Much ink has been spilled, to little purpose,
endeavoring to determine what this “letter from Laodicea” (την εκ
Λαοδικειας) actually
was: (a) several of the early church
Fathers (Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret) together with many
other later writers including Beza supposed this to have been a letter from
Laodicea to Paul. But by far the most likely meaning of the Phrase is that the
Colossians were to procure the letter from Laodicea (so Robertson, Grammar, 600, BDF, para. 437), an
interpretation clearly supported by the context (so Dibelius-Greeven, 52, who
considers the expression is from the standpoint of the Colossians and note
Abbott’s comments, 304, 305: ινα και υμεις, “that you too,” corresponds to the previous
ινα και, “that
also,” which refers to the Laodiceans reading the Colossians’ letter; the
parallelism implies that the Laodiceans, like the Colossians, will have
received a letter, cf. Moule 138, Bruce, 310, Loymeyer, 170, Anderson, JBL 85 [1966] 436, 437, Lohse, 174, 175,
Martin, NCB, 138, and Schweizer,
179). (b) Marcion identified this
letter with the Epistle to the Ephesians (a connection made in 1707 by John Mill
and which received abundant support from Lightfoot, 272-98; note also J.
Rutherford, “St Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans,” ExpTim 19 [1907-08] 311-14). However, Ephesians was almost certainly
written after Colossians, and not simply to one church in the province of Asia.
If it was written after Colossians, then it is unlikely to have been mentioned
in Colossians, unless 4:6 is a later addition but of this there is no evidence
(Marcion’s Apostolic Canon gave the title “To the Laodiceans” to the Epistle to
the Ephesians, perhaps because it lacked the words “at Ephesus” in the first
verse and he found what appeared to be a pointer to its destination in Col. 4:16,
so Bruce, 310, 311, following Souter). (c)
The Epistle to Philemon has been identified with the “epistles from Laodicea”
(J. Knox, Philemon among the Letters of
Paul, 2nd ed. [London: Collins, 1960] 38-47), but this letter was
private. . . and the delicacy of its
appeal would be destroyed if Paul directed it to be read in public. Further,
Philemon lived at Colossae (according to Col 4:9 Onesimus is a slave of
Philemon at Colossae) not Laodicea. (d)
No extant Pauline letter seems adequately to fit the description and so we are
left with the conclusion that the letter to the Laodiceans has not survived . .
. (Peter T. O'Brien, Colossians, Philemon
[Word Biblical Commentary 44; Milton Keynes: Word Books, 1987], 257-58)