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Phoebe's Letter of Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Edgar J. Goodspeed
Affiliation:
Los Angeles, California.

Extract

In a recent issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, in Manchester (XXI, 1948, pp. 224–40), Professor T. W. Manson writes of “St. Paul's Letter to the Romans — and Others,” arguing that Paul must have sent what we know as Romans out in two forms, one, our chapters 1–15, to Rome; the other, the same, with the addition of chapter 16, which would introduce Phoebe, to the church at Ephesus. Professor Manson is of course well aware of the perplexing problem of the rightful place of the great doxology, 16:25–27, which some manuscripts place at the end of chapter 14, most at the end of chapter 16, but the oldest manuscript, the P46, a papyrus from the early third century, places at the end of chapter 15. This location is in striking accord with the internal evidence, and confirms the theory advanced by David Schulz, more than a hundred years ago, that chapter 16 is no part of Romans, but part of a separate letter to Ephesus. Professor Dodd, however, concludes that chapter 16 is an integral part of the Letter to the Romans, inasmuch as “the burden of proof rests upon those who would set aside the tradition in favor of the conjecture,” p. 237.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1951

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