We have now considered all the most essential points respecting the destination of our Epistle, the question, that is, who it was that St Paul had in mind when he was writing. The next great question, whether St Paul himself was indeed the writer, may with advantage stand over a little to be considered with some cognate questions as to the purpose of the Epistle. It will be most convenient to take now a more external question, in this respect resembling that which we have hitherto been considering; to ask at what time and place the Epistle was written, on the assumption that St Paul wrote it. For this purpose we are able to use the evidence supplied by the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, as they were evidently carried by Tychicus on the same journey.

The most obvious mark of external circumstances is the language about imprisonment, “I Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus”; “I therefore the prisoner in the Lord”; “to speak the mysteries of the Christ, for which I am also in bonds (δέδεμαι)” (cp. “now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake”); “Remember my bonds”; “Paul a prisoner of Christ Jesus”; “Paul an ambassador and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ”; “my child, whom I have begotten in the bonds, Onesimus”; “that in thy behalf he might minister to me in the bonds of the Gospel.”