Prescript

The prescript, or introductory salutation, of an ancient letter regularly contained three elements: (a) the name of the sender or senders; (b) the name of the recipient or recipients, and (c) a word of greeting or good wishes. Examples abound from letters of the New Testament period, in Greek and in Latin, both literary and nonliterary; earlier examples are the extracts from the official correspondence of the Persian court quoted in the book of Ezra; compare Ezra 7:12, “Artaxerxes, king of kings, To Ezra the priest, a teacher of the Law of the God of Heaven: Greetings.” This pattern is followed here, as in all the NT letters: Paul and Timothy are named as the senders and “all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi” as the recipients, and the word of good wishes is “grace and pea…