Epistle to the Laodiceans
Chester
Epistle to the Laodiceans
Did you know that for centuries Bibles used to contain a small Epistle
from Paul to the Laodiceans? It is referenced in Colossians 4 vers 16.
After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the
church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from
Laodicea. (Colosse and Laodicea are less than fifteen miles apart.)
The oldest known Bible copy of this epistle is in the Fulda manuscript
written for Victor of Capua in 546. It is mentioned by various writers
from the fourth century onwards, notably by Gregory the Great, to whose
influence may ultimately be due the frequent occurrence of it in Bibles
written in England; for it is commoner in English Bibles than in others.
However this epistle is not without controversy. There is no evidence of
a Greek text. The epistle appears in more than 100 manuscripts of the
Latin Vulgate (including the oldest, the celebrated codex Fuldensis, 546
CE), as well as in manuscripts of early Albigensian, Bohemian, English,
and Flemish versions. At the close of the 10th century Aelfric, a monk
in Dorset, wrote a treatise in Anglo-Saxon on the Old and New
Testaments, in which he states that the apostle Paul wrote 15 Epistles.
In his enumeration of them he place Laodiceans after Philemon. About
1165 CE John of Salisbury, writing about the canon to Henry count of
Champagne (Epist. 209), acknowledges that 'it is the common, indeed
almost universal, opinion that there are only 14 Epistles of Paul ...
But the 15th is that which is written to the church of the Laodiceans'.
The Epistle to the Laodiceans is included in all 18 German Bibles
printed prior to Luther's translation, beginning with the first German
Bible, issued by Johann Mental at Strassburg in 1488. In these the
Pauline Epistles, with the Epistle to the Hebrews, immediately follow
the Gospels, with Laodiceans standing between Galatians and Ephesians.
In the first Czech (Bohemian) Bible, published at Prague in 1488 and
reprinted several times in the 16th and 17th centuries, Laodiceans
follows Colossians and precedes I Thessalonians.
It was not until the Council of Florence (1439-43) that the See of Rome
delivered for the first time a categorical opinion on the Scriptural
canon. In the list of 27 books of the New Testament there are 14 Pauline
Epistles, that to the Hebrews being last, with the book of Acts coming
immediately before the Revelation of John. The Epistle to the Laodiceans
is noteably absent.
This Epistle to the Laodiceans has been highly esteemed by several
learned men of the church of Rome and others, including the Quakers, who
have printed a translation and plead for it as canon. However there are
several scholars who write it off as a forgery. Their strongest
objection being no surviving Greek text.
Sixtus Senensis mentions two manuscripts, the one in the Sorbonne
Library at Paris, which is a very ancient copy, and the other in the
Library of Joannes a Viridario, at Padmus, which he transcribed and
published, and which is the authority for the translation below.
(There is also a very old translation of this Epistle in the British
Museum, among the Harleian MSS., Cod. 1212.)
Read this epistle for yourself and decide if you think it is forgery or
the words of Paul.
Epistle to the Laodiceans
http://reluctant-messenger.com/epistle-laodiceans.htm
Chester
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