonstrate in the process is that the popular reconstruction of ancient secretarial activity rests on precarious foundations. The problem is that the amanuensis hypothesis has been largely constructed on a few prescriptive comments from elite Greek and Roman authors. To this point, no attempt has been made to undertake a full survey of the ancient literary sources in order to construct a more complete portrait of secretarial responsibilities. What is more, very little attention has been devoted to the numerous letters in the documentary papyri that were actually transcribed by secretaries. These offer a direct, first-hand glimpse into the processes of letter-writing in antiquity. As a response to this lacuna, this book offers the first comprehensive assessment of secretarial activity in the Greco-Roman world. Through an examination of the relevant literary and documentary evidence, it challenges prevailing views on the frequency and function of amanuenses in antiquity and thereby charts a new course for understanding the origins of the New Testament epistles.
Although informed primarily by historical criticism, the work draws on a range of theoretical perspectives—including labelling theory, cultural anthropology, memory theory, and more—to illuminate the authors’ message and strategy. It also takes seriously the authorial ascriptions of the letters in light of their pseudepigraphic character. While it closely examines the linguistic, theological, and thematic features that indicate the epistles were not composed by the ascribed authors, considerable focus is devoted to questions of how fictional authorship is employed and what it is intended to accomplish.
The present study is intended to take up the question afresh and to thereby rectify the significant missteps through which the topic has been previously approached. Our purpose is to determine the nature of suffering in 1 Peter by situating the letter against the backdrop of conflict management in first-century CE Asia Minor. To do so, we seek to understand the different means by which conflict was dealt with in Roman Anatolia and how the persecutions of 1 Peter fit into this larger context. Part of this goal is to examine how conflict affected different social groups within the community as a way of determining the various forms of suffering to which specific members may have been prone. Therefore, our efforts consist of an attempt to differentiate the readers’ troubling experiences by providing a detailed “social profile” of the letter’s recipients and to contextualize the conflict situation by locating the problem and its subsequent resolution strategies within the world of first-century CE Asia Minor.
Articles/Essays by Travis B. Williams
The importance of secretarial usage lies in the mediatorial nature of the practice. When someone solicits the assistance of a third party to compose a letter, the content could be recorded in a variety of ways. A secretary could transcribe the dictation of an author verbatim, making sure to record every word in the exact order in which it was spoken. Conversely, an author might allow a secretary considerable latitude, granting them the freedom to decide what to say and how to say it. But was this the case in antiquity? If the letters of the New Testament were composed through secretarial assistance, as many scholars have argued, what processes were employed, and how might they help us to better evaluate the authorship claims of the epistles?
For centuries, the authorship claims of certain New Testament epistles have been defended through an appeal to secretaries. The best-known form of this approach, which has been particularly popular within more conservative circles of New Testament scholarship, is the amanuensis (or secretary) hypothesis. This theory was first postulated in response to critics who suggested that stylistic discrepancies in certain New Testament epistles undermined their authorship claims. For instance, since the vocabulary, syntax, and even theology of the Pastoral Epistles is, in some places, markedly different from the authentic Pauline epistles, critics have claimed the letters could not have been written by Paul. According to advocates of the amanuensis hypothesis, however, this objection holds little weight in light of the use of secretaries in the letter-writing process.
The amanuensis hypothesis is grounded in two key premises related to the frequency and function of secretaries in the Greco-Roman world, viz. that secretaries were commonly employed in the letter-writing process and that they were sometimes afforded extensive compositional license to shape the style, content, and structure of the letters they transcribed. The significance of these claims lies in their potential to adjudicate modern debates on the authorship of disputed New Testament epistles. If ancient secretaries performed (or, at least, were allowed to perform) an active role in epistolary composition, then proponents of the amanuensis hypothesis maintain that it invalidates a common interpretive approach within critical scholarship: making authenticity judgments based on the style or content of a given letter.
There are two ways in which the authenticity of disputed New Testament epistles receives support from ancient secretarial activity. First, it establishes the possibility that there could be variation in the stylistic character of letters sent by the same author, for the shape and content of any given correspondence would depend on who was serving in the role of secretary. Such a consideration would be crucial for assessing the differences between the so-called ‘deutero’-Pauline epistles and the rest of the Pauline corpus. If secretarial license was prevalent in antiquity, it would require a re-evaluation of the types of stylistic arguments commonly used to challenge the authenticity claims of letters such as Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Second, the amanuensis hypothesis offers a new lens through which to assess the stylistic quality of a letter purported to have been written by an author who lacked the requisite linguistic and/or literate abilities. This would be especially pertinent with regard to the Catholic Epistles. Scholars have long noted that the letters of James, 1–2 Peter, and Jude contain some of the most highly stylized Greek in the New Testament, leading many to question whether they could have been produced by Galilean peasants. Nevertheless, when secretarial freedom is factored into the equation, one must account for the possibility that the epistles were commissioned by the ascribed authors but actually composed by educated individuals who were much more capable in the Greek language.
