Introduction to the New Testament Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS, PHILEMON, AND EPHESIANS.1 161. These three epistles were all of them written during a protracted imprisonment, which was already known to those who were primarily addressed (see Col. iv. 3,18,10, cf. i. 24; Philem. 1, 9,10, 23; Eph. iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20); and they were all three despatched at the same time in the care of Tychicus and Onesimus, ?the two first to Colosse, in the south-west of Phrygia, and the third to a place in the same district. The universal belief in early times was that St. Paul wrote them from Rome; and this is stated in the postscripts of the Greek MS8. and versions, which usually name the place of writing. But in modern times the view has been advocated that they were written at Csesarea during St. Paul's imprisonment there.8 The former opinion is in all probability the true one. Rome is not indeed actually named in any of these epistles as the place of imprisonment, and many things stated might be explained with reference to Cassarea as well as Rome. But there is nothing which directly refers us to Csesarea, nor is there anything that favours the supposition of Caesarea as the place of writing more than that of Rome, when we recollect that, though the distance between Caesarea and Phrygia is less than that between Phrygia and Rome, still the intercourse of this province with Rome as the chief city was much more frequent and brisk than with Caesarea or Palestine generally. One thing which is urged in favour of 1 [See Dr. Friedrich Bleek's Vorlesmigen iiber die Briefe an die Kolosser, den Philemon, und die Ephesier, edited by Lac. Feiedrich Nitzsch, Berlin 1865.] 2 So first Dav. Sciiulz (Stud. u. Krit. 1829, pp. 612-617); afterwards Sciiott, 66; Bottger, Beitr. ii. 47 sqq.; WlGGERS, Stud. u. Krit. 1841, pp. 436-4...