Note to the Reader:
I was given this manuscript two years ago by a friend at the diocesan archives of Buenos Aires who knows that I read English. Though it is handwritten, the hand is too fair for it to be anything other than a copy: someone was evidently inspired by the original letters to transcribe them, longhand rather than typed, anonymous rather than signed. Some months earlier, an acquaintance of mine, a fellow biblical scholar, had happened to purchase a translation of the same manuscript at the auction of a bankrupt Spanish bookseller in Copenhagen. This was the first record I could find of a complete edition of these letters, or as complete as we have them here…
Vincent Hermès
Clermont-Ferrand, France, European Union
Year 20 of the New Common Era
