him. Certainly Tychicus was the bearer of the two letters.3 How then can we reconstruct the situation which led to these variants, some copies having ‘in Ephesus’, others having no designation and one referring to Laodicea? Near the beginning of this century Adolf Harnack suggested that the letter was originally addressed to the church in Laodicea, but that because of that church’s lukewarmness and consequent disgrace,4 the name of Laodicea was erased and that of Ephesus substituted. An alternative