by codeblue 11 Replies latest watchtower bible
From Col. 4:16: "And when this letter is read before you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and you yourselves read the one from Laodicea."Why is our current canon lacking the latter letter?
I don't know. But this is INTERESTING since it may mean there were things discussed more specifically that was decided to be left out of the canon! The early Christians may have had more deatils about the second coming or whatever than was included for us. ?? JC
Marcion's Pauline corpus included a letter to Laodicea, it is called Ephesians in our corrupted NT. In a number of important MSS the address to Ephesus (1:1) is absent. Romans was likewise not addressed to Rome but rather likely Laodicea/Ephesus as well considering internal evidence and some manuscript ommision of Rome at 1:7. The later readdressing it to Rome (with additions) was done to support the Proto-orthodox claim of a Petrine and Pauline foundation in Rome. The present form of these "letters" is badly corrupted. In my opinion not enough credence has yet been given the possibility that Marcion himself wrote the letter to Laodicea/Ephesus and other Pauline material as proposed a century ago.
