III
VOGUE OF EPISTOLARY FORM IN LITERATURE—THE NEW TESTAMENT EPISTLES
When we consider how in the first century of the
Christian era it was a frequent custom to clothe
literature of all kinds in the letter form, and how
popular amongst all classes and orders was this method—so
to speak—of literary expression, when associated with
it were, among a crowd of comparatively undistinguished
authors, such personalities as Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny,
whose letters as pieces of literature obtained at once an
enormous popularity which has never really waned,[1] it
becomes a grave and interesting question: Did this fashion,
this method, this singularly popular form of writing, affect the
great New Testament writers, and induce them to cast their
sublime inspired thoughts in this special form, which certainly,
when the apostles put out their writings, was a loved and
admired literary method?
The fact of so large a portion of the New Testament writings being cast in "letter form" is striking; it is quite different from anything that we find in the Old Testament Scriptures, where, save in one solitary instance (Jer. xxix.), nothing in the letter form appears in that wonderful compilation which embraces so many subjects, and which in the composition spread over many centuries; but we are so accustomed to the New Testament writings, that the fact of a very large portion of the collection of its inspired writings being in "letter" form does not at first appear strange or unusual.
We may preface the few suggestions which follow with the
- ↑ We might also cite here the well-known "poetic" epistles of Ovid and Horace.
