`bear one another's burden'.  The law of love is put in correspondence with the

law of Christ (Gal. 5:13,14; 6:2,3).  The question of the authorship of the

epistles is one that is very near the basis of the truth for the present time,

and as one feature, namely the matter of Paul's signature or sign -manual and

handwriting, comes before us at the close of Galatians, we will devote a larger

space to it than may at first seem proportionate, as it will provide an answer

to the question that arises with the study of every succeeding epistle

attributed to Paul, and particularly the authorship of the epistle to the

Hebrews.  A full discussion of Hebrews and its authorship necessarily involves

many more items and proofs than the one dealt with here, and these will be

found in the article Hebrews (p. 101).

We come therefore to the closing section of Galatians, namely 6:11 -16,

which opens with the words:

`Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine

own hand'

(Gal. 6:11) which the R.V. retranslates:

`See with how large letters I have written (margin "or, write")

unto you

with mine own hand'.

It is remarkable what differences of opinion have been expressed by

commentators concerning the meaning of these words, but they may be summarized

under the following headings:

1.

That Paul wrote the whole of the epistle to the Galatians with his

own hand, and calls this epistle `a large letter'.

2.

That the words `how large a letter' refer to the length of the

epistle, being equivalent to `how long an epistle'.

3.

That Paul wrote the whole of the epistle to the Galatians with his

own hand, and calls the Galatians' attention to `the large letters'

he used, referring to the size of the characters, and not to the

length of the epistle.

4.

That Paul dictated, as was his usual custom, the bulk of the

epistle, but at verse 11 he took the pen from the hand of the

amanuensis and wrote the postscript himself.

5.

That the postscript alone was written `with large letters'.

6.

That the large letters were a sign of the apostle's earnestness,

the largeness of the letter used, being equivalent to the use of

CAPITALS or Italics on the printed page.

7.

That the large letters were not adopted by the apostle for the sake

of emphasis, but that owing to his defective eyesight (already

alluded to, to arouse the latent affection of the Galatians) he

could not write other than with `large letters'.

8.

Finally, Deissmann's opinion that to soften the angry tone of some

previous portion of the epistle, Paul concludes with a little joke, so

that `his dear silly children' should understand that with the large

letters `The Galatians knew that the last traces of the seriousness of

the punishing schoolmaster had vanished from his features'

(Bibelstudein, p.  263).

We need spend no time on Deissmann's fancy, but must give attention to

the alternatives set out under the first seven headings.  This we will not do

by taking them seriatum, but by examining the actual wording of the passage.

First, the structure of the sentence, and the literal meaning of the

words used.