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PHILIPPIANS

apostle's health and prospects (i. 12), assured him of their prayers

(1 19), and wondered whether he, their pride and glory (xa.15Xr1/aa), would return to them (125 seq.).

After a brief greeting (1 1, 2), Paul assures them of his loving mterest in their present attainments and future progress in the faith of the gospel (1. 3-Il), then, relieving the11° anxiety about his own prospects, he expresses the confident hope that he will be released and thus be able to return to them (1 I2~26). Meantime they were to avoid any pride or fractiousness which might break their unity[1] as a church (1 27-11 18), and they are promised a visit from two of Paul's coadjutors,[2] who are well known to them (1i. 19-30). At this point the letter suddenly swerves[3] into a passionate warning against some errorists of judalsm (111 I-1v 1), after which the appeal tor LlHlt§ at Philippi is reiterated (iv. 2-9),[4] and the epistle closes w1th SOII]€ personal details (IV. 10-23).

Paul is a prisoner when he writes, and the place of composition may therefore be Caesarea or Rome (Acts xxv1ii. 16, 30-31). The edence upon the whole seems to point to the latter. The phrase otria. Kaiaapos (IV. 22) su1ts Rome better than Caesarea, and, while rrpawwpwv (1 13) does not necessarily imply the capltal, It is most naturally understood of Rome.[5] But the whole tone of the epistle suggests that Paul expected a speedy end to his case Now at Caesarea this was out of the question. His appeal to Caesar involved a protracted process, and it is very difficult to put expressions like those e.g. of ii. 23 into such a situation. The cr1t1cal outlook of Philippians does not correspond w1th the positron of the apostle at Caesarea, nor can the latter town be sa1d to have been a centre of vigorous Christian propaganda (1 17). Finally, the contention that no visit of T1mothy to Rome is known is an argument from silence which is of little more weight than the plea of Sp1tta that the cupidity of Fel1 (Acts xxiv 26) was excited by the arrival of the money from Philippi (Phil. 1v. 16).

A further examination of the epistle shows that it must have been w r1tten tow ards the close of the 5161-ia 6}r; of Acts xxvui. 30, not Ill the earlier part of the Roman captivity. Paul is on the edge and eve of the great decision. Beh1nd him (i. I2-I3) lies a per1od during which considerable progress has been made 1n the local preaching and extension of the gospel, nor does the language of the apostle suggest that th1s fresh departure in the propaganda was stimulated by the mere novelty of his arrival. furthermore, the relations between the Philippians and himself presuppose, on any fair estimate, an interval of time which cafmot be crushed 1nto a few months. News of his arrival must haxe reached the1n. money was collected (ii. 25, iv. 18) and then forwarded by Epaphroditus, who fell s1ck after he reached the capital, news of this again floated back to Philippi, and subsequently Paul heard of the Philippians' concern (11. 26). Not till then did he compose th1s letter.

Philippians 15 thus the last extant letter we possess from Paul, unless some of the notes embedded in the pastoral epistles are to be dated subsequent to its composition. It unites the close of his career in Rome with the begmning of his mission work in Europe (IV. 13; cf. Acts xvi. 12), and illustrates not merely the situation of the apostle at Rome, but the terms of exceptional affection which existed from first to last between him and the Macedonian churches. The main argument for putting it earlier is derived from the admitted affinities between it and Romans, the Colossian and Ephesian epistles containing, it is held, a more advanced christology (so Lightfoot especially, and Hort, Judaistrc Chrrsttamty, pp. II 5-129). But such considerations are not decisive. Paul wrote from time to time, not in the execution of a literary plan, but as different objects or interests called out his powers. The Philippians did not require, and therefore did not receive, the same elaborate warnings as the Asiatic churches. Hence on the one hand it is unreal to lay stress on coincidences with Romans, as if these necessarily implied that both epistles must have been composed shortly after one another, while again the further stage of thought on Christ and the Church, which is evident in Colossians, does not prove that the latter must have followed the former. Upon the whole, the internal evidence of the epistle strongly favours its position as the last of the captivity epistles.

