Colossians 4:14-18

4:14 Our dear friend Luke the physician and Demas greet you. 4:15 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters ¹  who are in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church that meets in her ²  house. ³  4:16 And after ⁴  you have read this letter, have it read ⁵  to the church of Laodicea. In turn, read the letter from Laodicea ⁶  as well. 4:17 And tell Archippus, “See to it that you complete the ministry you received in the Lord.”

4:18 I, Paul, write this greeting by my own hand. ⁷  Remember my chains. ⁸  Grace be with you. ⁹ 

¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

² tc If the name Nympha is accented with a circumflex on the ultima (Νυμφᾶν, Numfan), then it refers to a man; if it receives an acute accent on the penult (Νύμφαν), the reference is to a woman. Scribes that considered Nympha to be a man’s name had the corresponding masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ here (autou, “his”; so D [F G] Ψ Ï), while those who saw Nympha as a woman read the feminine αὐτῆς here (auth", “her”; B 0278 6 1739^[*^] 1881 sa). Several mss (א A C P 075 33 81 104 326 1175 2464 bo) have αὐτῶν (autwn, “their”), perhaps because of indecisiveness on the gender of Nympha, perhaps because they included ἀδελφούς (adelfou", here translated “brothers and sisters”) as part of the referent. (Perhaps because accents were not part of the original text, scribes were particularly confused here.) The harder reading is certainly αὐτῆς, and thus Nympha should be considered a woman.

³ tn Grk “the church in her house.” The meaning is that Paul sends greetings to the church that meets at Nympha’s house.

⁴ tn Grk “when.”

⁵ tn The construction beginning with the imperative ποιήσατε ἵνα…ἀναγνωσθῇ (poihsate Jina…anagnwsqh) should be translated as “have it read” where the conjunction ἵνα functions to mark off its clause as the direct object of the imperative ποιήσατε. The content of the clause (“reading the letter”) is what Paul commands with the imperative ποιήσατε. Thus the translation “have it read” has been used here.

⁶ sn This letter is otherwise unknown, but some have suggested that it is the letter known today as Ephesians.

⁷ tn Grk “the greeting by my hand, of Paul.”

⁸ tn Or “my imprisonment.”

⁹ tc Most witnesses, including a few important ones (א² D Ψ 075 0278 Ï lat sy), conclude this letter with ἀμήν (amhn, “amen”). Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant. Further, the external evidence for the omission is quite compelling (א* A B C F G 048 6 33 81 1739* 1881 sa). The strongly preferred reading is therefore the omission of ἀμήν.