here are fourteen Pauline epistles (letters). With one exception (Hebrews) all have 'Paul' as the first word, so indicating authorship. Seven of them are generally regarded as “undisputed”, i.e. the consensus is that they are the genuine work of the Apostle Paul: Romans (Rom), First and Second Corinthians (1 & 2 Cor), Galatians (Gal), Philippians (Php), First Thessalonians (1 Thes), and Philemon (Phm). Three are disputed: Ephesians (Eph), Colossians (Col), and Second Thessalonians (2 Thes), and three (collectively known as The Pastorals): First and Second Timothy (1 & 2 Tim), and Titus (Tit), are widely regarded as pseudepigraphical. Finally, the status of Hebrews (Heb) has been debated almost since the beginning of the Christian church, and is generally now considered not to be from Paul.
In modern Bibles the epistles are in the following order (listed here with the corresponding number of characters in each in the Nestle-Aland 27th Edition Greek New Testament (Morphological Edition) (NA27)):
Rom 34410
1 Cor 32767
2 Cor 22280
Gal 11091
Eph 12012
Php 8009
Col 7897
1 Thes 7423
2 Thes 4055
------
139944
The numbers above show a perhaps surprising pattern: the initial nine letters in modern Bibles form a group in descending order of size (with the exception that Ephesians is actually about 8.3% longer than Galatians). This group is followed by a group of four, also in descending order of size, then finally Hebrews.
1 Tim 8869
2 Tim 6538
Titus 3733
Phm 1575
-----
20715
Heb 26382
With the exception of Hebrews, the groupings are easily understood, although the order within the groups is not so easily explained. The first nine letters were all written to churches (or at least, to groups of people), while the next four were written to individuals. However, why order the epistles by size within each group? How did this order get chosen in the first place? There are a number of possible explanations:
There were no earlier collections of the epistles based on some 'importance' factor, for example, chronological or theological order; or
If there was such a collection, the order in that collection was not recognized as being significant;
Someone wanted to remove any association with a previous collection;
The person assembling this collection did not know of any other order, and so felt free to select what to him seemed the 'best' order.
In The Works of Nathaniel Lardner, Volume 3, Chapter 23, The Order of the Books of the New Testament, Lardner presents his views on this order:
I must say something about the order of St. Paul's epistles severally… Theodoret and Chrysostom have particularly taken notice, that the epistle to the Romans was placed first, though it was not the first in the order of time. Concerning the reason of that disposition of the epistle to the Romans, Theodoret observes, that it had been placed' first, as containing the most full and exact representation of the christian doctrine in all its branches. But some say, it had been so placed out of respect to the city to which it had been sent, as presiding over the whole world.
I have sometimes thought that first observation might be applied to all St. Paul's epistles, as the ground and reason of their situation. For the first five epistles, that to the Romans, the two to the Corinthians, and the epistles to the Galatians, and the Ephesians, are the largest of St. Paul's epistles. And all that follow are shorter, excepting the epistle to the Hebrews, which has been placed after those sent to churches, or last of all, after those likewise which were sent to particular persons, because its genuineness was not universally allowed of.
But the other, the dignity of the cities and people to whom the epistles were sent, has been more generally supposed to be the ground and reason of the order in which they are placed. How this is represented by Mill, may appear in his own words, which I place below.
I also shall show this as well as I can. Epistles to churches are placed first. Afterwards those to particular persons. The epistles to churches are placed very much according to the rank of the cities or places to which they were sent. The epistle to the Romans is placed first, because Rome was the chief city of the Roman empire. The two epistles to the Corinthians come next, because Corinth was a large, and polite, and renowned city. Galatia was a country in which were several churches, and therefore the epistle to them might be placed before others, written to one church only. Nevertheless, the epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians have been preferred, as is supposed, upon account of the great eminence of those two cities. The epistle to the Ephesians follows next, because Ephesus was the chief city of Asia, strictly so called. Afterwards follow the epistles to the Philippians, the Colossians, and the Thessalonians.
