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Col_4:15. Messages down to Col_4:17.
The first καί is: and especially, and in particular, so that of the Christians at Laodicea ( τοὺς ἐν Λαοδ . ἀδελφ .). Nymphas is specially[178] singled out for salutation by name. In the following καὶ τὴν κατʼ οἶκον αὐτῶν ἐκκλ ., the church which is in their house, the plural αὐτῶν (see the critical remarks) cannot without violence receive any other reference than to τοὺς ἐν Λαοδ . ἀδελφοὺς κ . Νυμφᾶν . Paul must therefore (and his readers were more precisely aware how this matter stood) indicate a church different from the Laodicean church, a foreign one, which, however, was in filial association with that church, and held its meetings in the same house wherein the Laodiceans assembled. If we adopt the reading αὐτοῦ , we should have to think, not of the family of Nymphas (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Calvin, and others), but, in accordance with Rom_16:5, 1Co_16:19, Phm_1:2, of a portion of the Laodicean church, which held its separate meetings in the house of Nymphas. In that case, however, the persons here saluted would have been already included among τοὺς ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ ἀδελφούς . The plural αὐτῶν by no means warrants the ascribing the origin of Col_4:15 to an unseasonable reminiscence of 1Co_16:19 and Rom_16:5, perhaps also of Phm_1:2 (Holtzmann). What a mechanical procedure would that be!
The personal name Nymphas itself, which some with extreme arbitrariness would take as a symbolic name (Hitzig, comp. Holtzmann), is not elsewhere preserved, but we find Nymphaeus, Nymphodorus, Nymphodotus, and Nymphius, also Nymphis.
[178] Nymphas appears to have been specially well known to the apostle, and on friendly terms with him; perhaps a συνεργός , who was now for a season labouring in the church at Laodicea.