2010-03-102010-03-102004Jordaan, GJC 2004, 'Die eenheid van die Filippensebrief: Oorwegings vanuit die gedagtestruktuur van die brief : The unity of the Philippian letter: Considerations from the thought structure of the letter', HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies, vol. 60, no. 1&2, pp. 261-277 http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/issue/archive]0259-9422 (print)http://hdl.handle.net/2263/13373Spine cut of Journal binding and pages scanned on flatbed EPSON Expression 10000 XL; 400dpi; text/lineart - black and white - stored to Tiff Derivation: Abbyy Fine Reader v.9 work with PNG-format (black and white); Photoshop CS3; Adobe Acrobat v.9 Web display format PDFDuring the last two decades a new interest has emerged in the structure of the letter to the Philippians, leading to a variety of text oriented studies, which have more or less confirmed the unity of the letter. This article contributes to these studies by making a thought-structure analysis of the text of Philippians. This analysis, which takes the grammatical relations within the text as point of departure, but proceeds to a study of the more implicit markers of structure, such as repetition and figures of speech, reveals that the thoughts in the letter body of Philippians are arranged in a letter body . In this pattern Philippians 1:27-30 serves as a “table of contents”, which is expanded upon in the rest of the letter body (2:1-3:21). In a subtle way the main elements of the “table of contents” are echoed in Philippians 4:1-9, resulting in an “inclusio”-pattern. These patterns of thought structure of Philippians provide further support for theories in favour of the unity of the letter.enFaculty of Theology, University of PretoriaPhilippiansUnityBible -- N.T. -- Philippians -- Criticism, TextualBible -- Structuralist criticismArticle