Our beloved Apphia. Codices A, D*, E*, F, G, and א (Sinaiticus) read adelphē (sister) for agapētē (beloved), and also Jerome, Griesbach, Meyer; which also has been adopted in the Revised Version. The name Appia, or Apphia, is either the Roman Appia Hellenized, which was the conjecture of Grotins (see Introduction), or more probably a native Phrygian name, from Appa or Appha, a term of endearment.
The name does not occur elsewhere in Scripture. The word ἀδελφῆ is not unlikely to have been added by way of explanation. St. Paul has used it in five other places, and always in the same sense, viz.
Romans 16:1, Romans 16:15; 1 Corinthians 7:15; 1 Corinthians 9:5; 1 Timothy 5:2. Most commentators, and particularly Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Theophylact, among the ancients, infer that Apphia was the wife of Philemon.
Otherwise, why mention her name here? Archippus; comp. Colossians 4:17, where he is said to have received a διακονία, i.e. a ministry or service, in the Church. This word, when used without a determining genitive, denotes service to others in a general and undefined sense.
But more commonly with some limiting word; as διακονία λόγου, office of teaching (Acts 6:4); διακονία τοῦ θανάτου, office or function of death (2 Corinthians 3:7). The general view is that Archippus was the presbyter who ministered to that congregation which assembled at the house of Philemon, though Ambrose and Jerome, with other commentators ancient and modern, think that he was the bishop.
Grotius, however, takes him to have been a deacon. (It is a very precarious inference that he was a son of Philemon and Appia.) Probably he was fulfilling a temporary mission only in Colossae, and that would be the διακονία in the passage cited.
Epaphras, a resident in Colossae (Colossians 4:12), is spoken of as having been the founder of the Church there (Colossians 1:7, Colossians 1:8), and as still being responsible for it (Colossians 4:13).
Primasius calls Epaphras bishop and Archippus deacon; and so Grotius. It may be that these theories err in ascribing too rigid and technical a meaning to the terms of ecclesiastical service at this early stage of their employment.
Epaphras was, however, at this time in Rome with St. Paul (Colossians 4:12, Colossians 4:13), and it is possible that Archippus was filling his place temporarily. It will be safer to call him (with Bishop Wordsworth) a presbyter.
It is, as we have said, an unsupported idea of some writers ancient and modern (Theod. Mopsuest., Michaelis, Rosenmuller, Olshausen, Lightfoot) that he was the son of Philemon (but see below). Our fellow-soldier; i.
e. of himself and St. Timothy, as engaged in the same warfare for Christ (1 Corinthians 9:7; 2 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Timothy 1:18). The same term is applied in Philippians 2:25 to Epaphroditus, and also the συνεργός of Philippians 2:1.
And to the Church in thy house. Mede (so Chrysostom and Theodoret also) understands this as meaning "and to the whole of thy family" (which is a Christian one)—a suggestion quite worth considering. For a separate letter "to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae" (Colossians 1:2) was brought by the same messengers, and it would seem natural that, in a matter so personal to Philemon, salutations should be confined to his own family.
The phrase is used more than once (see Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19, which seems rather to point the other way; but especially Colossians 4:15, "Nymphas and the Church which is in his house," which, since it was in Colossae itself, seems almost conclusive for that meaning).
The Ecclesia domestica was very familiar in the apostolic times. Theodoret states that the house of Philemon was still pointed out as late as the fifth century.