Epistle to the Philippians

[4] There is a general consensus that Philippians consists of authentically Pauline material, and that the epistle is a composite of multiple letter fragments from Paul to the church in Philippi.

Two chapters later, however, at the end of the canonical letter, Paul notes that Epaphroditus had only now just arrived at Paul's side, carrying a gift from Philippi, a reference found toward the close of the "thank-you note" as a formulaic acknowledgement of receipt at Phil 4:18.These letter fragments likely would have been edited into a single document by the first collector of the Pauline corpus, although there is no clear consensus among scholars regarding who this initial collector may have been, or when the first collection of Pauline epistles may have been published.

According to the theologian G. Walter Hansen, "The traditional view that Philippians was composed as one letter in the form presented in the NT [New Testament] can no longer claim widespread support.

"[5] Regardless of the literary unity of the letter, scholars agree that the material that was compiled into the Epistle to the Philippians was originally composed in Koine Greek, sometime during the 50s or early 60s AD.

[12] Any identification of the place of writing of Philippians is complicated by the fact that some scholars view Acts as being an unreliable source of information about the early Church.

[37] Verse 2:1 is translated in the King James Version: Meyer notes Paul's use of "four stimulative elements", which are assumed to apply and are not conditional.

[41] Chapter 2 of the epistle contains a famous poem describing the nature of Christ and his act of redemption: Who, though he was in the form of God, But he emptied himself And being found in appearance as a human Therefore God highly exalted him That at the name of Jesus And every tongue should confess Due to its unique poetic style, Bart D. Ehrman suggests that this passage constitutes an early Christian poem that was composed by someone else prior to Paul's writings, as early as the mid-late 30s AD and was later used by Paul in his epistle.

[42] This theory was first proposed by German Protestant theologian Ernst Lohmeyer in 1928, and this "has come to dominate both exegesis of Philippians and study of early Christology and credal formulas".

[43] The Frankfurt silver inscription, the oldest known reliable evidence for Christianity north of the Alps (dating from between 230 and 270), quotes a Latin translation of Philippians 2:10–11.

Scholars such as English theologian J.B. Lightfoot have argued that morphe should be understood in the Aristotelean sense of "essential nature", but more recent scholarship by Robert B. Strimple and Paul D. Feinberg has questioned whether a first century Jewish author would have had Aristotelean philosophy in mind, preferring instead the plainer translation of the word morphe as simply "appearance".

Strimple writes, "For years I tried to maintain the view of Lightfoot that Paul here uses morphe with the sense it had acquired in Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelian...

"[46] Likewise, Feinberg cautions, "the attractiveness of the Greek philosophical interpretation of morphe is that it gives the theologian about as strong an affirmation of the deity of Christ as is possible... One must, however, be careful that he does not read his theological convictions into the text when they are not there.

This is because the last two stanzas quote Isaiah 45:22–23:[50] ("Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess"), which in the original context clearly refers to God the Father.

He testifies that while he once was a devout Pharisee and follower of the Jewish law, he now considers these things to be worthless and worldly compared to the gospel of Jesus.

[53] Paul tells his own story and says how he "emptied himself" for Christ's sake and how his ultimate goal was now to follow the "upward call of God" (verse 14) to the end.

Jesuit theologian Robert Murray describes this process as a "transvaluation of values", using a phrase adopted from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Paul is hopeful that he will be released, and on this basis he promises to send Timothy to the Philippians for ministry,[67] and also expects to pay them a personal visit.

[71] Verse 4:13 is given in the New King James Version: The Greek word Χριστῷ (Christō, "Christ") is found in the majority[73] of older manuscripts,[74] but others lack explicit reference, so are rendered as "him".

"Philippians 3:20-21" is a song title in the album "The Life of the World to Come" inspired by these verses that was released by the American band The Mountain Goats in 2009.