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Col_4:16.[179] This message presupposes essentially similar circumstances in the two churches.
ἡ ἐπιστολή ] is, as a matter of course, the present Epistle now before us; Winer, p. 102 [E. T. 133]. Comp. Rom_16:22; 1Th_5:27.
ποιήσατε , ἵνα ] procure, that. The expression rests on the conception: to be active, in order that something may happen, Joh_11:37. Comp. Herod, i. 8: ποίει , ὅκως κ . τ . λ ., i. 209; Xen. Cyrop. vi. 3. 18. The following καὶ τὴν ἐκ Λαοδ . κ . τ . λ . is, with emphatic prefixing of the object, likewise dependent on ποιήσατε , not co-ordinated with the latter as an independent imperative sentence like Eph_5:33—a forced invention of Hofmann, which, besides, is quite inappropriate on account of the stern command which it would yield.[180]
τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας ] not: that written to me from Laodicea. So τινές in Chrysostom, who himself gives no decisive voice, as also Syriac, Theodoret, Photius in Oecumenius, Erasmus, Beza, Vatablus, Calvin, Calovius, Wolf, Estius, Cornelius a Lapide, Storr, and others, as also again Baumgarten-Crusius. This is at variance with the context, according to which ΚΑῚ ὙΜΕῖς , pursuant to the parallel of the first clause of the verse, presupposes the Laodiceans, not as the senders of the letter, but as the receivers of the letter, by whom it was read. How unsuitable also would be the form of the message by ποιήσατε ! Paul must, in fact, have sent to them the letter. Lastly, neither the object aimed at (Theophylact already aptly remarks: ἀλλʼ οὐκ οἶδα , τί ἂν ἐκείνης —namely, that alleged letter of the Laodiceans
ἜΔΕΙ ΑὐΤΟῖς ΠΡῸς ΒΕΛΤΊΩΣΙΝ ), nor even the propriety of the matter would be manifest. Purely fanciful is the opinion of Jablonsky, that Paul means a letter of the Laodiceans to the Colossian overseers, as well as that of Theophylact: ἡ πρὸς Τιμόθεον πρώτη · αὕτη γὰρ ἐκ Λαοδικείας ἐγράφη . So also a scholion in Matthaei In accordance with the context—although Lange, Apost. Zeitalt. I. p. 211 ff., denounces the idea as a “fiction,” and Hofmann declares it as excluded by the very salutations with which the Colossians are charged to the Laodiceans—we can only understand it to refer to a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans, which not merely these, to whom it was written, but also the Colossians ( καὶ ὑμεῖς ) were to read, just as the letter to the Colossians was to be read not merely by the latter, but also in the Laodicean church. The mode of expression, τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας , is the very usual form of attraction in the case of prepositions with the article (comp. Mat_24:17; Luk_11:13), so that the two elements are therein comprehended: the letter to be found in Laodicea, and to be claimed or fetched from Laodicea to Colossae. See generally, Kühner, II. 1, p. 473 f., and ad Xen. Mem. iii. 6. 11, ad Anab. i. 1. 5; Stallbaum, ad Plat. Apol. p. 32 B; Winer, p. 584 [E. T. 784]. This letter written to the Laodiceans has, like various other letters of the apostle, been lost.[181] In opposition to the old opinion held by Marcion, and in modern times still favoured especially by such as hold the Epistle to the Ephesians to be a circular letter (Böhmer, Böttger, Bähr, Steiger, Anger, Reuss, Lange, Bleek, Dalmer, Sabatier, Hofmann, Hitzig, and others), that the Epistle to the Ephesians is to be understood as that referred to, see Introd. to Eph. § 1; Wieseler, Chronol. d. apost. Zeitalt. p. 435 ff.; Sartori, l.c.; Reiche, Comm. crit. ad Eph_1:1; Laurent in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. 1866, p. 131 ff. The hypothesis that the Epistle to Philemon is meant (so Wieseler, also Thiersch, Hist. Standp. p. 424; and some older expositors, see in Calovius and in Anger, p. 35) finds no confirmation either in the nature and contents of this private letter,[182] or in the expressions of our passage, which, according to the analogy of the context, presuppose a letter to the whole church and for it. Even the Epistle to the Hebrews (Schulthess, Stein, in his Comm. z. Luk., appendix) has been fallen upon in the vain search after the lost! According to Holtzmann, the words are intended to refer to the Epistle to the Ephesians, but καὶ τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικ . ἵνα κ . ὑμ . ἀναγν . is an insertion of the interpolator;[183] comp. Hitzig.
