frankness, "In the ca~e of this Epistle, more than any other, if cri ticiisrv should inquire for evidence in favour of its apostolic name, it seems liable to the reproach of hypercriticism, of exaggerated su~picion, trustless doubt, from the attacl<H .,f which nothing is safe. What ha,1 criticism t.o do with this short, attractive, and friendly letter, inspired as it is by the noble81 Christian feeling, and which has never yet been touched by the breath , ,f suspicion?" It is evident throughout his treatment of this Epistle (pt. ii. eh. 6) that he is being driven by the exigencies of his preconceived theo1y to deny a genuineness which he secretly acknowledges. It is the importance of the niche which this Epistle fills in the general , scheme of St. Paul's life, as handed down by the Christian tradition, in "its historical and critical connection with the other Epistles which stand nearest to it," that arouse his hostility. He holds that the entire group of Epistles, which consist!! of those to the Culossians, Ephesians, and to Phile- mon, is un-Pauline; and since the testimony of each of these supports the rest, he dares admit of no exceptions from the sentence of rejection. There- fore he must regard Philemon as "a Christian romance, serving to convey a. genuine Christian idea." No introduction to the Epistle can be said to be complete, therefore, which does not reckon with his doubts and those of his school, though his reasoning is somewhat forced. 1. Ezternal evidence. The character of its contents fittea it but little for quotation. The apostolic Fathers, therefore, present no reference to it; for the Onesimus referred to in Ignatius, • Ad Ephes.,' ii. and • Ad Magnes.,' xii. is probably another person, and in 'Ad Polycarp.,' vi. the resemblance of phrase is too vague to rest upon. It is included in the Muxatorian Canon, and Eusebius classes it with the received books ( oµ.oA£yovµ.o,a). i\larciun received it as Paul's, and that without altering or modifying it-a circum- stance which drew forth the criticism of Tertullian that its brevity had been of advantage to it in one respect at least, that it had escaped the cor- rupting hands of Marcion. "Yet I wonder," he adds, "that, since he h:tS received a letter to one man, he should have rejected the two to Timothy and one to Titus, which treat of the organization of the Church. He affected, I suppose, to ·alter even the number of the Epistfo;," (' Adv. Marcion.,' lib. v. c. 21 ). It was sometimes placed thirteenth in order, before the Epistle to the Hebrews, but in other copies last of all. Origen has repeated references to this Epistle (see • Humil. in Jerem. xix.;' • in Matt. Tract.,' xxxiii. and xxxiv.). We find, nevertheless. by the time of St. Jerome, that there were already persons who argued against this Epistle, that either it was not written by Paul at all, or that, if it were, it contained nothing edifying. "Aut Epistolam non ease Pauli . . . aut etiam, si Pauli sit, nihil habere, quod aidificare nos possit." Baur, unlike most commentators, argues that either the circumstances are altogether fictitious, or that, if they rest on a baRis of fact, they have been freely treated in order to embody dramatically the idea" that what 011e viii IN'l'RODUCTION TO
loses in the world, one recovers in Christianity, and that for eYer; that the world and Christianity are related to ea.eh other as iseparation and reunion, as time and eternity;" and this he thinks is expressed in ver. 15. His argument.s on the improbahility of what he calls "a very remarkable oon- ourrence of chances" are 80 evidently without serious weight that we shall not linger upon them. 1 But he further object.s to the style as un-Pauline. The instances he gives, however, are not very substantial. When he says that cnxrTpanrf¥rq~ (ver. 2), in the figurative sense, belongs to later writings, he means appa- rently that it is found in the pastoral Epistles once (2 Tim. ii. 3, crTpan- rf¥rq~). The word appears to be somewhat rare even in classice.l literature. But it is found in Xenophon (' Anab.,' i. 2, 26), Plato(' Repub.,' 556 c.), and precisely in this metaphorical sense as here in Josephus(' Bell. Jud.,' vi. 9. 1 ). And a.s far as we can dhcover after search, tbfl metaphorical sense cannot be said to be popular until a very much later age (see Eusebius, • Pr&lparat. Evangel.,' lib. xiii. c. 7) than it is possible to name for this Epistle. In ver. 15 a.1rcxw has not the sense of" have back," as Baur argues, which would be unexampled, but of "have fully," as in Phil. iv. 18 (see Lightfoot's note here). The fact that it was a having back again in the case of One,;imus is, so to speak, an accidental circumstance in this case. 'A1r0Tlw, 1rpouoip£LAW (ver. 19) and 0V1Jµ.a, (ver. 20) are, it is true, peculiar to the places where they occur; and while it is curious that so many ii1r~ >..ryoµ.wa should cluster in this brief Epistle of twenty-five verses, the character of its subject-matter, which is different from the usual subjects treated in the Epistles of St. Paul, fully accounts for this. It is a letter v.poo busine81J, and as such it naturally contains busin688 terma, such as these words are. (2) In the consideration of the internal characteristics of this Epiistle, the same over-subtle analysis and excessive suspicion of "tendency" seems to cloud and disturb the judgment arrived at by Baur and those of his school. It does not appear to us that to praise the Epistle as" invaluable" because it exhibits "the apostle's cheerful and amiabie personality" is in any wise an accurate or closely fitting description. Surely St. Paul's temperament was fervid, emotional, mobile, subject to great height,; and depths of mood, and not what would be called equable or "cheerful." This characteristic is faithfully reflected in the Epistle before us. It is a courteous and even affectionate communication from the apostle to one whu, though bound to respect his official position, and under great personal obligations tu him, was yet not familiarly known to him. He had to do a very difficult thing-to come between a master and his slave, to take what by some men and in some circumstances might have been 1 For th011e who can 61:.l'Alpt it, a very easy way of avoiding these "impossibilities," suoh u they are, is presented by that hypothesis, upheld by Schulz, Schneokenburger, ReuSB, Schenkel, Ziiokler, Meyer, which asaigns this Epidtle, with those to the Epheeia1111 and ColoSBiana, to the imprisonment at Cwd1>rc1> iuetetl.d of at Rowe. THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.