598 NEW TESTAMENT 



question whether this is really one letter or a collection of parts of 

 several letters moulded into the form of a single letter, not by the 

 writer himself, but by a considerably later editor or scribe; respect- 

 ing Romans, the question of its integrity, especially as pertains to 

 the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters. But however these problems 

 may eventually be solved, we are still in possession of that most 

 important advantage in any field of study a foundation on which 

 to build, a base-line from which to triangulate the region of greater 

 or less uncertainty. 



But in so stating the matter we understate the positive element 

 of the situation. For as is well known, it has gradually come to 

 be recognized that the kind of evidence which establishes the genuine- 

 ness of Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and Romans exists 

 also in the case of First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. 

 The present attitude of scholarship is represented, not by the phrase 

 "the four undisputed letters of Paul," but rather by the expres- 

 sion "the generally accepted letters of Paul." That there is entire 

 unanimity on this point, even among those who reject Van Manen's 

 position, is not here affirmed. There are problems still to be solved 

 respecting First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon, even as 

 there are in respect to Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. But 

 the question of their genuineness can no longer be counted among 

 the acute problems of New Testament study. 



Respecting Second Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians, 

 the situation is somewhat different. The trend of opinion is very 

 strongly toward the acceptance of Colossians, in the main at least, 

 as a real letter of the apostle himself, any differences of point of 

 view between it and the other letters reflecting the progress of the 

 apostle's own thinking under the influence of contact with different 

 types of thought in the Grseco-Roman world, rather than the thought 

 of a period subsequent to that of the life of Paul. That Ephesians 

 is not in the strictest sense a letter, but a sermon or theological essay, 

 cast somewhat in the form of a literary epistle, and that only as such 

 can it be regarded as a genuine letter of Paul, is now generally ad- 

 mitted. The apostle cannot have written such a letter specifically 

 to the Ephesian church. The impersonality of its tone can be 

 accounted for only by recognizing its semi-literary character. The 

 view that the author intended it to pass as a letter of the apostle to 

 Ephesus involves the consequence that authorship and destination 

 are both a literary fiction. The question, therefore, is: Which is 

 more probable, that the apostle put forth a similar letter intended for 

 the reading of a group of churches, following the same general lines 

 of thought which the situation in Colossae had led him to adopt in 

 writing to the church in that place, or that a Christian of the post- 

 apostolic age availed himself of the epistle to the Colossians to build 



