in making it a sentence complete within itself, is “the saints who are also faithful’. Adopting this, some (e.g., Abbott, following Reiche, Ewald, etc.) take the Epistie to be addressed not to any particular Church or Churches as such, but generally to all the Christian people in the Phrygian parts. This hypothesis, it is held, ex- plains the absence of local particulars; avoids the necessity of supposing that a blank space had been left after the τοῖς οὖσιν ; and enables us to understand the phrase “' {πε epistle from Laodicea ” in Col. iv. 16. Others, however, think the case is better met by supposing that a space was left in which the name of the particular church might be inserted to which the letter was addressed in the course of its circular journeyings ; or, as Hort prefers to put it, that the blank in the original copy sent with Tychicus was filled in with the name of the Church of each place in which it was read.
The last is perhaps the most natural explanation. And on the whole question it may be said that it is much easier to under- stand how the local designation should have come to be inserted than to imagine how, if originally in the text, it should have come to be omitted, and that, too, at so early a date. The fact that the Ephesian Church was the Church of the chief city of the Asiatic Province and the most important Church in all these parts would account for the insertion of ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, especially if, as is most probable, it was from Ephesus that copies were sent elsewhere. The fact that the Epistle was meant for a wider audience than that found in Ephesus itself would account for the circulation of such a letter as that referred to as “the epistle from Laodicea”’. On the other hand, the supposition that the Epistle was meant originally only for Ephesus, and that the ἐν Ἐφέσῳ came to be dropped either by acci- dent or by design, is one hard to entertain. It is difficult to imagine how mere accident could account for the omission, and to say that the local designation was struck out of certain very ancient copies because it did not appear to be in harmony with the contents of the letter is to attribute to these very early times the operation of a criticism of which we have very little evidence.
7. TimE AND PLaAce oF Composition. The date has been put variously, ¢.g., at A.D. 55-58 (McGiffert) ; 60 or 61 (Meyer) ; 62 (Zahn) ; 61-63 (Lightfoot) ; 75 to 80 (Ewald) ; about Α.Ρ. 80 (Scholten); about A.D. 100 (Holtzmann, Mangold); 130-140 (Baur, Davidson). The question of the date depends largely on the question of the place. The Epistle itself makes it clear that Paul was a prisoner when he wrote it (iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20). It contains things, too, which point to some affinity between it and other Epistles in which the