1.B 06. Making the Collection

Making the Collection Can we go on to say where the collection was made and issued? There are certain indications which point strongly to Ephesus. It was there that Paul spent three years, longer than in any other place in the days of his freedom. It was there that Revelation with its seven letters was published; it was there that the Johannine letters with their knowledge of Paul were published; it was in Asia Minor that the Ignatian collection was made; and it is there that references to the letters of Paul as a collection appear. Ephesus was in any event what Harnack called "the second fulcrum of Christianity", Antioch being die first. Goodspeed and Mitton both regard Ephesians as a letter produced by a disciple of Paul, who was soaked in the Pauline letters and especially in Colossians, as a preface and introduction to that collection. That may or may not be so; ourselves we very much doubt it; but it is in any event not an essential part of the theory. There is good evidence that it was in Ephesus, about A.D. 90, consequent upon the publication of Acts, that the Pauline letters were collected and published.

One last question arises Can we say who was the moving figure behind this collection? Once again Goodspeed and Knox have a suggestion to make. True, we are now in the realm of conjecture, if not of imaginative reconstruction, but it is a suggestion of such interest and charm that it is more than worth while to look at it.

There is one letter in Paul’s collection which stands out as different from all the others and that is the letter to Philemon. It is a little personal note, quite different from the others. As long ago as Jerome there were those who were saying that it was so trivial that it was quite out of place. It is certainly true that anyone must wonder how it succeeded in gaining an entry into the New Testament at all, and why it was included in the collection. For its inclusion there must be a reason. John Knox writes: "The more anomalous the presence of Philemon in the collection appears, the more significant it must be. The more grounds which can be cited for its exclusion, the more important must have been the ground upon which it was actually included. The very fact that Philemon seems so out of place is evidence that the original editors had very good reason for including it. We are convinced that if we knew that reason we should know something very important about the publication of the Pauline letters." Can we then discover the reason for the inclusion of this little letter, so different from the others? The letter is a letter about the sending back to Philemon of the runaway slave Onesimus. Onesimus must have become very dear to Paul. His name means "the useful one" and Paul puns on that name. "Formerly he was useless to you, but now indeed he is useful to you and to me" (Philemon 1:11). Now let us hear what Paul says: "I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will" (Philemon 1:13-14). Could there be a clearer indication that Paul would very much like to have Onesimus back again? And could the heart of Philemon have been proof against that gentle and courteous and half-humorous appeal?

Let us, then, assume that Paul received Onesimus back from Philemon as his personal helper and attendant. If that is so, Onesimus would become very much Paul’s right-hand man. And now let us go on rather more than fifty years, when, if Onesimus was still alive, as he might well be, he would be an old man. Ignatius is on his way to Rome to fight with the beasts in the arena. As he goes, he writes to the Church at Ephesus and he speaks of their bishop "a man of indescribable charity and your bishop here on earth" (Ignatius, Ephesians 1:3). And what is the bishop’s name? It is Onesimus. This is to say that at the very time when the Pauline collection was made at Ephesus the name of the bishop was Onesimus. Can Onesimus the bishop be one and the same as the runaway slave, who had twined himself around the heart of Paul? No man can say for certain, but it is certainly possible. It may well be that, after the publication of Acts had drawn the fulllength picture of Paul to the Church, and had given the stimulus to the collection and preservation of everything connected with this colossal figure, in Ephesus Onesimus took steps to collect and publish the letters of the master whom he had loved and who had loved him. And in that collection he included the little letter to Philemon, because it told of himself as a thieving and runaway slave. He left deliberately the record of his shame, as if to say: "See what I was and see what Jesus Christ did for me," If that is so, it is one of the loveliest hidden romances of the New Testament, for it is a moving thing to think of the great and good bishop deliberately including the letter which told of what once he was, as if to say: "That is what Christ did for me and he can do it for you." In regard to Onesimus we are in the realm of conjecture, and all we can say is that we hope that that story may be true. But we may regard it as all but certain that the letters of Paul were collected in Ephesus in A.D. 90 as a consequence of the publication of Acts.

It is true that they are not yet fully Scripture that final step isstill to come but C. L. Mitton is not wrong when he writes: ’ ’ It may very well be that this acceptance of Paul’s writings as authoritative was the first clear act in the formation of what later came to be the canon of the New Testament."