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Col_4:11. Of this Jesus nothing further is known.
οἱ ὄντες ἐκ περιτ . is to be attached, with Lachmann (comp. also Steiger, Huther, Bleek), to what follows, so that a full stop is not to be inserted (as is usually done) after περιτ . Otherwise οἱ ὄντες ἐκ περιτ . would be purposeless, and the following οὗτοι μόνοι κ . τ . λ . too general to be true, and in fact at variance with the subsequent mention of Epaphras and Luke (Col_4:12-14). It is accordingly to be explained: Of those, who are from the circumcision, these alone (simply these three, and no others) are such fellow-labourers for the kingdom of the Messiah, as have become a comfort to me. The Jewish-Christian teachers, consequently, worked even at Caesarea to a great extent in an anti-Pauline sense. Comp. the complaint from Rome, Php_1:15; Php_1:17. The nominative οἱ ὄντες ἐκ περιτ . puts the generic subject at the head; but as something is to be affirmed not of the genus, but of a special part of it, that general subject remains without being followed out, and by means of the μετάβασις εἰς μέρος the special subject is introduced with οὗτοι , so that the verb (here the εἰσί to be supplied) now attaches itself to the latter. A phenomenon of partitive apposition, which is current also in classical authors. See Kühner, II. 1, p. 246; Nägelsbach and Faesi on Hom Il. iii. 211. Comp. Matthiae, p. 1307. Hence there is the less reason for breaking up the passage, which runs on simply, after the fashion adopted by Hofmann, who treats ἐκ περιτομῆς οὗτοι μόνοι as inserted parenthetically between οἱ ὄντες and συνεργοί . The complimentary affirmation is to be referred to all the three previously named, without arbitrary exclusion of Aristarchus (in opposition to Hofmann). At any rate, Caesarea was a city so important for the Christian mission, that many teachers, Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian, must have frequented it, especially while Paul was a prisoner there; and consequently the notice in the passage before us need not point us to Rome as the place of writing.
παρηγορία ] consolation, comfort, only here in the N. T.; more frequently in Plutarch; see Kypke. Μέγιστον ἐγκώμιον τὸ τῷ ἀποστόλῳ γενέσθαι θυμηδίας πρόξενον , Theodoret Bengel imposes an arbitrary limitation: “in forensi periculo.”