thoughts or feelings. The historical details, so far from being extra- ordinary or unaccountable, afford us some of the most valuable side- lights we possess on a particular epoch of Paul’s history, otherwise obscure. Since Baur’s time comparatively few critics have been bold enough to renew the attack on our Epistle. A complete history of its criticism will be found in Holsten’s articles in the Fahrb. f. protestant. Theol. (1876), pp. 328-372. No more searching scrutiny of the Epistle with a view to proving its spuriousness has ever been carried out than that of Holsten himself (of. cit., 1875, p. 425 ff. ; 1876, p. 58 ff.). In these discussions he brings all his well-known acuteness and subtlety of reasoning to bear upon the minutest points of the letter. He willingly admits that it belongs to the Pauline school, but decides from such indications as the method of dealing with the Judaisers in ch. i., the conception of Christ in ch. ii. 6-9, etc., etc., that it cannot be the work of Paul. But any fair-minded reader of Holsten’s articles will feel bound to agree with the verdict of an unbiased scholar like Schiirer that his “arguments are so foolish that one is sometimes tempted to put them down as slips of the pen” (Th. LZ., 1880, col. 555). Probably Pfleiderer’s state- ment may be taken as representative of present-day opinion: “ The genuineness of this letter is not to be doubted. The accounts of Philippians tally thoroughly with the presuppositions of Romans” (Urchristenthum, p. 153). Among many elaborate defences of the authenticity of Phil. we may mention as especially worthy of note those of Hilgenfeld in Zeitsch. f. wiss. Theol., xvi., 2, p. 178 ff.; xviii., 4, p. 566 ff.; xx., 2, p. 145 Π.; xxvii, 4, ρ. 498 ff.
The unity of the Epistle has also been questioned. This was done as early as the beginning of last century by Heinrichs (N. T., ed. J. Koppe, vol. vii., pars 2, proll., p. 31 ff.), who supposed it to consist of two letters, one (ch. i. 1-iii. 1 ; iv. 21-23) being addressed to the Church in general, the other (ch. iii. 2-iv. 20) to the more prominent authorities in it. (Por a full account of such attempts see Clemen, Einheitlichkeit d. paulin. Briefe, 1894, p. 133 ff.) Vélter (Theol. Tijdschr., 1892, pp. 10-44, 117-146) put forward the theory that we have here a genuine Epistle consisting of ch. i. 1-7, 12-14, 180.26: ii. 17-29; iv. 10-21, 23, and also a spurious one made up of ch. i. 8-10, 27-30; ii. 1-16; iii. 1-iv. 9, 22, the remaining verses being added by the redactor whose compilation is before us. It is difficult to take so arbitrary a scheme as this seriously, and Vélter entirely fails to show what aim or motive his hypothetical redactor had in his work. This would require to be stated with some appearance of reason before we could consider the likelihood of finding in a simple,