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"The epistle presents no textual questions of importance,” wrote Marvin R. Vincent almost a century ago. 10 At one level, nothing that has happened since then disturbs this verdict. Thus in the entire epistle the UBS3 text has only one reading with a D rating (whether to read "the word,” "the word of God,” or "the word of the Lord” in Phil. 1:14). There is no reason for doubting that we have the letter substantially as Paul wrote it. Text-critical study, however, has become far more sophisticated since Vincent’s day, so that even variants judged relatively minor when taken in isolation begin to assume importance as part of an exegetical and textual tradition as soon as they are placed within the pattern of variations of a MS or a text type. Recent study has carefully classified the 112 variants (not itself an exhaustive list) reported in NA26. 11
