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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Prison in Ephesus?
  • Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 00:48:50 -0400


Dave Inglis says in response to Steve Black:

>>I'm assuming that both letters [Ephesians and Colossians]
were written early enough that someone who knew what Paul
wrote would have been able to denounce any forgeries. As
far as I'm aware there is no evidence that either letter was
written late enough for this knowledge to have been lost
(Because Marcion included both letters it's reasonable to
think that both letters were in existence and believed to be
by Paul by about 120-130 AD at the latest.<<

And how would someone "know" what Paul wrote?? If written in
his "style," all the savvy reader/listener would know for
sure was that they had not read/heard *that* letter before.
I've labored about this here before, but David Trobisch's
work (particularly _Paul's Letter Collection_) deals exactly
with this problem.

The general state of circulation of Paul's letters was not
so free and uninhibited as we like to think. The fact is
that, after sifting through all 779 existing mss of Paul's
epistles, Trobisch came to the conclusion that the Pauline
corpus as we have it (with the exception of Hebrews) appears
to have been based on a single comprehensive edition, rather
than from the amalgamation of individual manuscripts. There
is internal evidence that they were first grouped into small
collections, and these smaller collections were (later?)
grouped into the corpus we have, but the mss do not suggest
that the smaller collections circulated separately in any
extensive manner from the comprehensive edition.

And if you think that unauthorized editions of letters or
lectures could not get out in the author's own lifetime,
then you are sadly mistaken. Harry Gamble provides several
examples from classical writers in _Books and Readers_.
Eusebius even preserves the griping of Dionysius, Bishop of
Corinth:

Church History, Book 4, Chapter 23: The same writer also
speaks as follows concerning his own epistles, alleging that
they had been mutilated: "As the brethren desired me to
write epistles, I wrote. And these epistles the apostles of
the devil have filled with tares, cutting out some things
and adding others. For them a woe is reserved." (PNF series
2, vol 1)

But getting back to Ephesians vs Colossians, Ephesians has
the appearance of being an appendix added to the end of a
collection that included only Rom-1Cor-2Cor-Gal. Colossians
is always associated with a second grouping that includes
Phillippians-Col-1Th-2th. This second group almost always
follows on the first. So in effect, Ephesians is the odd man
out. When was Ephesians created? I don't know, but I do know
that Trobisch thinks that the Pauline corpus found in
virtually all the manuscripts we have today are copies, with
occasional rearrangement of individual books, of a
comprehensive edition.

This comprehensive edition included Ephesians and even
Hebrews. Based on the fact that Irenaeus is the first early
Christian writer to cite all of them (except Philemon), I'd
place the comprehensive edition in the mid 2nd century.
Since Colossians is in a sub collection of the comprehensive
edition, it probably preceded the comprehensive edition by
some span of time. But since the sub editions did not appear
to compete for circulation with the comprehensive edition,
how widely could they have been known? They may well have
been private editions (say of individual teachers, and
incorporating their commentary) or based on caches of
letters accidentally found in trunks like the one at Troas.

A while ago I created a Word for Windows document with a
two-column table that allowed me to compare the parallel
passages of Ephesians and Colossians. FWIW, after having
stared at it for a good while just now, I am inclined to
think that Colossians is the archetype upon which Ephesians
was based, as Ephesians appears to be expanding on the
subject matter that is found in Colossians.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA






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