St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A...

One or other is also the reading of the Old Latin (d, e, g, harl.**), of the Memphitic, the two Syriac (Peshito and Harclean), the Æthiopic, and the Arabic (Erpenius, Bedwell, Leipzig) Versions; and of Augustine (de Unit. Eccl. 45, IX. p. 368) and Cassiodorus (II. p. 1351, Migne).

A comparison of these authorities seems to show pretty clearly that τῷ θεῷ πατρί was the original reading. The other two were expedients for getting rid of a very unusual collocation of words. |compared with iii. 17,|The scribes have felt the same difficulty again in iii. 17 εὐχαριστοῦντες τῷ θεῷ πατρὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ, and there again we find καί inserted before πατρί. In this latter instance however the great preponderance of ancient authority is in favour of the unusual form τῷ θεῷ πατρί.

It is worth observing also that in i. 12, where τῷ πατρί has the highest support, there is sufficient authority for τῷ θεῷ πατρί to create a suspicion that there too it may be possibly the correct reading. Thus τῷ θεῷ πατρί is read in א 37, while θεῷ τῷ πατρί stands in F G. One or other must have been the reading of some Old Latin and Vulgate texts (f, g, m, fuld.), of the Peshito Syriac, of the Memphitic (in some texts; for others read τῷ πατρί simply), of the Arabic (Bedwell), of the Armenian (Uscan), and of Origen (II. p. 451, the Latin translator); while several other authorities, Greek and Latin, read τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί.

If the question were to be decided by external authority alone, we could not hesitate. It is important however to observe that (2) conforms to the parallel passage Philem. 5 ἀκούων σου τὴν ἀγάπην καὶ τὴν πίστιν ἣν ἔχεις, while (3) conforms to the other parallel passage Ephes. i. 15 καὶ [τὴν ἀγάπην] τὴν εἰς πάντας τοὺς ἅγιους. Thus, though ἣν ἔχετε is so highly supported and though it helps out the sense, it is open to suspicion. Still the omission in B may be an instance of that impatience of apparently superfluous words, which sometimes appears in this MS.

(2) ὑμῶν אc C Db K L P, 17, 37, 47, and many others; the Vulgate, the Peshito and Harclean Syriac, the Memphitic, Gothic, and Armenian Versions; Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia (transl.), and Theodoret (in their respective texts, for with the exception of Chrysostom there is nothing decisive in their comments), with others.

Though the common confusion between these two words even in the best MSS is a caution against speaking with absolute certainty, yet such a combination of the highest authorities as we have here for ἡμῶν does not leave much room for doubt: and considerations of internal criticism point in the same direction. See the note on the passage.

(2) τῷ καλέσαντι D* F G, 17, 80, with the Latin authorities d, e, f, g, m, and the Gothic, Armenian, and Æthiopic Versions. It is so read also by the Ambrosian Hilary, by Didymus de Trin. iii. 4 (p. 346), and by Vigilius Thapsensis c. Varim. i. 50 (p. 409).

Here the confusion between τωιικανωϲαντι and τωικαλεϲαντι would be easy, more especially at a period prior to the earliest existing MSS, when the iota adscript was still written; while at the same time καλέσαντι would suggest itself to scribes as the obvious word in such a connexion. It is a Western reading.

For ἔχομεν B, the Memphitic Version, and the Arabic (Bedwell, Leipzig), read ἔσχομεν. This is possibly the correct reading. In the parallel passage, Ephes. i. 7, several authorities (א* D*, the Memphitic and Æthiopic Versions, and the translator of Irenæus v. 14. 3) similarly read ἔσχομεν for ἔχομεν. It may be conjectured that ἔσχομεν in these authorities was a harmonistic change in Ephes. i. 7, to conform to the text which they or their predecessors had in Col. i. 14. Tischendorf on Ephes. l.c. says ‘aut utroque loco εχομεν aut εσχομεν Paulum scripsisse puto’; but if any inference can be drawn from the phenomena of the MSS, they point rather to a different tense in the two passages.

(1) ἀποκατηλλάγητε B. This also seems to be the reading of Hilary of Poitiers In xci Psalm. 9 (I. p. 270), who transfers the Apostle’s language into the first person, ‘cum aliquando essemus alienati et inimici sensus ejus in factis malis, nunc autem reconciliati sumus corpore carnis ejus.’