But how to account for this order, according to the method we here observe, I do not well know, Colosse indeed might be reckoned a city of inferior rank, and Philippi was a Roman colony. But Thessalonica was the chief city of Macedonia, in which Philippi stood. And if the epistles were disposed according to the dignity of places, it is not easy to conceive why the two epistles to the Thessalonians were placed after those to the Philippians, and the Colossians. So that in this method, as seems to me, the order of the epistles is made out in but a lame and imperfect manner. And there may be reason to apprehend that the brevity of the two epistles to the Thessalonians, especially of the second, procured them this situation, though they are the first written epistles of our apostle, and indeed the first written of all the sacred scriptures of the New Testament.
Among the epistles to particular persons, those to Timothy have the precedence, as he was a favourite disciple of St. Paul, and those epistles are the largest and fullest. The epistle to Titus comes next, as he was an evangelist. And that to Philemon is last, as he was supposed by many to be only a private christian. Undoubtedly Titus was a person of greater eminence, and in a higher station than Philemon. Moreover, by many the design of that epistle was thought to be of no great importance.
The epistle to the Hebrews is fitly enough placed after the rest, because for a while it was doubted of, as before said. I likewise think it to be the last written of all St. Paul's epistles.
Some learned men, who have examined the chronology of St. Paul's epistles, have proposed, that they should be placed in our Bibles according to the order of time. Dr. Wall, at the end of the preface to his Critical Notes upon the Testament, has an argument to this purpose. But first, it will be difficult to alter the order which has been so long established in all editions of the original Greek, and in all versions. Secondly, The order of their times has not been yet settled. Many, I suppose, are of opinion, that Dr. Wall's order is not right. Must the order be altered again and again, to suit every one's fancy? That would create a very troublesome and disagreeable confusion.
I think that the knowledge of the order in which St. Paul's epistles were written, must be very entertaining and useful: and I have done what is in my power to find it out. But I am far from desiring that they should be placed, and bound up together, according to my calculations. Before an attempt of that kind is made, the order of time should be settled, and determined, to the general satisfaction of all learned and inquisitive men. And judicious christians, who have studied the chronological order of the writings of the New Testament, may have an advantage by it, though the books are continued in their present order.
As Lardner and Mill both observe, it is hard to fathom why the order that we see was chosen, at least on the basis of anything related to the content of the epistles or their destinations. As for Hebrews, it is most likely listed last because it is now generally not believed to be by Paul, although Origen believed that it records Paul’s teachings, as noted by David Alan Black in ‘Origen on the Authorship of Hebrews’:
There is one consideration of major importance that has been widely—one may even say totally—neglected in dealing with the authorship of Hebrews. This is the evidence of the church father Origen. Origen’s adherence to the Pauline origin of Hebrews was determined by an ancient belief that he knew to be well founded. His testimony has been preserved for us by Eusebius:
That the character of the diction of the epistle entitled To the Hebrews has not the apostle’s rudeness in speech, who confessed himself rude in speech, that is, in style, but that the epistle is better Greek in the framing of its diction, will be admitted by everyone who is able to discern differences of style. But again, on the other hand, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the apostle, to this also everyone will consent as true who has given attention to reading the apostle…. But as for myself, if I were to state my own opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the apostle’s, but that the style and composition belonged to one who called to mind the apostle’s teachings and, as it were, made short notes of what his master said. If any church, therefore, holds this epistle as Paul’s, let it be commended for this also. For not without reason have the men of old handed it down as Paul’s. But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.
Whether or not any of the above reasons for the order might be the correct one, an order based on using size as a 'proxy' for importance would be perfectly reasonable. However, this is not the original order.
