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The
Structure of Paul's Letters
by
Robert A. Bailey
Revised
Fourth Edition (May 28, 2010)
[Please note: The Structure of Paul's Letters (Revised Fourth
Edition, May 28, 2010) by Robert Bailey, which may be
downloaded by clicking on "All Paul's Letters" in the left-hand menu, is the latest edition available from the author.
The soft cover Third Edition (July 10, 2008) by Xulon Press, which
is available from
Amazon.com, is significantly out of date as compared to this
online version.]
In an era of no
punctuation, not even spaces between words, sentences, and
paragraphs, and when all letters were capital letters, Paul made
careful use of internal structures of parallelism. These
structures are like Hebrew poetry, which is not based on meter or
rhyme, but on parallelism of clauses, a symmetry of form and sense.
They emphasize, organize, and clarify his thoughts. They can
help a careful reader to see his outline and the units of thought
that go together to make a whole structure of thought. They
also made it difficult for anyone to alter his letters without
making that evident to a careful reader.
In all of the Pauline letters, structures of symmetrical parallelism
(also called chiasmus, symmetrical inversion, or concentric
symmetry) are used to organize the entire letter, and then are often
repeated to organize the subdivisions, often to three or more
levels.
These structures call for translations, paragraphing, and outlines
appropriate to the structures and their themes. But many of
them are obscured and unnoticed in popular English translations.
This translation is relatively literal in order to retain more of
Paul's structures. Only in Greek could all the details of
Paul's structures be seen and demonstrated.
This work is far from being a complete and perfect identification of
the poetic structures in Paul's letters. But hopefully it is a
helpful advancement of that project.
Except where noted, the English translation follows Nestle-Aland's
27th edition of the Greek text (Novum Testamentum Graece,
1993), omitting any words that NA27 placed in brackets as doubtful,
but not necessarily following the punctuation proposed by NA27
(there was no punctuation in the original Greek). The English
translation also uses a degree of literalness comparable to the King
James Version, and, like the KJV, uses italics to indicate
text not in the Greek source. Quotations or allusions to
Scripture or other writings are shown in quotation marks. The
references can usually be found in NA27 or the various study Bibles.
Each letter document available from the above menu ("Paul's
Letters) is divided into three parts. The first part is
a short
introduction to the
epistle. Next, an English translation follows that is arranged
and formatted indicating its structure. Finally, the entire
Greek text of the epistle is arranged in the same manner without any
change in the original
Greek word order.
The Pauline structures presented
by Mr. Robert Bailey are in Adobe 7.0 PDF
format and backward compatible to Adobe 5.0 PDF format.
Regardless the size of your computer screen, they will automatically
open to 100% of the original document size. This feature works
properly for Internet Explorer 6.x or higher. Other browsers may
not support this feature. Regardless, you will be able to view,
download, or print the files available. However, because of
the propriety Greek font used in these documents, editing of the
files is password protected.
The Pauline structures available from this web site were
originally published under the title
The Structure of Paul's
Letters (2004). Mr. Robert Bailey has graciously chosen
to republish his updated editions (Revised Fourth Edition, May 28,
2010) in electronic format and
share his labor of love for the Word of God with those who have an
internet connection.
If you find Robert Bailey's work edifying, please be sure
to let him know
by e-mail. It only
takes a few minutes and it will encourage him.
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