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

635. τινὲς ὑπέλαβον καὶ πρὸς Λαοδικέας αὐτὸν γεγραφέναι· αὐτίκα τοίνυν καὶ προσφέρουσι πεπλασμένην ἐπιστολήν.

636. Anger (p. 143) argues against a Greek original on the ground that the Eastern Church, unlike the Latin, did not generally interpret Col. iv. 16 as meaning an epistle written to the Laodiceans. The fact is true, but the inference is wrong, as the language of the Greek commentators themselves shows.

637. Act. vi. Tom. v (Labbe viii. p. 1125 ed. Colet.) καὶ γὰρ τοῦ θείου ἀποστόλου πρὸς Λαοδικεῖς φέρεται πλαστὴ ἐπιστολὴ ἕν τισι βίβλοις τοῦ ἀποστόλου ἐγκειμένη, ἣν οἱ πάτερες ἡμῶν ἀπεδοκίμασαν ὡς αὐτοῦ ἀλλοτρίαν.

638. A Greek version is given in Elias Hutter’s Polyglott New Testament (Noreb. 1599); see Anger p. 147 note g. But I have retranslated the epistle anew, introducing the Pauline passages, of which it is almost entirely made up, as they stand in the Greek Testament. The references are given in the margin.

639. Quoted above, p. 359, note 637.

640. See above, p. 315 sq.

641. Greg. Magn. Mor. in Iob. xxxv. § 25 (III. p. 433, ed. Gallicc.) ‘Recte vita ecclesiæ multiplicata per decem et quattuor computatur; quia utrumque testamentum custodiens, et tam secundum Legis decalogum quam secundum quattuor Evangelii libros vivens, usque ad perfectionis culmen extenditur. Unde et Paulus apostolus quamvis epistolas quindecim scripserit, sancta tamen ecclesia non amplius quam quatuordecim tenet, ut ex ipso epistolarum numero ostenderet quod doctor egregius Legis et Evangelii secreta rimasset’.

642. Patrol. Lat.CXVII. p. 765 (ed. Migne) ‘Et eam quæ erat Laodicensium ideo præcipit Colossensibus legi, quia, licet perparva sit et in Canone non habeatur, aliquid tamen utilitatis habet’. He uses the expression ‘eam quæ erat Laodicensium’, because τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας was translated in the Latin Bible ‘eam quæ Laodicensium est’.

643. See Galatians p. 232 on the authorship of this commentary.

644. A third Epistle to the Corinthians being perhaps reckoned as the 15th; see Fabric. Cod. Apocr. Nov. Test.II p. 866.

645. Patrol. Lat.CLXXXI. p. 1355 sq. (ed. Migne) ‘et ea similiter epistola, quæ Laodicensium est, i.e. quam ego Laodicensibus misi, legatur vobis. Quamvis et hanc epistolam quintamdecimam vel sextamdecimam apostolus scripserit, et auctoritas eam apostolica sicut cætera firmavit, sancta tamen ecclesia non amplius quam quatuordecim tenet, ut ex ipso epistolarum numero ostenderet etc.’ At the end of the notes to the Colossians he adds ‘Hucusque protenditur epistola quæ missa est ad Colossenses. Congruum autem videtur ut propter notitiam legentium subjiciamus eam quæ est ad Laodicenses directa; quam, ut diximus, in usu non habet ecclesia. Est ergo talis.’ Then follows the text of the Laodicean Epistle, but it is not annotated.

646. A Saxon Treatise concerning the Old and New Testament by Ælfricus Abbas, p. 28 (ed. W. L’Isle, London 1623).

647. Ioann. Sarisb. Epist. 143 (I. p. 210 ed. Giles) ‘Epistolæ Pauli quindecim uno volumine comprehensæ, licet sit vulgata et fere omnium communis opinio non esse nisi quatuordecim, decem ad ecclesias, quatuor ad personas; si tamen illa quæ ad Hebræos est connumeranda est epistolis Pauli, quod in præfatione ejus astruere videtur doctorum doctor Hieronymus, illorum dissolvens argutias qui eam Pauli non esse contendebant. Cæterum quintadecima est illa quæ ecclesiæ Laodicensium scribitur; et licet, ut ait Hieronymus, ab omnibus explodatur, tamen ab apostolo scripta est: neque sententia hæc de aliorum præsumitur opinione sed ipsius apostoli testimonio roboratur. Meminit enim ipsius in epistola ad Colossenses his verbis, Quum lecta fuerit apud vos hæc epistola, etc.’

648. Patrol. Lat.CL. p. 331 (ed. Migne) on Col. iv. 16 ‘Hæc si esset apostoli, ad Laodicenses diceret, non Laodicensium; et plusquam tredecim essent epistolæ Pauli’. We should perhaps read xiiii for xiii, ‘quatuordecim’ for ‘tredecim’, as Lanfranc is not likely to have questioned the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

649. The proportion however is very different in different collections. In the Cambridge University Library I found the epistle in four only out of some thirty MSS Which I inspected; whereas in the Lambeth Library the proportion was far greater.

