Book Review: Lost Letters of Pergamum

I first read the Lost Letters of Pergamum (Bruce W. Longenecker, 2003, Baker Academic) a couple of years ago, at the recommendation of my son-in-law and with his copy of the book. He knew that I love reading letters as literature, as regular readers of this blog will know. My collection of books of letters--some read, some in the queue--include Charles Lamb, Emerson with Carlyle, George H.W. Bush, John Wesley, Cicero, Pliney the Younger, Dylan Thomas, Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Darwin, and a few others. Some of these I accessed on-line and formatted for ease of printing/reading, and printed them.

He also knew I was working on a book about the writing of the gospel of Luke (Doctor Luke's Assistant), and so recommended this since it deals much with Luke's gospel. These letters are fiction, created by Longenecker to represent the typical letters of the era, and show how the gospel of Luke might have been viewed/interpreted/accepted by the educated, wealthy class of the time. The protagonist is Antipas, son of Philip, a wealthy merchant/landowner, late of Tyre and now of Pergamum. He writes to Calpurnius, son of Theophilus, of the city of Ephesus. This eventually turns into a series of letters between Antipas and Luke, who lives in Ephesus and is a friend of Calpurnius, the letters being about his gospel (called his "nomograph" by the correspondents). Slowly, Antipas is drawn into the faith. By the end of the book he is a Christian, and dies a martyr to save the life of Simon, of the common people. The relations of the rich to the common is one of the minor themes of the book.

Longenecker makes this Antipas the same person mentioned in Revelation, the the letter to the church at Pergamum: "Antipas, my faithful witness,...was put to death in your city [Pergamum]--where Satan lives." This is a reasonable basis for the main character. He is further made to have been named in honor of Herod Antipas. The book includes three appendices, which include maps and the characters. The third appendix is the author's notes of what he feels like is true in the letters, i.e. what can be defended historically, what is speculative but which he feels is probably true, and what is fiction. This is an important addition to the book.

If this book has a fault, it is that the letters sometimes include information that a letter writer would not really include, which appears added only to educate/inform the 21st century reader. Some is tolerable, such as in the first letter to someone who is a stranger. But I think Longenecker gives us a bit too much of this. Certainly, these items help us to better understand the correspondence and times, but make the letters a little less realistic.

I recently reviewed some of these letters to get Longenecker's take on some of the historical facts. As I read through them for making this post, I was again struck by their excellence, and may keep them a while longer and read them once more before returning them. I highly recommend this book for any who are curious about the early days of Christianity, and how the growing faith was viewed by the educated people of the Roman world. The book has no three-act structure, no conflict, no real angst. No thrilling plot. It's just great writing in its style.

Please see also the next post on this blog, More Thoughts on "Lost Letters of Pergamum".