The amanuensis hypothesis has received a variety of responses from critical scholars, ranging from casual dismissal to qualified acceptance. But despite their pushback, critics have yet to discredit the theory because of the apparent strength of the two premises upon which the theory rests. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to test the merit of each of these claims. What I will attempt to demonstrate in the process is that the popular reconstruction of ancient secretarial activity rests on precarious foundations. The problem is that the amanuensis hypothesis has been largely constructed on a few prescriptive comments from elite Greek and Roman authors. To this point, no attempt has been made to undertake a full survey of the ancient literary sources in order to construct a more complete portrait of secretarial responsibilities. What is more, very little attention has been devoted to the numerous letters in the documentary papyri that were actually transcribed by secretaries. These offer a direct, first-hand glimpse into the processes of letter-writing in antiquity. As a response to this lacuna, this book offers the first comprehensive assessment of secretarial activity in the Greco-Roman world. Through an examination of the relevant literary and documentary evidence, it challenges prevailing views on the frequency and function of amanuenses in antiquity and thereby charts a new course for understanding the origins of the New Testament epistles.
Although informed primarily by historical criticism, the work draws on a range of theoretical perspectives—including labelling theory, cultural anthropology, memory theory, and more—to illuminate the authors’ message and strategy. It also takes seriously the authorial ascriptions of the letters in light of their pseudepigraphic character. While it closely examines the linguistic, theological, and thematic features that indicate the epistles were not composed by the ascribed authors, considerable focus is devoted to questions of how fictional authorship is employed and what it is intended to accomplish.
The present study is intended to take up the question afresh and to thereby rectify the significant missteps through which the topic has been previously approached. Our purpose is to determine the nature of suffering in 1 Peter by situating the letter against the backdrop of conflict management in first-century CE Asia Minor. To do so, we seek to understand the different means by which conflict was dealt with in Roman Anatolia and how the persecutions of 1 Peter fit into this larger context. Part of this goal is to examine how conflict affected different social groups within the community as a way of determining the various forms of suffering to which specific members may have been prone. Therefore, our efforts consist of an attempt to differentiate the readers’ troubling experiences by providing a detailed “social profile” of the letter’s recipients and to contextualize the conflict situation by locating the problem and its subsequent resolution strategies within the world of first-century CE Asia Minor.
By identifying each instance in which a change in hand occurs in the subscript of non-literary letters and then measuring these cases in light of the total number of published documentary epistles, it is possible to make a more informed determination regarding the frequency of dictation in ancient epistolary writing. If the majority of documentary epistles contain a handshift in the subscription, this would be strong evidence that secretaries were prevalent in the process of letter-writing (as is commonly assumed in scholarship). On the other hand, if most epistles display consistent handwriting between the letter body and the subscript, then amanuenses may not have been employed as often as many have assumed. (Since a secretary could have composed the entire letter plus the subscript, however, it is important to be cautious about the conclusions that are drawn from the continuity between the letter body and the subscript.)
The information below was originally drawn from the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV) on 25 August 2023 and were subsequently color-coded in the weeks that followed. The document is still a work-in-progress, however. Many of the marked instances represent subjective interpretations based on the fragmentary nature of particular letters, and there are (no doubt) mistakes that have arisen throughout the process of documentation. Consequently, if there are interpretations that need to be amended or corrections that need to be made, please let me know (email: trwilliams@tusculum.edu). Update 11 September 2023
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other texts from the Judean desert, scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity were presented with direct access to ancient media culture. These finds provided a glimpse into the production, distribution, and consumption of oral and textual communication in antiquity. Over the intervening decades, much of the attention has focused on different ways that these textual resources might inform historical perspectives. But following the publication of the entire collection of manuscripts from Cave 4, new questions about ancient media have emerged. In an effort to gain perspective on these issues, scholars have begun to extend their focus beyond the traditional methodological confines of Scrolls research through an interdisciplinary engagement with media studies.
The application of a media perspective within Scrolls research has been diverse. Some scholars have considered the social dynamics of the Scrolls community in light of the projections of low literacy rates in the ancient world. Others have worked to evaluate the reading practices prescribed in the Scrolls through comparisons with other elite “textual communities.” To aid in this process, interpreters have also turned their attention to the social and cultural dimensions of memory in an effort to better understand how various forms of media are employed in the shaping of collective identity. This growing awareness of the importance of ancient communications culture has begun to contribute significantly to the study of the Scrolls and the community(-ies) who produced, preserved, and performed them.
Nevertheless, scholarly engagement with ancient media criticism is still in its infancy, and there is much about this interpretive approach that remains to be defined. For this reason, the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham will host The Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Media Culture, a conference designed to evaluate the status quaestionis of the Dead Sea Scrolls within ancient media culture. At this consortium, leading scholars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and experts in media studies will come together to review how scholarship has addressed issues of ancient media in the past, to assess the use of media criticism in current research, and to outline potential directions for future discussions.