1,700-year-old recently discovered Christian letter offers clues into how faithful lived centuries ago

Where is the slander, the gossip, the petty arguing? Where is the name-calling, the tribalism, the one-upmanship, the indignation? Is it possible that Christians could once correspond with each other without resorting to such things? Call me a skeptic…..

It’s clearly a forgery, because secondary separation and the dangers of neo-evangelicals aren’t mentioned.

Send me some of that fish liver sauce, too. Mmmmmm good! :^) Notice that the letter does reference likely persecution—the gymnasium was the place where pagan Greeks got naked and did athletics/intellectual pursuits, hence “gymnasiarchy” would be the rulers of the gymnasium, i.e. the de facto city leaders. A reference to that means, if I read it right, “keep your head down, our advocate is otherwise occupied on the city council and can’t take the case.”

It also appears that either “gyne” is mistranslated as “wives” instead of “women of the household”, or Paulus was polygamous. Greeks and Romans were monogamous (though often with paramours); Jews held on to polygamy. Can’t tell which these guys were.