The Unity of the Letter
The Unity of the Letter
Until comparatively recent times there has not been much discussion of the unity of Philippians. Some awkward sequences have been noticed, but these have been accepted as what we can expect in a dictated letter from a man like Paul. But in recent days there has been a tendency to see two or even three letters in what had been taken as a unity (Childs dates this tendency from 1950). A number of considerations are urged in support of the hypothesis.
1. In some places the break in sense is quite marked, notably at Phil. 3:1 and 4:9. There is little doubt that the author was Paul, but there has been much discussion of whether we are confronted with one letter composed as such, or a number of Paul’s writings that have been joined together. Thus 3:1 appears to be leading into the end of a letter, but 3:2 goes off on a warning against false teachers; is it perhaps part of another letter? The transition from 4:9 to 4:10 also seems to many to require an explanation.
2. Epaphroditus is reported as very ill in Phil. 2:25-30, but there is no indication of this when the same man is referred to in 4:18. It is argued that there has been a change in his health, and that change presupposes a lapse of time.
3. Paul’s opponents are not the same throughout the letter. There is a sharp, even merciless, attack on false teachers in Phil. 3:2-4, but nothing in the preceding part of the letter prepares us for anything like this. The conclusion is drawn that fragments from more than one letter have been combined. 23
4. Some scholars discern fragments in Phil. 4:1-9, 20-23. Both of these could be construed as appropriate ends of original letters.
5. Polycarp speaks of Paul as having written "epistles” to the Philippians (Phil. 3.2). This is evidence that more than one such letter was written, and it therefore opens the way for the hypothesis that some have been combined in our present Philippians.
Evidence of this sort leads a number of scholars to the conclusion that parts of two or perhaps three letters were put together by an unknown hand. 24 It is not uncommon to see the first letter as Phil. 4:10-20 (thanks for the Philippians’ gift), a second as 1:1 -3:1; 4:4-7, 21-23 (warning against division), and a third as 3:2-4:3, 8-9 (attack on false teachers).
But the evidence is far from compelling. Sudden breaks in sense are not altogether unknown in Paul (note the several breaks in Rom. 16:16-27), and those in Philippians are no greater than we might expect in a letter put together by this writer. The argument demands much more consistency in following a theme than Paul (or for that matter anyone else) always shows. It is better to see this as one letter with the abrupt changes of subject that we all tend to introduce from time to time. The references to Epaphroditus are quite in order; there is no reason why the man’s illness should be brought up every time he is mentioned. That a number of things in chapter 4 might be suitably used toward the end of a letter does not mean that any of them was deliberately intended to be so used. And the letters of which Polycarp speaks were not necessarily combined. We need suppose no more than that only one of them survives. (Most of Paul’s correspondence has surely been lost; we cannot think that a man who could write so powerfully wrote no more than thirteen letters throughout the whole of his ministry.) 25