The life and work of St. Paul

KPISTLE8 OP THE CAPTIVITY. 591
fantastic hypothesis that they were sent from Caesarea. 1 If any confirmation
for this certain tradition were required, it would be found, as far as the
Epistle to the Philippians is concerned, in the salutation which St. Paul sends
from the converts in " Caesar's household." As regards the other three
Epistles it is sufficient to say that internal evidence conclusively proves that
all three were written at the same time, as they were despatched by the same
messengers, and that whereas during his Caesarean imprisonment St. Paul was
looking forward to visit Rome, 2 he is, at the time of writing these letters,
looking forward to visit, first Macedonia, then Colossae. 8 Further than this,
the allusions in these Epistles show that, prisoner though he was, he was
inabled to exercise a powerful influence for the spread of the Gospel in a city
4
of the highest importance. Meyer, indeed with that hypercritical ingenuity
which, like vaulting ambition, so constantly overleaps itself and falls on the
other side argues that Onesimus is more likely to have fled from Colossae to
Caesarea than to Rome an ; argument of which we can only say that Caesarea
a mere Procuratorial residence full of Jews would be about the very last
town which any one would naturally have dreamt of suggesting as a likely
hiding-place for a runaway Asiatic slave. Meyer might as reasonably argue
that a London pickpocket would be more likely to hide himself at Biarritz than
at New York. His other arguments derived from the non-mention of the
name of Onesimus in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and the incidental expression
" you also" in that letter, are too trivial for serious discussion.
The question next arises, in what order these Epistles were written ; and
the primd fade argument that the Epistle to the Philippians seems to have
been written before the approaching crisis of his trial has been taken as a
sufficient proof that it was written after the other three. On the other hand,
there is the same expectation of approaching release in the Epistle to Phile-
mon, so that on this circumstance no conclusion can be built. The notion
that this Epistle shows traces of deeper depression than the others, and that
this may be accounted for by the change wrought in his affairs through the
influence of Tigellinus and Poppaea, is partly unsupported by fact, since a
spiiit of holy joy is the very key-note of the Epistle ; and partly inconsistent
with itself, since, if the hostile influences were at work at all appreciably, they
were quite as much so within a few months after Paul's Roman imprisonment
began, as they were at its close,6 It is true that the letter could not have been
Procem ad Epist. ad Eph., &c. If I do not mention Oeder's theory (?) that the Epistle to
the Philippians was written from Corinth (see Schenkel, Der Brief an die Philippier,
p. 110), it ia because " it is not worth while," as Baur
"
says, to discuss vague hypotheses
which have no support in history, and no coherence in themselves."
1 I can only express my surprise that this theory should have commended itself not
only to Schula and Schneckenburger, but even to Holtzmann, Keuss, Schenkel, and
Meyer.
2 Acts xix, 21 ; xsaii 11. Phil. iL 24 ; Philem. 22,
Eph. vi. 19, 20 ; Col. iv. 3, 4.
8 The death of Burrus and the appointment of Tigellinus took place very early In
A.D. 62, some nine months after St. Paul's arrival. Nero's marriage with Fopprea took
place about the time, and indeed bears very little on the matter, since her influence aa
Nero's mistress was probably even greater than that which she enjoyed as hia wife,