In the earliest extant Greek collection of the Paulines, P46, usually dated to around the year 200, the order of the epistles is similar to that shown above, but slightly closer to what would be expected if they were ordered strictly according to size:
Rom, Heb, 1 Cor, 2 Cor, Eph, Gal, Php, Col, 1 Thes
The most obvious difference here from strict size order is that in P46 Hebrews precedes 1 Corinthians (rather than being between 1 & 2 Corinthians as size order would dictate), and perhaps the most likely reason for this was a recognition that 1 & 2 Corinthians should be kept together. Also, in P46 Ephesians precedes Galatians, so 'correcting' the incorrect size order we find in bibles today. However, this begs the question: Why did Ephesians and Galatians later become reversed? One possible clue can be found in the fact that P46 contains stichoi at the end of several of the epistles, and ostensibly these record the numbers of lines in each epistle in P46, but as argued in The Contents of Codex P46, the stichoi are more likely to have been copied from the source mss used by the scribe of P46. The key point here is that the stichoi for Ephesians and Galatians are 316 and 375 respectively, suggesting that at some point prior to the writing of P46 there existed a variant of Galatians that was longer than Ephesians (and/or a variant of Ephesians that was shorter than Galatians), and that the current order derives from these variants.
It should be noted that on the basis of strict size-order we would also expect to see 1 Timothy (and possibly 2 Timothy as well) before Philippians, but we don't. We also have the problem that P46 breaks off part way through 1 Thessalonians, and, as far as we can tell, it would never have contained enough room for all the rest of the Paulines (see The Contents of Codex P46 for details of this issue). It is possible that we could gleam some information from earlier collections, so could the order in P46 be based on an earlier ms with an order that was known to the scribe?
There are no known 1st century mss containing any of the Pauline epistles, and therefore we must look for clues as to the order of the epistles in other extant mss, from the early church fathers, or in the epistles themselves. For example, 2 Cor 2:4 tells us that Paul had written a previous letter (usually thought to be First Corinthians), but in 1 Cor 5:9 there is evidence of another, earlier, letter:
I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: [1 Cor 5:9]
For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.. [2 Cor 2:4]
Even if we have 1 and 2 Corinthians in the wrong order, as both epistles refer to a previous one Paul must have written at least three times to the same people. There is also the point that what we know as 2 Corinthians may itself be a ‘pastiche’ of two or more letters, as suggested at earlychristianwritings.com:
However, there are difficulties that have suggested to several commentators that 2 Corinthians has been compiled from several pieces of correspondence. Since the "sorrowful letter" mentioned in 2:4 does not describe 1 Corinthians, we know that Paul had written at least three letters to the Corinthians. A quite reasonable suggestion is that the last four chapters contain the "sorrowful letter" that is mentioned in 2:4.
Other evidence bears out this view. Edgar J. Goodspeed notes a few considerations that suggest disunity in 2 Corinthians (An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 58-59). On the one hand, "From the beginning through chapter 9 it is pervaded by a sense of harmony, reconciliation, and comfort." On the other, "With the beginning of chapter 10 we are once more in the midst of personal misunderstanding and bitterness, and these continue to dominate the letter to the end . . . This undeniable incongruity between the two parts of II Corinthians naturally suggests that we have in it two letters instead of one - one conciliatory and gratified, the other injured and incensed. And as the early part of II Corinthians clearly looks back upon a painful, regretted letter, the possibility suggests itself that we actually have that letter in chapters 10-13."
The above strongly suggests that we only have part of Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians, and we certainly have nothing of their correspondence with Paul. We also appear to be missing some of the correspondence with Ephesus, as in Ephesians we see:
How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, [Eph 3:3]
Also in Col 4:16:
And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. [Col 4:16]
This last is disputed. It has been suggested that this is actually what we know as Ephesians, or perhaps Philemon, but whatever epistle it was (whether extant or not) it is acknowledged that we do not have extant copies of all the Pauline epistles in the form that they were received (whether genuine or pseudepigraphical).
