ABSTRACT
The blunt truth is simply expressed by Burridge (and acknowledged to various degrees by most others) that ‘despite two thousand years of tradition, research and speculation, it is important to stress at the outset that in fact we know practically nothing of who the original authors and audiences of these texts were’ (2005: 100). But, as he also says, ‘human beings are naturally curious animals’, so this ignorance is not going to stop a curious animal like me from constructing the author and speculating about him.
