Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans - analogy to Vulgate Prologue in Fuldensis

[Steven Avery]

Philip Tite

Ehrman (Harnack, Speyer, et al)

CARM
https://forums.carm.org/threads/the-epistle-to-the-laodiceans-and-jerome’s-prologue.10217/

 

[Steven Avery]

https://forums.carm.org/threads/ful...still-unanswered-question.20865/#post-1610070

For those who do know what the Epistle to the Laodiceans, which is the center of this discussion, is, I offer the text that appears in M.R. James's Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1924) pages 478-480.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000055158169&seq=514

Every line is copied from a line in one or another canonical Pauline epistle. The closest to an exception is the very first line, which is copied from Galatians 1:1, except where Gal 1:1 says "the brethren that are at Galatia", Loadicean says "the brethren that are at Laodicea". James says "It is not easy to imagine a more feably constructed cento of Pauline phrases." It evidently found credence (only) because Paul made reference to having sent a letter to Laodicea in Colosseans 4:16. I suppose this fabricated epistle was written at some date after the settling of the canonical collection of Paul's letters. Its earliest known appearance is in the Latin Codex Fuldensis (ca. 546), a manuscript which has many significant departures from the Greek text.

 

[Steven Avery]

Every line can be identified as coming from a canonical Pauline epistle. New Testament Apocrypha by Edgar Hennecke, ed. by Wm. Schnelmelcher (1965) provides the citations for every line.

Thanks!

New Testament Apocrypha: Writings relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and related subjects (2003)
2. The Epistle to the Laodiceans
Wilhelm Schneemelcher
https://books.google.com/books?id=v6IqqnEoN3QC&pg=PA45

p. 45-46 has the cross reference

 

[Steven Avery]

BCHF
The epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1936

CARM
https://forums.carm.org/threads/the...d-jerome’s-prologue.10217/page-3#post-1611561
A bit more about the Epistle to the Laodiceans. In The Text and Canon of the New Testament (1913 London, Duckworth, page 193), the scholar Alexander Souter says this:

Not later than the fourth century a forger, misunderstanding the passage Col. iv 16, composed a (Latin?) epistle as from St. Paul to the church at Laodicea. It is a cento from the genuine Epistles. A large number of Latin manuscriptrs of the Epistles contain it. It is first found in the Pseudo-Augustinian Speculum [a work probably not later than the beginning of the fifth century, written in Spain or North Africa, and wrongly attributed to St. Augustine], was recognized as genuine, but not canonical, by Gregory the Great, and was early translated into English. It is recognized by Alfric, Abbot of Cerne (989 AD), and finds a place in various early Bibles of modern European peoples.

Souter follows this with the Latin text of Laodiceans. Souter also cites as a resource, B.F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, which has an annotated Latin text, and in turn, references J.B. Lightfoot's edition of Colossians for a text with "a very complete apparatus".

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwpj1y&seq=290

https://forums.carm.org/threads/the...d-jerome’s-prologue.10217/page-3#post-1612406
Here is a fine online resource.
(I have not looked up Westcott and Lightfoot.)

The Epistle of Paul to the Laodecians
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1936

ADDED

The epistle to the Laodiceans.

According to Colossians 4.16, the apostle Paul wrote an epistle to the church in Laodicea.

web.archive.org

 

[Steven Avery]

CARM

One moment, please...

Souter also cites as a resource, B.F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, which has an annotated Latin text, and in turn, references J.B. Lightfoot's edition of Colossians for a text with "a very complete apparatus".

A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament,
Brooke Foss Westcott

Muratorian Canon - p. 197
https://books.google.com/books?id=a50CAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA197

p. 426-434
Medieval scholars on the Epistle of Laodicea and early history

p. 542-546
Appendix E - The Epistle to the Laodiceans
Information and Latin

===========================


The Lightfoot reference is in the 1896 edition - p. 591
https://books.google.com/books?id=sjYRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA591
1 The Epistle has been printed with a very complete apparatus by Bp Lightfoot, Colossians, pp. 285 ff.

=======

Nobody knows who worked up the Epistle to the Laodiceans, but it apparently was a Latin author and before the early fourth century.
Somehow Laodiceans got into the Latin version of the NT, without any Greek original, and stayed there until well into late medieval times, when the Greek original of the NT started getting serious attention (e.g., Luther's German translation).

Unfortunately for me, Avery has used the third edition (1870) of Westcott's History of the Canon, and I have the sixth edition (1889), which has different page numbers. The link I gave for J.B. Lightfoot's Colossians, namely ....
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwpj1y&seq=290
.... if followed to page 287 will be a thoroughly annotated Latin text of Laodiceans.

 

[Steven Avery]

...Every line is copied from a line in one or another canonical Pauline epistle. The closest to an exception is the very first line, which is copied from Galatians 1:1, except where Gal 1:1 says "the brethren that are at Galatia", Loadicean says "the brethren that are at Laodicea". ....

(that from message #12)
I erred, The last verse of Laodiceans is also an alteration of its source, namely Col 4.16, which twice mentions Laodicea, and in the fake Epistle these are replaced with mentions of Colossae.

So, except for substitution of city names in both the first and the last line, every line of the Epistle to the Laodiceans is a straight copy of a line from one or another canonical epistle (most often Philippians).