69 Cf. Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.17.
67P. N. Harrison suggested that it was lost in the earthquake of A.D. 60 (see p. 6 above). Then, he went on, thirty years later Onesimus composed the document which has come down to us as the letter to the Ephesians (a view which Harrison took over from E. J. Goodspeed and J. Knox) and, knowing that Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans was lost beyond recall, transferred its title to this new document which was designed to replace it. The omission of the original reference to Laodicea in early manuscripts (without, at first, any attempt to substitute another place-name) “may well have been due to the waning reputation of Laodicea” to which witness is borne in Rev. 3:15-19 (Paulines and Pastorals [London, 1964], p. 55).
68The first scholar of comparatively modern times to make this identification was John Mill in his Prolegomena (1707); see A. Fox, John Mill and Richard Bentley (Oxford, 1954), p. 85. Cf. also J. B. Lightfoot, ad loc; A. von Harnack, “Die Adresse des Epheserbriefes des Paulus,” SAB (1910), pp. 696-709; J. Rutherfurd, St. Paul’s Epistles to Colossae and Laodicea (Edinburgh, 1908); J. Knabenbauer, Commentarius in S. Pauli Apostoli Epístolas, 4 (Paris, 1912), 7-8; B. W. Bacon, “St. Paul to the Laodiceans,” Expositor, series 8, 17 (1919), 19-35; G. B. Caird, ad loc. (see pp. 230-31 below).
69Cf. Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.17.
70Cf. A. Souter, The Text and Canon of the New Testament (London, 21954), p. 152.
71Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester, 1962), pp. 229-30.