[626]. So at least I find the number given in my notes. But in Bentl. Crit. Sacr. p. xxxvii it is 3561.
[627]. The epistle has been critically edited by Anger Laodicenerbrief p. 155 sq. and Westcott Canon App. E. p. 572. I have already expressed my obligations to both these writers for their collations of MSS.
In the apparatus of various readings, which is subjoined to the epistle, I have not attempted to give such minute differences of spelling as e and ae, or c and t (Laodicia, Laoditia), nor is the punctuation of the MSS noted.
[628]. e.g. Anger Laodicenerbrief p. 142 sq., Westcott Canon p. 454 sq. (ed. 4). Erasmus asks boldly, ‘Qui factum est ut hæc epistola apud Latinos extet, cum nullus sit apud Græcos, ne veterum quidem, qui testetur eam a se lectam?’ The accuracy of this statement will be tested presently.
[629]. Anger, p. 165.
[630]. Canon Murat. p. 47 (ed. Tregelles). The passage stands in the MS, ‘Fertur etiam ad Laudecenses alia ad Alexandrinos Pauli nomine fincte ad heresem Marcionis et alia plura quæ in catholicam eclesiam recepi non potest.’ There is obviously some corruption in the text. One very simple emendation is the repetition of ‘alia’, so that the words would run ‘ad Laudicenses alia, alia ad Alexandrinos’. In this case fincte (= finctæ) might refer to the two epistles first mentioned, and the Latin would construe intelligibly. The writing described as ‘ad Laodicenses alia’ might then be the Epistle to the Ephesians under its Marcionite title, the writer probably not having any personal knowledge of it, but supposing from its name that it was a different and a forged writing. But what can then be the meaning of ‘alia ad Alexandrinos’? Is it, as some have thought, the Epistle to the Hebrews? But this could not under any circumstances be described as ‘fincta ad hæresem Marcionis’, even though we should strain the meaning of the preposition and interpret the words ‘against the heresy of Marcion’. And again our knowledge of Marcion’s Canon is far too full to admit the hypothesis that it included a spurious Epistle to the Alexandrians, of which no notice is elsewhere preserved. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that there is a hiatus here, as in other places of this fragment, probably after ‘Pauli nomine’; and ‘finctæ’ will then refer not to the two epistles named before, but to the mutilated epistles of Marcion’s Canon which he had ‘tampered with to adapt them to his heresy’. In this case the letter ‘ad Laudicenses’ may refer to our apocryphal epistle or to some earlier forgery.
[631]. See the introduction to the Epistle to the Ephesians.
[632]. Timotheus, who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 511, while still a presbyter, includes in a list of apocryphal works forged by the Manicheans ἡ πεντεκαιδεκάτη [i.e. τοῦ Παύλου] πρὸς Λαοδικεῖς ἐπιστολή, Meurse p. 117 (quoted by Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T. I.. p. 139). Anger (p. 27) suggests that there is a confusion of the Marcionites and Manicheans here. I am disposed to think that Timotheus recklessly credits the Manicheans with several forgeries of which they were innocent, among others with our apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans. Still it is possible that there was another Laodicean Epistle forged by these heretics to support their peculiar tenets.
[633]. Vir. Ill. 5 (II. p. 840) ‘Legunt quidam et ad Laodicenses, sed ab omnibus exploditur’.