The life and work of St. Paul

692 THE LIFE AND WOKK OF ST. PAUL,
written during the earliest months of the captivity at Rome, because time
must be allowed for the news of Paul's arrival there to have reached the
Philippians ; for the despatch of Epaphroditus with their contributions ; for
his illness at Rome ; for the arrival of intelligence] to that effect at Philippi ;
and for the return of their expressions of sorrow and sympathy. 1 Now a
journey from Rome to Philippi a distance of seven hundred miles would,
under ordinary circumstances, occupy about a month, and as we do not suppose
that any of those letters were written during the first year of the
imprisonment, ample time is allowed for these journeys, and no objection
whatever to the traditional priority of the Epistle to the Philippians can be
raised on this score.
Still less can any argument be urged from the absence of greetings from
Luke and Aristarchus, or from the allusion to Timothy as the sole exception to
the general selfishness which the Apostle was grieved to mark in those around
him. The presence of particular names in the greetings of any letter may
furnish a probable or even positive argument as to its date, but their absence
is an indication of the most uncertain character. It needs no more than the
commonest everyday experience to prove the utter fallaciousness of the
"
and we know far too little of the incessant missions
" argument from silence ;
and movements, from church to church, and continent to continent, of the
companions of St. Paul, to be able in any way to build upon the non-occurrence
of the name of any one of them. Since, therefore, there are no adequate
arguments against regarding the Epistle to the Philippians as the earliest of
the four Epistles of the Captivity although it may have been written only a
few months before the other three full weight may be given to the internal
evidence, which is in favour of that supposition. That internal evidence con-
sists in the general resemblance of this Epistle to those of the earlier group
especially to the Epistle to the Romans which enables us to regard it as an
intermediate link between the Epistles of the Captivity and those of the third
Apostolic journey. 2 To the Epistle to the Romans it presents many and
close parallels in thought and language, while its general tone and spirit, its
1 Dr. Lightfoot (Philipp. p. 34) thinks that Aristarchus may have left St. Paul at
Myra, and may have conveyed to Philippi the news of St. Paul's journey to Rome, as he
was on his way home to Thessalonica ; but I can see no sufficient reason for believing that
Aristarchus, who was in some sense St. Paul's "fellow-prisoner" at Rome (Col. iv. 10),
went home from Adramyttium (Acts xxvii. 2). In any case he could only have taken the
news that St. Paul was on his way to Rome, not that he had arrived.
3
Lightfoot, Philippians, pp. 40 45, e.g.
PHILIPPIANS. ROMANS.
PHILIPPIANS. ROMANS.
i. 3, 4, 7, 8 ... i. 811
iii. 4, 5 . ... xi. 1
L10 ii. 18
iii. 9 x. 3
ii. 8, 9, 10, 11
ii. 4
...
...
adv. 9, 11
xii. 10
iii. 21
iii. 19
viii. 29
xvi. 18.
2 Tim. iv. 6, x-atpbs Ti)S ft^ a>/aAv c^eaTTj/cec. Phil. ii. 17, i Kal