Laodicener letter

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Laodikeia on Lycus : remains of one of the central streets of the ancient city

The Laodiceans or Laodiceans is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the Christian community in Laodicea (Laodikeia am Lykos) mentioned in the New Testament , but not passed down . In later centuries various scriptures appeared that claimed to be, or were believed to be, this letter.

It can no longer be determined whether Marcion still knew the original letter in the 2nd century. In any case, the “letter to the Laodiceans” handed down in some manuscripts of the Vulgate does not go back to the apostle.

The Pauline letter to the Laodiceans

In the final section of the Letter to the Colossians ( Col 4.16  EU ) the author orders that the congregation in Colossai should also read the letter “from Laodicea”. No (Pauline) laodicener letter has come down to us. Various possible causes for this have been discussed.

  1. It is the letter to the Ephesians . This view was already held in antiquity. a. by Hippolytus of Rome .
  2. It is the Philemon Letter (Edgar J. Goodspeed).
  3. The letter could have been lost. This must have happened very early because it was never included in the biblical canon .
  4. The letter was not from Paul. The Greek wording - the Colossians should also read "the [letter] from Laodikeia" (καὶ τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας kai ten ek Laodikeias ) - does not expressly say that this letter comes from Paul, even if this is due to the context of the text ( Col 4.13 –16  EU ) is interpreted in this way by most exegetes.

The Laodiceans at Marcion

The Muratori canon (7th century; going back to a Greek source at the end of the 2nd century) mentions that the canon of the early Christian theologian Marcion contained a letter to the Laodiceans, and attacks it as spurious. The forged letter is only used to spread Marcion's heresy . Marcion had drafted his own biblical canon , which completely excluded the Old Testament and only comprised a "purified" Gospel (which probably had a certain proximity to the Gospel according to Luke ) and the Pauline letters . The content of this letter is unknown. Some researchers (e.g. Adolf von Harnack ) consider it possible that the writing is identical to the Laodicener letter in the Vulgate described in the next section. Others, however, believe that this writing, should it go back to Marcion or one of his followers, should contain more Marcionite ideas.

The Laodiceans in the Vulgate

In the middle of the 6th century a Laodicener letter appears in some manuscripts of the Itala and especially the Vulgate within the Pauline writings. Already in the 4th century Hieronymus had stated that the letter would be rejected by everyone ("Legunt quidam et ad Laodicenses, sed ab omnibus exploditur"). This pseudepigraphic letter probably owes its origin to the note in Col 4.16.

In terms of content, the short letter brings nothing new compared to the well-known Pauline letters. It looks like a compilation of different messages going back to Pauline letters, so Gal 2,4  EU ; Phil 2,2.12f  EU ; 4,6.8f EU : Thanks for the Christian status of the readers, warning against false teachers, reference to Paul's imprisonment and admonitions to be faithful.

This letter to the Laodiceans was included under the name of Paul in all 17 German translations of the New Testament before the Luther Bible . Martin Luther judged the letter to be apocryphal and eliminated it from his canon. The Council of Trent , which defined the canon binding for the Roman Catholic Church in response to the criticism of the Reformation of the Bible , no longer allowed the controversial letter, so that it has generally no longer been perceived as a canonical book.

Laodicener letter from Jakob Lorber

The newly revealed Jakob Lorber (1800–1864) published the book The Laodicener Letter of the Apostle Paul in 1844 , which he claims to have received as a revelation .

literature

Web links

  • The Epistle to the Laodiceans , commentary, Latin text and English translation of the Vulgate letter at bible-researcher.com, accessed on March 14, 2012 (English)
  • Epistle to the Laodiceans , commentary and English translation of the Vulgate letter at reluctant-messenger.com, accessed on March 14, 2012 (English)

Remarks

  1. ↑ So z. E.g. Adolf Schlatter: The letters to the Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon, Calw 1963, p. 313.William MacDonald: Commentary on the New Testament, CLV: Bielefeld 1997, p. 1024.
  2. ↑ Klaus Berger, Christiane Nord: The New Testament and early Christian writings. Insel, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-458-17249-1 , p. 1230.
  3. ↑ Adolf von Harnack: Marcion: The gospel of the foreign god. 2nd Edition. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1924 ( online ( memento of the original from October 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hschamberlain.net
  4. ^ Bart D. Ehrman : Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-514183-0 , pp. 213-215 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ^ Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus: De viris illustribus , chap. 5, quoted from: Karl August Credner : Introduction to the New Testament, Volume 1. Verlag der Buchh. des Waisenhauses, 1836, p. 333 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  6. ^ German translation in: Klaus Berger, Christiane Nord: The New Testament and early Christian writings. Insel, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2005, p. 1231.
  7. ↑ Helmut Zander : The Word of God has a very earthly story: How the Bible came into being (Review of: Konrad Schmid , Jens Schröter : The Origin of the Bible. From the First Texts to the Holy Scriptures. Munich 2019). In: NZZ , October 27, 2019, accessed on November 2, 2019.
  8. ↑ Jakob Lorber: The Laodicener letter of the Apostle Paul . 5th edition. Lorber Verlag, Bietigheim o. J. [1980], ISBN 3-87495-124-3 ( online ).