matured form.^1145 But Ephesians has likewise striking affinities in thought and language with Romans
in the doctrine of justification (comp. Eph. 2:8), and with Romans 12 and 1 Cor. 12 and 1 Cor. 14)
in the doctrine of the church. As to the heresy, Paul had predicted its rise in Asia Minor several
years before in his farewell to the Ephesian elders. And, finally, the grateful and joyful tone of
Philippians falls in most naturally with the lofty and glorious conception of the church of Christ as
presented in Ephesians.§ 94. The Epistle to the Colossians.
The Churches in Phrygia.
The cities of Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis are mentioned together as seats of Christian
churches in the closing chapter of Colossians, and the Epistle may be considered as being addressed
to all, for the apostle directs that it be read also in the churches of the Laodiceans (Col. 4:13–16).
They were situated within a few miles of each other in the valley of the Lycus (a tributary of the
Maeander) in Phrygia on the borders of Lydia, and belonged, under the Roman rule, to the
proconsular province of Asia Minor.
Laodicea was the most important of the three, and enjoyed metropolitan rank; she was
destroyed by a disastrous earthquake a.d. 61 or 65, but rebuilt from her own resources without the
customary aid from Rome.^1146 The church of Laodicea is the last of the seven churches addressed
in the Apocalypse (Rev. 3:14–22), and is described as rich and proud and lukewarm. It harbored
in the middle of the fourth century (after 344) a council which passed an important act on the canon,
forbidding the public reading of any but "the canonical books of the New and Old Testaments" (the
list of these books is a later addition), a prohibition which was confirmed and adopted by later
councils in the East and the West.
Hierapolis was a famous watering-place, surrounded by beautiful scenery,^1147 and the
birthplace of the lame slave Epictetus, who, with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, ranks among the
first heathen moralists, and so closely resembles the lofty maxims of the New Testament that some
writers have assumed, though without historic foundation, a passing acquaintance between him
and Paul or his pupil Epaphras of Colossae.^1148 The church of Hierapolis figures in the post-apostolic
age as the bishopric of Papias (a friend of Polycarp) and Apollinaris.(^1145) So Lightfoot (p. 31), followed by Farrar (II. 417). Ewald likewise puts Philippianas before Colossians, but denies the
genuineuess of Ephesians. Bleek regards the data as insufficient to decide the chronological order. See his Einleitung, p. 461,
and his posthumous Lectures on Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, published 1865, p. 7.
(^1146) The earthquake took place, according to Tacitus (Ann, XIV. 27), in the seventh, according to Eusebius (Chron., Ol.210, 4),
in the tenth year of Nero’s reign, and extended also to Hierapolis and Colossae.
(^1147) In a Greek inscription, published by Boeckh and quoted by Lightfoot, Hierapolis is thus apostrophized:
"Hail, fairest soil in all broad Asia’s realm;
Hail, golden city, nymph divine, bedeck’d
With flowing rills, thy jewels."
(^1148) Epictetus ( Ἐπίκτητος), a slave and then a freedman of Epaphroditus (who was himself a freedman of Nero), was considerably
younger than Paul, and taught first at Rome, and, after the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, at Nicopolis in Epirus,
where his discourses (Enchiridion) were taken down by Arrian. For, like Socrates, he himself wrote nothing. A meeting with
Paul or Epaphras would " solve more than one riddle," as Lightfoot says. But he shows no trace of a knowledge of Christianity
any more than Seneca, whose correspondence with Paul is spurious, though both lived at Rome under Nero. Marcus Aurelius,
a century later, persecuted the Christians and alludes to them only once in his Meditations (XI. 3), where he traces their heroic
A.D. 1-100.