New Research on Amanuenses and NT Authorship

I recently came across a very insightful article published in the Currents in Biblical Research journal by Travis B. Williams of Tusculum University entitled 'The Amanuensis Hypothesis in New Testament Scholarship: Its Origin, Evidential Basis, and Application.' As the more perceptive can probably guess, Williams addresses the "secretary" defence that is often mustered to exonerate the authorship of the disputed New Testament letters. Published in October of last year, it is well worth us looking at what Williams has to say given the relevance of this discussion to apologetic defences of New Testament authorship.

The Origins of Amanuensis Hypotheses

The entire thing is a weighty 76 pages, with nearly half of it dedicated to an exhaustive bibliography. Williams begins by tackling the issue of whether Jerome is the earliest witness to the secretary defence and concludes that he was rather speaking about translation as opposed to transcription (pp. 9-12). Instead, Williams suggests that it was Reformation-Era writers like Erasmus and Calvin who first proposed the amanuensis solution when addressing the problematic style found in 2 Peter. This was done, however, via literary analysis and motivated by theological necessity as opposed to historical inquiry; the suggestion failed to gain much momentum despite the monumental influence of these Reformation figures (pp. 12-15). 

Williams tracks the amanuensis hypothesis through the 19th and 20th centuries in tandem with various other arguments to account for the stylistic differences between 1 and 2 Peter (pp. 15-19). He observes that the first author to use the hypothesis to defend the authenticity of the Pastorals was H. A. Schott in 1830 (p. 22), but the first scholar to mount a defence secretarial freedom and creative licence wrote more than a century subsequent with Otto Roller in 1933 (p. 23). Roller argued that the arduous time to compose a letter would have granted a secretary a kind of role that would be flexible and that they would not have written down their client's words as "sternographers." Combined with references to Cicero and Philostratus of Lemnos, as well as a focus on 2 Timothy which claims to have been written by Paul from prison, Roller concludes that it was likely that Paul employed secretaries who had a moderate amount of creative freedom (pp. 25-26).

What follows is a brief survey of responses made to Roller in subsequent years: some took issue with his reconstruction of ancient letter-writing process in which syllable-by-syllable dictation took place (p. 26). Roller's critics also pointed out that he misread ancient accounts of secretarial involvement (including Paul) which led to overestimation, inflation and the insistence of the necessity of their significance (pp. 26-27). While his case for secretarial creative license was influential, Roller's arguments joined those of the Reformation Era writers in an equivalent failure to gain traction and his work became relegated to the refuse bin of New Testament scholarship.

Richards and the Popularisation of the Hypothesis

Finally reaching the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium, Williams surveys the work of E. Randolph Richards, who has written prolifically on the subject of secretaries and authorship (and is an evangelical author whom I hold to very high esteem). Richards' influence on this topic is highly extensive, with Williams noting that "virtually all modern scholars who espouse secretarial freedom trace their views back to the work of Richards" (p. 28). In his 1991 doctoral dissertation and many subsequent publications, Richards defends the existence of a Greek shorthand in Paul's time that would have allowed for the composition of his letters as he was speaking instead of syllable-by-syllable dictation (p. 28). He lays out a spectrum of secretarial freedom from a "recorder" (strict verbatim dictation) to a "composer" (free composition following loose guidelines), though he concedes that the latter was quite rare and was occasionally intended to deceive it's readers when it was employed (p. 29). In his later works, Richards combined the ideas of "recorder" and "composer" into a "contributor," where a rhetorically trained scribe was expected to work with drafts given by the original author (p. 30).

Richards' work has not gone unscathed, Williams goes on to say, noting that his critics observed an over-dependence on comparisons to Cicero, that evidence from other ancient authors points away from secretarial usage by Paul, and that his propensity for the amanuensis defence was so broad that it could be used to erase pseudepigraphy from existence altogether (p. 31). It is also observed that stylistic problems are only one of many criteria that are mustered against the authenticity of certain Pauline letters and that Richards' definition of style is so hollow to the point it excludes actual grammar and vocabulary. This allows him to circumvent the fact that there are a number of instances in the ancient literature where authors use style to distinguish between themselves (p. 32).

