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Php 1:1. Δοῦλοι, the servants) Paul writes more familiarly to the Philippians than to those to whom, in writing, he calls himself an apostle. Under this common predicate, he very courteously joins Timothy with himself, who, by his means, was called to be a disciple, and who, having recently joined Paul, had come to Philippi, Act 16:3; Act 16:12.-σὺν, with) The Church is superior to the bishops; and the apostolic writing is sent more directly to the Church than to the presiding ministers; Heb 13:24; Eph 3:4; Col 3:18, etc., Col 4:17; Rev 1:4; Rev 1:11; 1Th 5:12.-ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις, with the bishops and deacons) At that time the former properly managed the internal, the latter the external affairs of the Church, 1Ti 3:2; 1Ti 3:8; the latter, however, were not excluded from care about the internal affairs, nor the former about the external. Sometimes Paul, in the inscriptions, calls them churches; sometimes he uses a periphrasis, which either signifies something greater, as we have remarked at 1Co 1:2, or is used because, as in the instance of the Romans, they had not yet been fully reduced to the form of a church. This epistle to the Philippians alone is so inscribed as to connect the mention of the bishops and deacons with the emphatic paraphrase.[1]
[1] Michaelis (in der Enleitung, etc., T. I. p. m. 165, sq.) confirms the venerable antiquity of the Syriac Version of the N. T. from the fact, that in this passage it uses the word elders for bishops, and therefore it was made at that time when the real difference between bishops and presbyters was not yet known.-E. B.