[179] See Anger, Beitr. zur histor. krit. Einl. in d. A. u. N. T. I.; über den Laodicenerbrief, Leip. 1843; Wieseler, de epistola Laodicena, Gott. 1844; and Chronol. d. apost. Zeit. p. 450 ff.; Sartori, Ueber d. Laodicenserbrief, Lüb. 1853.
[180] Hofmann needed, certainly, some such artificial expedient, wholly without warrant in the words of the text, to favour his presupposition that the Epistle to the Ephesians was meant, and that it was a circular letter. For a circular letter goes through the circuit destined for it of itself, and there is no occasion to ask or to send for it in order to procure, that ( ποιήσατε , ἵνα ) people may get it to read. But the effect of the forced separation of the second ἵνα from ποιήσατε is, that the words τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας are supposed only to affirm that the letter “will come” from Laodicea to Colossae, that it “will reach” them, and they ought to read it. In this way the text must be strained to suit what is à priori put into it. This applies also in opposition to Sahatier, l’ap. Paul, p. 201, who entirely ignores the connection with ποιήσατι (“la lettre qui vous viendra de Laod.”).
[181] The apocryphal letter to the Laodiceans, the Greek text of which, we may mention, originated with Elias Hutter (1599), who translated it from the Latin, may be seen in Fabricius, Codex apocr. p. 873 ff., Anger, p. 142 ff. The whole letter,—highly esteemed, on the suggestion of Gregory I., during the Middle Ages in the West, although prohibited in the second Council of Nice, 787 (to be found also in pre-Lutheran German Bibles),—which is doubtless a still later fabrication than that already rejected in the Canon Muratorianus, consists only of twenty verses, the author of which does not even play the part of a definite situation. Erasmus rightly characterizes it: “quae nihil habeat Pauli praeter voculas aliquot ex ceteris ejus epistolis mendicatas.”
[182] For, although it is in form addressed to several persons, and even to the church in the house (see on Phm_1:1-2), it is at any rate in substance clear, as Jerome already remarks: “Paulum tantummodo ad Philemonem scribere, et unum cum suo sermocinari.” Besides, it is to be inferred from the contents of the Colossian letter, that the Laodicean letter meant was also doctrinal in contents, and that the reciprocal use of the two letters had reference to this, in accordance with the essentially similar needs of the two neighbouring churches.
[183] Because, if we annex ἵνα to ποιήσατε , an awkward sense arises, “seeing that the Colossians can only cause that they get the letter to read, but not that they read it.” That is a subtlety, which does injustice to the popular style of the letter. But if we take ἵνα independently (as Hofmann does), then Holtzmann is further of opinion that the author of Eph_4:29; Eph_5:27; Eph_5:33, is immediately betrayed—an unfounded inference (comp. Winer, p. 295 [E. T. 396]), in which, besides, only the comparison of Eph_5:33 would be relevant, and that would he balanced by 2Co_8:7.
REMARK.
It is to be assumed that the Epistle to the Laodiceans was composed at the same time with that to the Colossians, inasmuch as the injunction that they should be mutually read in the churches can only have been founded on the similarity of the circumstances of the two churches as they stood at the time. Comp. Col_2:1, where the καὶ τῶν ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ , specially added to περὶ ὑμῶν , expresses the similar and simultaneous character of the need, and, when compared with our passage, is to be referred to the consciousness that the apostle was writing to both churches. And the expression τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας produces the impression that, when the Colossians received their letter, the Laodiceans would already have theirs. At the same time the expression is such, that Paul does not expressly inform, the Colossians that he had written also to the Laodiceans, but speaks of this letter as of something known to the readers, evidently reckoning upon the oral communication of Tychicus. The result, accordingly, seems as follows: Tychicus was the bearer of both letters, and travelled by way of Laodicea to Colossae, so that the letter for that church was already in Laodicea when the Colossians got theirs from the hands of Tychicus, and they were now in a position, according to the directions given in our passage, to have the Laodicean letter forwarded to them, and to send their own (after it was publicly read in their own church) to Laodicea.