Various people have suggested that the first collections of the Paulines would have been created by the churches to which they were sent. For example, In ‘Paul’s Letter Collection,’ David Trobisch writes:
I grew up with a picture of Paul traveling through Asia and Europe, founding congregations, counseling and teaching the men and women who had given their lives to Jesus. If he could not visit them, he sent letters. When Paul died, his letters were kept as treasures. Each church that had received one of his letters saved it, read it during worship services, and exchanged copies of the letter with other congregations close by. Later the congregations tried to complete their collection.
The problem with this view is that, as seen above, there are ‘gaps’ in the collection we have now, indicating that what we have today is not a collection created by anyone gathering together all of Paul’s letters sent to the churches to which he had written. Instead, what we do have suggests that no such early collection ever existed.
The earliest mention of multiple Paulines may be Ignatius of Antioch, who c. 110 appears to have quoted from:
Rom, 1 Cor, Eph, Col, and 1 Thes.
Later, Polycarp (who died in 155) quoted from:
1 & 2 Cor, Gal, Eph, Php, 1 & 2 Thes, 1 & 2 Tim, and Heb.
We therefore have early to mid 2nd century references to all the Paulines except Titus and Philemon, but there is no evidence that either Ignatius or Polycarp had access to an actual collection of the Paulines (i.e. they may have seen them in individual mss in multiple locations) or that they associated any particular order with them. However, we do know that c. 140 Marcion had an actual collection (see Marcion's Apostolicon: The Pauline Epistles) which, according to Epiphanius, included the following epistles, in this order:
Gal, 1 & 2 Cor, Rom, 1 & 2 Thes, Eph, Col, Phm, and Php
This order, very different from that in P46, is confirmed by Tertullian. He also records Marcion's order, with the exception that he has Philemon last, although from his text it seems likely that this was simply because it was the only one of these letters that was written to an individual. Marcion's collection did not include Hebrews, 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus, and it is usually stated that he excluded them (i.e. taking a positive action to not include them), but there there is no actual evidence that Marcion even knew of them, or that if he did he had access to them. Marcion’s order later appeared in the form of Latin prologues to the epistles, about which Nils Alstrup Dahl writes:
Patristic and Old Latin attestation proved that the Prologues were present in Latin manuscripts from the mid-4th century onward. Shortly after 400 A.D. they were incorporated into all major branches of the Vulgate text. Textual variants and expansions make it likely that the whole series of Latin Prologues goes back to the 3rd century. Some textual variants are of material importance. The Prologues to 1 Corinthians originally had the plural form ab apostolis.
The Prologues presuppose an edition which had Paul’s letters to churches in the same order as Marcion. The author of the Prologues understood this as a chronological order. Form, vocabulary and other criteria prove that not only the Prologues to 2 Corinthians and 2 Thessalonians but also the Prologues to the letters to Timothy and Titus and to Philemon are secondary. The Prologue to Ephesians is likely to have been substituted for a prologue which had the Laodiceans as addresses. The addition of secondary prologues changed the character of the text, from an introduction to Paul’s letters to seven churches to a series of prefaces to thirteen discrete letters.
The edition of Paul’s letters to seven churches, for which the original set of Prologues was composed, has many features in common with Marcion’s Apostolikon. But traces in other, mainly Syriac and Latin, sources make it likely that in the 2nd century these features were not Marcionite peculiarities. The series of Prologues was expanded in the 3rd century, when collections of thirteen (or fourteen) of Paul’s letters prevailed and made the original order and number of prologues obsolete.
… The history of transmission makes a Marcionite origin extremely unlikely, and the content of the Prologues does not really favor the hypothesis. Just because they are not of Marconite origin, the Prologues are a very important testimony to one of the main forms in which the Pauline letter collection circulated in the second century… The basic observation is that connective words prove that 1 Corinthians followed immediately after Galatians and Colossians followed after another letter to Christians in Asia.
