One Jack Kilmon has a complaint about the way TV Bible-documentaries portray Paul writing his letters:
“Many of these documentaries, like “After Jesus,” flash back to and anchor themselves on a guy dressed in ancient garb with a reed in his hand, writing on papyrus to represent the Gospels or the Pauline epistles as the narrator discusses some historical event mentioned in those texts between discussions from some of the finest and most brilliant scholars and authors today… Now I can forgive the Medieval artists who depict the evangelists or Paul writing a text of scribbling or jibberish but in every one of these documentaries, not just one but all of them, the director does close-ups of the papyrus and the scribe dipping his reed and writing…what? Jibberish! Scribbles!”
So… the TV documentaries are portraying Paul as though he was writing jibberish? This might be just too obvious to even say, but: at least they are getting something right!
For complete historical accuracy, they then need to portray hordes of scholars across the span of the subsequent two millennia asserting that they have made perfect sense of Paul’s jibberish.
The Dunedin School 
i think you missed the point. “what” paul is writing isn’t the issue “how” is. it’s the scribbles on the page, not the mind jibbering of paul at issue.
I know.
Yes! These ‘documentaries’ are interesting. Besides the low-budget dramatic portrayals, what I love more is the hyper-rational empiricism lurking behind it all.
Just the other day, I saw an ‘enlightening’ program on the History Channel that explained the natural conditions necessary to make possible Moses’ plagues…even the death of the firstborns! It then put the whole event into some natural realm of possibility. Oh, of course, us children of the Enlightenment can explain what is to some (i.e. theists) miraculous and therefore scientifically unexplainable, and to others (i.e. atheists) simply impossible.
I can’t wait for a scientific proof (or disproof) of the multiplication of fish and bread! Its such a silly phenomenon, honestly, this whole hyper-rational-pseudo-scientific-biblical-babble.
I might do a quick (less sarcastic) write up on this topic. I’ve seen too many of these programs floating around on television this holiday season.
Best,
-AD