THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
misfortune that befell the ending of the second Gospel. The doxology has the internal marks of a genuine Pauline fragment, possibly used by Paul in preaching, kept in the memory of some hearer, and incorporated by the editor into a disordered text. The Phoebe letter in chap. xvi. also presents grave difficulties. It is filled with intimate greetings. Priscilla and Aquila have been appealed to, their knowledge of the Roman congregation being put in evidence. But friendships as intimate as these can not be borrowed nor imported. How then came so many of Paul's intimate friends to be in Rome? Renan's hypothesis that there is here a fragment of a letter to Ephesus makes too large a forced loan. The likeliest supposition is that the Phcebe letter is a separate literary unit. It was probably written by Paul after his release from the first imprisonment (see 4, § 1, below). The Pauline editor, assembling his materials, incorporated this along with the doxology. There is no solid reason for doubting the Roman address of the letter. The documentary evidence for the omission of " in Rome " in i. 7 is not considerable. That fact in itself may not be completely decisive. The history of the New Testament text is inseparable from the history of the Church. When once the great congregation of Rome had appropriated the letter, any other address would have slight chance to survive. But the variant is not hard to explain. Other churches soon appropriated the letter, and some copies of it, with the Roman address omitted, might easily have got into circulation; xv. 28 can not be applied to any church but Rome: nor can i. 8-14, without strain, be applied to any other situation.
The most significant turn in the study of the Pauline epistles since Baur's day is indicated by the group of scholars somewhat loosely called the Dutch school. Baur and the Tubingen school left the
quadrilateral standing, apparently im-
7. Criticism pregnable and unassailable. But these
by Dutch scholars make the assault with vigor
School, and conviction (cf. especially Van
Manen, in EB, s.v. Paul and Romans). These scholars do not snatch their conclusions out of the air. They seem to build on good foundations. From the Old Testament they borrow the fixed conclusions that the Moses of history and the Moses of Mosaism are far apart; and that the Isaiah of the canon is a mind widely removed from Isaiah of Jerusalem. Coming nearer home, they use the fact that the " John " of the Johannine writings may be a mind widely removed from the " John " of Ephesus — whoever he was. They come still nearer with the conclusion, accepted as a critical certainty by a large body of scholars, that the Colossian and Ephesian letters are Paulinist, but not Pauline. They capitalize the rising value of Acts, enhancing the value of the Paul of Acts and depreciating the Paul of the epistles. A letter accepted by all schools as •Pauline now goes the way of Colossians and Ephesians. But the Old-Testament standards of analysis must be cautiously used. In the quadrilateral we are not dealing with a code of law and a body of sacred history and legend, shaped by the spiritual and social pressure of centuries. Between the " Moses " of the Pentateuch and the " Paul " of
these letters there is an immense difference. " Isaiah" is a body of oracles, diverse in historical setting and in literary style. These four letters are real letters. They fit closely into that supreme religious crisis called the founding of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the Apostolic Fathers conclusively narrow the field of time within which that crisis was passed through. Even the " John " of the Johannine writings is not a close parallel. These four letters are intensely, almost extravagantly, personal. The style abounds in egoisms (" my Gospel " — Rom. ii. 16, xvi. 25; habit of taking the oath, Rom. i. 9; I Cor. i. 23; " I myself "—II Cor. x. 1, xii. 13; Rom. vii. 25, ix. 3, xv. 14). The writer has passed through unique personal experiences (I Cor. ix. 15, xv. 8 sqq.; II Cor. xi.-xii.; Gal. vi. 17; Rom. ix. 1 sqq., etc.). Making full allowance for the Paulinism of the editors, no course of editing can account for such intensely human documents.
4. Third Group ; Prison Epistles: If Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians belong to Paul, they constitute another distinct group, and record the final period in a mental development of remarkable symmetry. I Thessalonians records the apostle's state of mind when he was in quickening contact with tjje Gentiles and before the Judaizing movement drove him to deeper thinking. The quadrilateral records his thinking in defense of the proposition that Jew and Gentile are equal before God. And the letters written during his imprisonment carry his mind forward into conflict with Gnosticism, a view of God and man that dissipated the divine unity and emptied history of its meaning.
If Paul wrote the three letters, it seems probable that all of them were written from Rome. As in the quadrilateral, a decisive argument concerning the sequence of the letters is impossible. Scholars of note (e.g., Weiss) place
1. Philippians.
Colossians and Ephesians at Caesarea, Philippians at Rome. But, on the whole, the internal argument carries all three to Rome. Philippians almost beyond question belongs there. If it was written after Colossians and Ephesians, it is difficult to understand why it fails to show any trace of the terminology peculiar to them. It is better to suppose that Philippians is midway between the quadrilateral and Colossians-Ephesians. In Lightfoot's happy phrase, it is the spent wave of the debate with Judaizing Christianity. The Philippian letter, cashiered by Baur, has fought its way back to wide-spread critical recognition. It is the most intimate of all the Pauline letters. Possibly the reason is found in the fact that the church at Philippi never gave the apostle a moment's anxiety. There were no Jews there worth mentioning (Acts xvi. 13, no synagogue). The Judaizing movement never gained a foothold. The relation of the congregation to Paul was so deeply affectionate that he broke his rule of self-support (iv. 15—16) and permitted them to minister to his needs. This intimate relationship with his readers may explain the free air of the letter. The apostle seems to have nothing on his mind. At Rome Jewish Christians (i. 15-16) are making trouble. In the second part of the letter (iii. 2-9) he takes the reasons for pride