A Letter to Asia Macmillan and Co., Limited London Bombay Calcutta Melbourne the Macmillan Company New York Boston Chicago Dallas San Francisco

LIBRARY TORONTO Shelf No. 35 til 5- Register No. XWS.,11 -.12 ( BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ST. PAUL AND JUSTIFICATION BEING AN EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING IN THE EPISTLES TO ROME AND GALATIA 8vo. 6s. net. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.. A LETTER TO ASIA MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO A LETTER TO ASIA BEING A PARAPHRASE AND BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE BELIEVERS AT COLOSSI BY FREDERICK BROOKE WESTCOTT D.D. ARCHDEACON AND CANON OF NORWICH CHAPLAIN-IN-ORDJNARY TO H.M. THE KING MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN S STREET, LONDON 1914 COPYRIGHT J PREFACE SOME little time ago I put out a small work dealing with the doctrinal sections of llomans and Galatians. This was not unkindly reviewed by several public prints. Their words and the encouragement of friends, both known and unknown, determined me to go forward and deal with other Epistles as I had dealt with these. For various private reasons I first selected this one. The result is this little book. A formal edition it cannot claim to be. Years of study would be needed for the achieving of such a purpose. Nor indeed is it intended for the use of practised scholars. The people I have in my mind are those who still have time and energy for quiet Bible reading. I hope such will not be scared by the intrusion of Greek words. For more than forty years now I have been read ing the New Testament in the original and, in common with many others, I think we have still a good deal to learn about its meaning. vi A LETTER TO ASIA For purposes of devotional reading I believe that the splendid version of 1611 will always stand. For private study, I think, something further is required in the way of a paraphrase or unfettered rendering. That I have made bold to supply. If only any reader finds as much pleasure in the perusal of what I have written here as I have had in the writing, I shall be indeed much more than thankful. And one word more I would say. To some it may appear I have dealt almost irreverently in one place or another with Bishop Lightfoot s famous name. May I say that his memory is dear to me, not only for his scholarship and his monumental learning, but also because I had in him the best and most generous of godfathers. F. B. WESTCOTT. NORWICH, January 30, 1914. INTRODUCTION WHEN the writer of the i ook of the llevelation " sends greeting to the seven Churches which are in Asia " the modern reader must remember that the name Asia does not mean in the least what it means now. Asia in old days was no Continent, but only a single province a large province, to be sure in one region of the territories belonging to the lloman Empire. It was part of what we now call Turkey in Asia. All the westward coasts of that land with a hinterland stretching back for hundreds of miles in the shape of a long-sided, truncated triangle formed Roman Asia, the Asia of St. Paul and of the Xew Testament writers generally. The Seven Churches, all of them, lie in a comparatively small part of it. A triangle having a base one-third of the sixe of the other, and roughly proportionate to it, would cover all seven. Among them Ephesus has pride of place because it was the seat of government, and its position near the sea-board was central and com manding. From Ephesus, in Roman days, one main road led north-east in the direction of historic Sardis. Another crossed the mountains which lie l B 2 A LETTER TO ASIA to the south of the city, and took its downward way to the valley of Mseander. Its route thereafter lay due east along the valley. This was the principal road to the far east of the Empire in the of as it had been even days Roman ascendancy ; earlier, thanks to natural advantages. It was, in fact, the Grand Trunk Road from Ephesus to the the East, and that meant from Borne to the East. Through Magnesia, through Tralles, through Nysa it passed, and at intervals through other places less known to fame. At a distance of some hundred miles or so from the capital the river forks : that which the old name flows to the north the part kept ; tributary flowing east and south is the historic river Lycus. This latter stream is of interest to us because hard by its banks lay three early Churches, all mentioned in our Epistle Colossse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. Imagine two sides of a square: that will give you three points, at the angle and at either end of the lines which form the angle. These three points will indicate the relative positions of the three well-known Lycus Churches. Hierapolis (a famous watering-place, and the mother of a famous son indeed, the philosopher-slave Epictetus) lay due north of Laodicea, a good way from the river and above it Laodicea nearer high ; the river, but on the southern side of it, three miles or so from it Colossm east of Laodicea away ; with a touch of south, on the actual banks of the river, which divides the site in half. The main road made its way through Laodicea to reach Colossse. Hierapolis stood upon another important road INTRODUCTION 3 from the famous city of Sardis, making its junction with the great road actually in Laodicea. It follows that to pass from Colossa? to Hierapolis one would have had to journey through it. Of Colossfe even the site is not absolutely certain. Of Laodicea and Hierapolis there still are ample remains. Colossse disappeared from history in the seventh or eighth century. Its modern re presentative is a place called Chonas (anciently Chona?) high up upon the slopes of Cadmus. In Saracenic days a situation on a main route was far too perilous. The old name Colossse was still retained for a time by titular Bishops who lived at Chonae. But even that relic of the past was lost in the dismal course of the ninth century of our era. Lying as it did, Colossce was sure to play its part in the march of armies. Xerxes passed through it with his motley host marching west ward and the Greeks of the Anabasis ; passed through it marching eastward. To this fact we are indebted for two early historical mentions. This is what the Father of History has to tell us about it : Passing by a town of Phrygia called 1 Anaua and a lake from which they get salt, he came to Colossce a great city of Phrygia, where the river Lycus tumbling into a chasm in the ground disappears, and then at an interval of some five furlongs reappears and discharges itself into the Maeander (Herodotus vii. 30). About this we 1 Professor Ramsay says : Tbey still get salt from the lake as they did iu Xerxes days. 4 A LETTEE TO ASIA can only say the river does not do so now. But it is a land of many earthquakes, and of a geo logical formation which easily lends itself to such 1 phenomena. However, the learned are not sure whether the statement of Herodotus should be accepted as true or not. Professor Eamsay thinks that Herodotus, who had never been there, is con fusing two separate statements, one that within the very city . the Lycus enters a deep cleft in the the other that it issues from an ground ; underground channel and flows to the Maeander. The real source of the river (he says) is in the lake of Anaua, and the sound of a subterranean river has been distinctly heard at a point where part of its flow first issues from beneath the rock. This is Colossae s earliest mention. It seems not at all unlikely that the name should be really Colassre. If so, it was possibly Herodotus himself who first changed the a into o. For colossiis is a common Greek word, and Colossse would therefore sound far more natural to Greek ears than would Colassse. And now for Xenophon s testimony. He tells us how Cyrus started from Sardis, marched through Lydia, crossed the Mteander on a bridge of seven boats, and so, after one stage of marching, reached Colossce, a habitable city, prosperous and large. There he stayed seven days (Anab. i. 2, 6). I remember how eagerly a little boy, a great 1 but I think of the at and I am no geologist ; gorge Meiringen in of (still better) the gorge at Constantine Algeria both them once complete natural tunnels. INTRODUCTION 5 many years ago, at his preparatory school, lit upon the familiar name amid the weary wilderness of stages and parasangs. Colossre, famous as it once was, owes all its glory now to the fact that Christ s Apostle was moved to write to the believers there a short letter of eighty-five verses, some six pages and a half of print. That letter, short as it is, has given the place addressed undying fame. We see, then, where these Colossian believers in a town they lived, ; maybe still nourishing (though well on the down ward grade as compared with its two sisters), lying on a great main road which led to the further East, and deriving (possibly) a respectable revenue from trade in wool.

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