Dahl also comments on the order of the epistles in the Old Syriac, which supports at least some of Marcion’s order:
The placement of Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans as the first letters in the Pauline Corpus is not exclusively Marcionite. The same order is attested for the Old Syriac version, both by the commentary of Ephraem and by a Syriac canon list (Catalogus Sinaiticus, ca. 400). In the Old Syriac, Hebrews follows Romans. Ephraem’s commentary includes the apocryphal 3 Corinthians but not Philemon. The arrangement of the letters in the old Syriac version seems to be due to an amalgamation of an order like that of Marcion and the Prologues for the first four letters and an order more like that of our Greek manuscripts for the others (The order Corinthians, Romans, Hebrews is one of decreasing length, with the Corinthian letters treated as one unit, but the Catalogus Siniaticus places the two Thessalonian letters as the last of the letters to churches, and Ephraem may have followed the same order).
On the basis of the above information it appears unlikely that the order of the epistles in Marcion’s Apostolicon originated with Marcion, but that he was instead following an earlier tradition, and perhaps actually had access to a collection of epistles in that order.
Another early order can be found in the Muratorian canon fragment, a copy of an old list (the original is believed to have been written c. 175) of the books of the New Testament. The fragment is missing the beginning, and ends abruptly, but includes mention of:
Letters written first to the Corinthians, then the Galatians and the Romans;
Letters (in this order) to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Thessalonians, and Romans;
One more letter each to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians;
Letters to Philemon, Titus, and two to Timothy;
Forgeries to the Laodiceans and Alexandrians.
Because of the multiple references to some of the churches it is not clear why they are mentioned in this particular order, except that the author makes a distinction between letters to churches and those to individuals. However, all of the known Paulines (with the exception of Hebrews) are mentioned here. Two early codex fragments of the last of the Pauline epistles were found in Egypt. These are P32, containing part of Titus, and P87, containing part of Philemon. Both are contemporary (assuming the conventional dating) with P46, making it possible that the scribe at least knew of these epistles, and therefore might have been able to include them.
Almost all later mss containing collections of the Pauline epistles in which the order is known (e.g. not just a small number of loose leaves with no obvious order) appear to have been influenced by P46. Most of them begin with Romans, followed by the rest of the epistles in the extant portion of P46, in generally the same size order (except for Hebrews), and then usually followed by the Pastorals and Philemon. A few mss (015 - Coislinianus, 048 - Vaticanus 2061) are too damaged to know either what epistles were originally present, or their order. In addition, a few are damaged at the beginning or end (016 - Freeianus is missing Romans, and Vaticanus is missing the Pastorals and Philemon). However, there are some specific known variations:
Galatians & Ephesians: Almost all mss have Galatians before Ephesians, as in modern Bibles, rather than in size order as in P46. A possible reason for this is given above.
Philippians and Colossians: These epistles are swapped in Claromontanus, while in the earlier Catalogus Claromontanus Philippians (along with 1 & 2 Thessalonians and Hebrews) is not listed, and Colossians appears between Titus and Philemon. Philippians and Colossians are also swapped in the much later (c. 1350) minuscule 5.
Hebrews: This epistle migrates, in stages, from 2nd place in P46 (and in minuscules 103, 455, 1961, 1964, 1977, 1994) to last place currently. In minuscules 1930, 1978, and 2248 Hebrews is between 2 Corinthians and Galations, and in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and several other early codices it is placed between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy;
The earlier numbering system in Vaticanus places Hebrews between Galatians and Ephesians. A few mss of Pauline collections do not include Hebrews, and it is not mentioned by Epiphanius in Panarion 76.5.
The order of the epistles in minuscules 103 (from the 12th century) and 455 (13th-14th century) is unique: Both begin with Romans, Hebrews, Colossians, and 1-2 Thessalonians. 103 then has Philippians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Ephesians, Galatians, and 1-2 Corinthians, while 455 has Titus, 1-2 Corinthians, 1-2 Timothy, Ephesians, Philippians, Galatians, and Philemon.
