Romans 16:5

16:5 Also greet the church in their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, ¹  who was the first convert ²  to Christ in the province of Asia. ³ 

Romans 16:15

16:15 Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the believers ⁴  who are with them.

Colossians 4:15

4:15 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters ⁵  who are in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church that meets in her ⁶  house. ⁷ 

Philemon 1:2

1:2 to Apphia ⁸  our sister, ⁹  to Archippus our ¹⁰  fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your house.

¹ sn The spelling Epenetus is also used by NIV, NLT; the name is alternately spelled Epaenetus (NASB, NKJV, NRSV).

² tn Grk “first fruit.” This is a figurative use referring to Epenetus as the first Christian convert in the region.

³ tn Grk “Asia”; in the NT this always refers to the Roman province of Asia, made up of about one-third of the west and southwest end of modern Asia Minor. Asia lay to the west of the region of Phrygia and Galatia. The words “the province of” are supplied to indicate to the modern reader that this does not refer to the continent of Asia.

⁴ tn Grk “saints.”

⁵ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

⁶ 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.

⁷ tn Grk “the church in her house.” The meaning is that Paul sends greetings to the church that meets at Nympha’s house.

⁸ sn Apphia is thought to be the wife of Philemon.

⁹ tc Most witnesses (D² Ψ Ï) here read τῇ ἀγαπητῇ (th agaphth, “beloved, dear”), a reading that appears to have been motivated by the masculine form of the same adjective in v. 1. Further, the earliest and best witnesses, along with a few others (א A D* F G I P 048 0278 33 81 104 1739 1881 pc), have ἀδελφῇ (adelfh, “sister”). Thus on internal and external grounds, ἀδελφῇ is the strongly preferred reading.

¹⁰ tn Though the term “our” does not appear in the Greek text it is inserted to bring out the sense of the passage.