The attempts made during the 19th century to disprove the Pauline authorship now possess merely an historic interest, nor have the various hypotheses of more or less extensive interpolation won any ser1ous support.[6] More significance attaches to the view that the epistle is made up of two separate notes, written to Philippi at different times. The fusion of the two is found in the abrupt hiatus of iii. 1, and evidence is led from supposed inconsistencies between the earlier and the latter parts of the epistle. But the flexibility of a letter-writer, under different moods of feeling, which would naturally lead to rapid transitions, may be adduced as some explanation of the latter phenomena. The exegesis does not absolutely necessitate a partition of the epistle, which (so Heinrichs and Paulus) would make iii. 1-iv. 20 a special letter addressed to some inner circle of the apostle's friends (in spite of iv. IO seq), or take iii.-iv. (Hausrath, History of N. T. Times, iv. 162 seq. and Bacon, Story of St Paul, pp. 367 seq.) as earlier than i.-ii. Besides, as Pileiderer po1nts out, the hypothesis is shipwrecked on the difficulty of imagining that “ each of the epistles had but one essential part: the first, in particular, lacking an expression of thanks for the gift from the Philippians, which must nevertheless, according to ii. 25, have already taken place.” In his letter to the Philippians (iii. 2) Polycarp indeed observes that Paul wrote éucorohds to them; but, even if the plural could not be taken as equivalent to a single despatch, it would not necessarily support the partition theory of the canonical Philippians. Polycarp may have known of more than one Pauline note to Ph1l1ppi, no longer extant, or he may be referring loosely to 2 Thessalonians, which was addressed to a neighbouring Macedonian church. The exegetical arguments are, in short, the final court of appeal, and their verdict tells rather in favour of the epistle's integrity. The simplest account of iii. 1 is to suppose that Paul started afresh to complete or supplement what he had already written, possibly because some fresh tidings from Plnlippi had reached him in the interval. Psychologically the change from ii. IQ seq., with its note of farewell, to the impassioned outburst of iii. 2 seq., is not incredible in an informal letter from a man like Paul. The hiatus is striking, but it cannot be held to necessitate an editorial dovetailing of two separate epistles. It is doubtful, therefore, if the ingenious attempts to analyse Philippians have proved much more convincing than the similar movement of literary criticism upon the first Phihppic of Demosthenes, where research has swung back in the main to a conservative position (cf. A. Baron in Wzerzer Studiert, 1884, 173-205).

The first clear echoes of the epistle are heard in Polycarp, though it was probably known to Clement of Rome and Ignatius (cf. the evidence tabulated in The N ew Testament in the Apostolic

  1. ↑ For the strong Chr1st1an consciousness of solidarity, presupposed in the Philippians see Von Dobschu1z's Chrzstran Life w the Przmztwe Church (1904) pp 93 seq
  2. ↑ The touch of acerbity in ii 2I (after i 14) is probably to be explained in the fact that “ Paul had found some of the brethren reluctant to undertake a Journey to Macedonia, or to perform some other service which he desired, and the words only express the momentarx disappomtment of a man who was imprisoned and ready to die for the gospel” (Drummond). Cf. Renan's Antichrist (Eng. tran p 48)
  3. ↑ The so called logion in (]ustin's?) De resurrect 9 efpqxev Ev obpavw TUV »1u.rouL1/ |i)7TU./JXELV, seems 3. mere echo of Ili. 20.
  4. ↑ On 18 on Qoden notes (History of Early Chrzstfzan Lzterature, p 114) that “ It is as 1f we heard the ripple of the waves at the meeting of the two streams which have tl1e1r source IH Zion and the Pai thx non "
  5. ↑ If the expression meant (a) the praefectr praetorzo or officials charqcd with the care of prisoners under trial, ze. the supreme imperial court, or (b) the praetorian guard, or (6) their barracks, this would almost follow But conceivably it might mean the palace 1 e of Herod (Acts xxiu. 35) The balance of probabilities alls, however, in favour of the court hypothesis.
  6. ↑ To the details furnished in the present writer's Hzstorzcal New Testament (2nd ed, 1901, pp. 634-635) may be added references to Volter's Paulus u. seme Brrefe (1 05), pp. 286-323, Belser's Ezuleztung zu der N. T. (2nd ed., 19053, pp. 555 seq, and Sehmiedel's paragraphs in Erzcy. Bzb. (3147~3148). Plleiderer (Przmzme C/zrzstramty, i. 254 seq) now hesitates on 11. 6 seq alone like Bruckner and Schmiedel. The objections to Paul's authorship on the score of stvle and grammar are finally set aside by the ph1lolog1st Ntgeli 1n Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus 1905), pp. 80-82.
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