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16. ἐν πάσαις ἐπιστολαῖς. πάσαις ταῖς is read by אKLP: ABC omit the article, and are followed by Westcott and Hort. The phrase reads very awkwardly without it. There is no great difference in sense, whether we read “in all letters” or “in all his letters.”
ἐν αἷς ἐστὶν δυσνόητά τινα κ.τ.λ. Not specially referring to the subject of μακροθυμία, nor to the end of the world, but, generally, to those parts of Pauline teaching which had been exaggerated or misrepresented, e.g. about things offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8 etc.): utterances about the Law which might form an excuse for men to say that they were not bound by the Decalogue (Rom 3:20; Rom 7:7-11 etc.): of becoming all things to all men: and so on.
ὡς καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς γραφάς. If the phrase occurred in a later document, we should not hesitate to render it “the rest of the Scriptures” and to take it as including both O.T. and N.T. Scriptures. But the fact that we have here a writing under the name of an Apostle, and of early date, causes a difficulty. We shall be overstating the case if we say that the writer here places Paul’s Epistles exactly on a level with the O.T. and implies the existence of a body of Christian Scriptures that were so regarded: but it is fair to say that he knows of the Pauline Epistles as writings read to Christian congregations and on the way to be put upon the level of Canonical Scripture. Cf. p. xxviii.