There is very little information to suggest why the pairs Galatians - Ephesians and Philippians - Colossians are in size order in some mss, and are reversed in others. However, it is possible that one or both of each pair of epistles existed in more than one variant at some point in time, with a sufficient size difference to cause the order to be reversed. For example, the stichoi in P46 point to a possible reason for the Galatians - Ephesians reversal, and another glimpse of the possible existence of different size variants of the epistles can be found in The works of Nathaniel Lardner, Volume 8, where he comments on Marcion's versions of the epistles:
Epiphanius affirms the same concerning the second Epistle to the Thessalonians ... viz. that the reason why he selected nothing from thence was, because it was entirely corrupted by Marcion. Tertullian however produces several passages from this second epistle to confute this heretic; and accuses him only of erasing ‘in flaming fire,’ from the eighth verse of the first chapter...
Philippians is the tenth and last of St. Paul's epistles received by Marcion in his Apostolicon. 'This also,' Epiphanius says, 'was so mutilated by him, that he did not 'choose to quote any part of it out of his copy.' Tertullian has quoted several passages from this epistle, but doth not accuse Marcion of any particular corruptions. Nor doth any other author, that I can find, except Epiphanius.
These comments from Lardner appear to indicate that what Tertullian saw in his copy of Ephesians and Philippians c. 200 differed significantly from what Epiphanius saw c. 375 in his, and these differences could have resulted in some scribes using different orders for Galatians - Ephesians and Philippians - Colossians.
The variations in the position of Hebrews are most reasonably seen as indicating its reducing status as an epistle of Paul. Having been included immediately after Romans in P46, it next appears between 2 Corinthians and Galatians, then before Ephesians, between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy, and lastly after Philemon, as well as being omitted in some mss. There are a few other variations in later mss: Minuscules 103 and 455 have all the epistles, but with Hebrews after Romans, and followed by unique orderings that do not appear to have any precedent, and minuscule 794 has two copies of Hebrews, one between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy, and the other after Philemon.
It is impossible to tell from the extant mss of the Pauline epistles the order in which they were written, but it is beyond the bounds of possibility that they were written in decreasing size order. How size order (or something approximating it) became the norm in collections is unknown, but the fact that it is the norm suggests that either the epistles never existed in the form of a collection in chronological order, or that knowledge of that order was lost very early on. It is possible that the order we see today resulted from one or more of the following:
The switch from chronological to size order may have originated with P46, as a result of copying several individual MSS into one codex;
Marcion’s influence was sufficiently strong that either the Church wanted to distance itself from Paul’s letters afterwards, or at least wanted to disassociate itself from Marcion as much as possible. As a result, the Church had to come up with a new order for Paul’s letters if they were going to continue to use them, and size order would have avoided many arguments;
The inclusion of Hebrews as one of Paul’s letters may have been an accident, caused by a copy of Hebrews being kept with Paul’s letters at some location;
The Pastorals were either not generally known of until the 3rd century, or were considered to be of secondary importance as they (together with Philemon) were written to individuals, not churches.
References
Biblehub: The Epistles of Paul
Cramer, Dane: Chronological Order of Paul’s Letters .
Dahl, Nils Alstrup: Studies in Ephesians, 2000
Edgecomb, Kevin P: Chronology of Paul's Letters
Goodspeed, Edgar J: An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 58-59
Lardner, Nathaniel: The works of Nathaniel Lardner, Volume 3, Chapter 23: The Order of the Books of the New Testament
NA27: Nestle-Aland 27th Edition Greek New Testament (Morphological Edition) (NA27)
Price, Robert M: The Evolution of the Pauline Canon
Trobisch, David: Paul's Letter Collection: Tracing The Origins
Wall, William: Brief Critical Notes, Especially on the Various Readings of the New Testament
Wikipedia: Pauline epistles: Order
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding this topic please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net