650. The Speculum of Mai, see above, p. 348.

651. The Codex Fuldensis, which was written within a few years of the Codex Amiatinus.

652. The list of MSS given above p. 348 sq. will substantiate this statement.

653. An account of this MS, which is at Lyons, is given by Reuss in the Revue de Théologie v. p. 334 (Strassb. 1852). He ascribes the translation of the New Testament to the 13th century, and dates the MS a little later.

654. This version is printed by Anger, p. 170 sq.

655. See Anger, p. 149 sq., p. 166 sq.

656. These two versions are printed in Lewis’s New Testament translated by J. Wiclif (1731) p. 99 sq., and in Forshall and Madden’s Wycliffite Versions of the Holy Bible (1850) IV. p. 438 sq. They are also given by Anger p. 168 sq. (1843), who takes the rarer form from Lewis and the other from a Dresden MS. Dr Westcott also has printed the commoner version in his Canon, p. 457 (ed. 4), from Forshall and Madden.

Of one of these two versions Forshall and Madden give a collation of several MSS; the other is taken from a single MS (I. p. xxxii). Lewis does not state whence he derived the rarer of these two versions, but there can be little doubt that it came from the same MS Pepys. 2073 (belonging to Magd. Coll. Cambridge) from which it was taken by Forshall and Madden (I. p. lvii); since he elsewhere mentions using this MS (p. 104). The version is not known to exist in any other. Forshall and Madden give the date of the MS as about 1440.

657. From Forshall and Madden, IV. p. 438. The earliest MSS which contain the common version of the Laodicean Epistle (to which this prologue is prefixed) date about A.D. 1430.

658. Printed from Forshall and Madden l.c. I am assured by those who are thoroughly conversant with old English, that they can discern no difference of date in these two versions, and that they both belong probably to the early years of the 15th century. The rarer version is taken from a better Latin text than the other.

659. On Col. iv. 16. Erasmus is too hard upon the writer of this letter, when he charges him with such a mass of forgeries. He does not explain how this hypothesis is consistent with the condemnation of the Epistle to the Laodiceans in Hieron. Vir. Ill. 5 (quoted above p. 359).

660. Pauli Apostoli ad Laodicenses Epistola, Latine et Germanice, Hamburg, 1595, of which the preface is given in Fabricius Cod. Apocr. Nov. Test.II. p. 867. It is curious that the only two arguments against its genuineness which he thinks worthy of notice are (1) Its brevity; which he answers by appealing to the Epistle to Philemon; and (2) Its recommendation of works (‘quod scripsit opera esse facienda quæ sunt salutis æternæ’); which he explains to refer to works that proceed of faith.

661. See Bp. Davenant on Col. iv. 16: ‘Detestanda Stapletonis opinio, qui ipsius Pauli epistolam esse statuit, quam omnes patres ut adulterinam et insulsam repudiarunt: nec sanior conclusio, quam inde deducere voluit, posse nimirum ecclesiam germanam et veram apostoli Pauli epistolam pro sua authoritate e Canone excludere’. So also Whitaker Disputation on Scripture passim (see the references given above, p. 341, note 595).

662. Ovid. Met. vii. 626 sq. ‘Jupiter huc, specie mortali, cumque parente Venit Atlantiades positis caducifer alis’ etc.

663. Acts xiv. 11 οἵ θεοὶ ὁμοιωθέντες ἀνθρώποις κατέβησαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς κ.τ.λ. There are two points worth observing in the Phrygian legend, as illustrating the Apostolic history. (1) It is a miracle, which opens the eyes of the peasant couple to the divinity of their guests thus disguised; (2) The immediate effect of this miracle is their attempt to sacrifice to their divine visitors, ‘dis hospitibus mactare parabant’. The familiarity with this beautiful story may have suggested to the barbarians of Lystra, whose ‘Lycaonian speech’ was not improbably a dialect of Phrygian, that the same two gods, Zeus and Hermes, had again visited this region on an errand at once of beneficence and of vengeance, while at the same time it would prompt them to conciliate the deities by a similar mode of propitiation, ἤθελον θύειν.

664. Aristoph. Av. 762 εἰ δὲ τυγχάνει τις ὢν Φρὺξ ... φρυγίλος ὄρνις ἐνθάδ’ ἔσται, τοῦ Φιλήμονος γένους.

665. Compare Col. iv. 9 with Philem. 11 sq.

666. Theodoret in his preface to the epistle says πόλιν δε εἶχε [[ὁ Φιλήμων] τὰς Κολάσσας· καὶ ἡ οἰκία δὲ αὐτοῦ μέχρι τοῦ παρόντος μεμένηκε. This is generally taken to mean that Philemon’s house was still standing, when Theodoret wrote. This may be the correct interpretation, but the language is not quite explicit.

667. ver. 19.

668. See above, p. 30 sq.

669. See above, p. 31 sq.

670. ver. 1 συνεργῷ ἡμῶν.

671. Col. iv. 15.

672. ver. 2 τῇ κατ’ οἶκόν σου ἐκκλησίᾳ. The Greek commentators, Chrysostom and Theodoret, suppose that St Paul designates Philemon’s own family (including his slaves) by this honourable title of ἐκκλησία, in order to interest them in his petition. This is plainly wrong. See the note on Col. iv. 15.

673. 3 Joh. 5 sq.