Locating the Prison Epistles

The prison epistles are of course Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Traditionally, these letters have been located as written from Rome during the two year house arrest Acts mentions at its end.

The main detractors from this position are mainly 1) the fact that Paul's orientation in Philippians and Philemon is not the same as what we might expect given Acts or Paul's comments in Romans 15. In both Acts and Romans, Paul does not plan to continue his ministry in Asia Minor or Macedonia.

In Philemon, Paul tells Philemon to prepare a guest room for him--clearly an easier proposition from Ephesus than from Rome. In Philippians, we must infer at least four trips of news to and from Paul during the course of his imprisonment, possible from Rome but much more explainable from Ephesus. On the other hand, Philippians' mention of the household of Caesar, while possible in Ephesus, certainly fits Rome.

Other wrinkles... We must probably locate Colossians and Philemon in the same imprisonment. Onesimus has just become a Christian in Philemon and seems to be introduced for the first time as a part of Paul's cadre in Colossians. The names are the same at the end of each, except that in Colossians Aristarchus is Paul's fellow prisoner while in Philemon it is Epaphras. This is awkward but explainable.

Some scholars think Colossians is pseudonymous because it has somewhat of a different style and theology from Paul's other letters. I think, however, that the balance of evidence favors Paul as a living author, even if Timothy may have had more to do with its framing, perhaps because of Paul being in prison.

Ephesians is difficult because of many peculiar features that raise issues of pseudonymity as well as destination. It acts as if the audience does not know Paul personally (odd if Ephesus is the destination) and in fact the earliest manuscripts lack the words "in Ephesus" in the prescript. It also has so many parallels to Colossians that it would seem they were either written at about the same time or that Ephesians was modeled after Colossians.

Assuming that it is Pauline, the best explanation to me is that it is the letter to the Laodiceans mentioned in Colossians. Having thus tied Ephesians to Colossians, I will treat Ephesians-Colossians-Philemon as a package and Philippians as a package. Since Paul's request of Philemon to prepare a guest room--indeed the whole situation of Philemon--fits Ephesus better, I will go ahead and treat this package as an Ephesian package during an arrest not mentioned in Acts but alluded to either in 1 Corinthians 15 or 2 Corinthians 1:8.

Colossians and Philemon have a different set of names than Philippians. A natural inference is thus that they could be separated in time from each other in time or come from different imprisonments. The tone of Philippians seems more grave than Colossians or Philemon as well.

On the other hand, Colossians and Philemon share most of the names of 2 Timothy, which was certainly written from Rome if it isn't pseudonymous. By the way, I'm usually up front about evidence for pseudonymity, even if I don't conclude it. I feel strongly that 2 Timothy simply does not give off at all the signals we find in 1 Timothy, for example, with regard to pseudonymity. Most scholars currently would consider 2 Timothy pseudonymous because all three pastoral epistles are lumped together in discussion. This I believe to be a mistake. The authorship of 2 Timothy must be considered in its own right.

Yet even if the same names are found in Colossians and 2 Timothy, the situations of those names are different. Of course, most evangelicals already put 2 Timothy during a second Roman imprisonment anyway. But note that Timothy and Mark are distant from Paul in 2 Timothy and bid to come before winter. The other names (other than Luke) were with Paul and then left before 2 Timothy. If I stick with my conclusions thus far, it seems that the lack of names in Philippians doesn't contribute much to my discussion initially. If Paul wrote Philippians from Rome, he doesn't mention names he did in 2 Timothy. If Paul wrote Philippians from Ephesus, he doesn't mention names he did in Philemon and Colossians.

I can think of a couple possible conclusions. 1. Perhaps these names were not relevant to the Philippians and thus have no bearing on when Philippians was written, 2. perhaps Philippians was written before Colossians/Philemon before this stalwart group had acrewed to Paul's cadre.

If we view the two comments in the two Corinthian letters we have of course a basis for dating these two letters at different times. Philippians certainly feels to me much more like 2 Corinthians 1:8, and dating Colossians to an earlier imprisonment would allow Paul to use that guest room in Colossae. It also would allow for development (if there is development) between Paul's stark sleep death sounding 1 Corinthians 15 and the die and be with Christ of Philippians. However, this is far from certain.

Yet the absence of the names in Philippians would push toward the other order, if this factor is relevant. On the other hand, where is Titus? He is gone from Ephesus when Paul leaves Ephesus, for he is at Corinth, according to 2 Corinthians. It is reasonable to assume that any letter written during a later imprisonment at Ephesus would not have Titus' name in it. A Gaius and an Aristarchus is mentioned in Acts 19 at Ephesus. Yet only Aristarchus is mentioned in Colossians/Philemon. If these letters were written near the end of Paul's stay at Ephesus, wouldn't Gaius be mentioned as well?

To conclude, it would seem we have insufficient evidence for certainty. Philemon's comment that Paul is "and now a prisoner..." could imply that this is something new given his relationship with Philemon. I'll date Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians to this first imprisonment perhaps in mid-53. I'd like to think Paul then went to the Lycus Valley and met these churches, perhaps even pressed on to northern Galatia to check up on their status after the Galatian letter (it is of course more popular to see southern Galatia as the audience and evangelicals typically date Galatians much earlier, before the Jerusalem meeting of Acts 15).

I'll date Philippians to a second arrest at the end of Paul's stay there, perhaps late 54 ending early 55. The names of Colossians are not there, but perhaps they weren't pertinent to Paul's relationship with the Philippians.

All this is far from certain and definitely a thought process in process...