Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LAODICEANS, LETTER TO THE

The now lost letter that Paul exhorts the church of Colossae to obtain from Laodicea (Col. 4:16). “The Letter to the Laodiceans” also refers to a short, pseudonymous, apocryphal letter which is attributed to Paul and which purports to be the letter of Col. 4:16. The pseudonymous letter is a collection of phrases and sentences from the canonical Pauline letters, particularly Philippians (Laod. 8, cf. Phil. 1:21; Laod. 9, cf. Phil. 2:2). There is no apparent motivation for producing this letter other than to supply the missing letter of the Pauline corpus. The pseudonymous letter was written by the 4th century and was known by Theodore of Mopsuestia and Jerome. It is not found in Greek manuscripts of the NT, but by the 6th century it was found in a large number of medieval Latin manuscripts; nothing in its contents suggests that it was the Letter to the Laodiceans mentioned in the Muratorian Canon (2nd century) purported to have been written to support the Marcion heresy. The letter was considered fraudulent by the Eastern Church as early as the 4th century, but the Western Church considered it authentic until the Second Council of Nicaea (787).

Bibliography. W. Schneemelcher, “The Epistle to the Laodiceans,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson, rev. ed., 2 (Louisville, 1992), 42-46.

Duane F. Watson

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LAODICEANS, LETTER TO THE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)