Williams laments that the actual point of contention—that secretaries had authorial freedom—is not being addressed properly by either side of the debate, especially due to the readily available evidence from various papyri fragments (p. 33). He observes that the necessary questions about the relevance of the amanuensis hypothesis are simply not being asked: "What specific alterations were made to a letter by a secretary functioning as an editor? What specific contributions were made to a letter when a secretary was performing the role of a co-author? How much and what type of editorial work would a secretary need to perform before being considered a co-author?" (p. 35). 

Literacy and the Catholic Epistles become the next target for Williams who swiftly counters the claims of various scholars resistant to using low literacy rates to determine the authorship of James and the Petrine epistles. He argues that if the data suggests a typical situation for a general amount of people, to expect anything outside of this requires further evidence to overcome being an atypical exception to a general rule (p. 37). What is more, neither letters show any evidence of having been translated from a Semitic dialect into Greek nor any signs of having utilised a secretary (pp. 39, 41). Williams cites Chancey's classic studies regarding the language in rural Galilee at this time and that the evidence does not suggest extensive secretarial practices (pp. 37-39). 

Evidence for widespread Hellenization in Roman Palestine, such as Bethsaida being renamed "Julius" by Philip the Tetrarch and being afforded the title of a polis, are not enough to substantiate high levels of Greek proficiency. Williams thus observes that the only recourse for traditional authorship is the amanuensis hypothesis (pp. 39-42). Williams concludes his article by reaffirming the need for additional investigation into the use of amanuenses in the ancient world and criticising the uncritical acceptance of the hypothesis as a defence of traditional authorship. Likewise, he also points out the brief and unsubstantial nature of many criticisms of the amanuensis hypothesis, further adding to the necessity for more research (pp. 44-45). In his eyes, both sides are at fault and that more work is needed in this area to reach cogent conclusions.

Assessment and Implications

The article was not perfect and there are a few pitfalls in Williams' research. For example, little mention is made about the question of whether 1 Peter 5:12 refers to Silas/Silvanus as Peter's secretary. Richards' classic article from 2000 arguing that Silas was not Peter's scribe is cited, but the problem is not probed any further. This is quite a severe oversight on Williams' part as 1 Peter 5:12 would be solid evidence that the author of 1 Peter used a scribe in an active fashion, whereby secretarial freedom could be well evidenced. 

I also found a bit of tension regarding Williams' extrapolation of the data on literacy and language: if the ancient Galileans were by in large illiterate, then we should assume that Peter or James being literate would be atypical, and thus unlikely. However, the question of language presents a similar conundrum. If the Greek language was demonstrated to be widespread and pervasive in Galilee at the time of the apostles, should we assume it to be atypical that the apostles could not possess a certain potency for Greek language? Those who argue for widespread Greek in this region (contrary to Chancey) often use such cases as evidence that the apostles could speak Greek. Should we still extrapolate from that data in the same way that we do for literacy? 

It seems that another area of inquiry to resolve this question should be the individual situations that we find the apostles in and whether they, as men who had their own lives and backgrounds, would be candidates for higher skills in reading, writing, and speaking relative to their fellow countrymen. This requires a deeper look into the Gospels and especially Acts, where we could assess the historicity of the apostle's portrayal as men with explicitly extensive language capabilities. This, however, goes well beyond the topic of secretaries and is a question for another time. 

In sum, Williams' article is exactly what we needed to push this topic forward. The secretary question is a precarious subject that many use to facilitate defences of traditional authorship. It is perceived by many that if secretaries were generally used in the ancient Mediterranean, then the apostles of Jesus should be no different. As Williams has pointed out, this massively simplifies the matter and does not take into account other considerations such as different levels of compositional license, the assumption of a unique style associated with all ancient authors, or even if there is any evidence a given document shows any trace of having used a secretary at all. 

We simply do not have a comprehensive understanding of how secretaries operated in the ancient world and how that understanding would apply to the documents in the New Testament. Our current state of knowledge presents a blurry picture in which more research has yet to be done and, where it has been done, there are problematic barriers that preclude us from using amanuenses as a defence of traditional authorial attributions. Apologetic defences of traditional authorship need to take this into account, or risk spreading misinformation about the ancient letter-writing process.