Ro 16

A NOTE TO EPHESUS

1 I COMMEND to you our sister Phoebê who ministers to the Com2 munity at Kenchreae: receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of saints, and give her whatever help she may require at your hands; truly she has proved herself a helper to many, as well as to myself.

3 Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus,

4

5

they laid down their own necks for my life;

to whom not only I but also all the Communities of the Gentiles give thanks:

also the community at their house.

Salute Epaenetus my beloved,

he is the firstfruits of Asia for Christ.

6 Salute Mary,

she laboured actively for you.

7 Salute Andronikus and Junias my kinsmen and fellow-prisoners; they are men of note among the apostles,

also they were in Christ before me.

8 Salute Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord.

9 Salute Urbanus, our fellow-worker in Christ, and Stachys my

beloved.

10 Salute Apelles, that genuine character in Christ.

Salute those who belong to the household of Aristobûlus.

11 Salute Herôdion my kinsman.

Salute those of Narcissus' household who are in the Lord. 12 Salute Tryphaena and Tryphosa who labour in the Lord. Salute Persis the beloved,

she laboured actively in the Lord.

13 Salute Rufus, that choice character in Christ,

also her who is his mother and mine.

14 Salute Asynkritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, also the brothers who are with them.

15 Salute Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, also the saints who are with them.

16

17

Salute one another with a saints' kiss.

All the Communities of Christ salute you.

Now I appeal to you, brothers, look to those who are creating the dissensions and the hindrances among you, contrary to the doctrine which you 18 have learned; turn away from them. Such people serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and by fair and flattering speech they 19 beguile the hearts of the unsuspecting. Your obedience has reached the ears of all. I rejoice then over you; but I would have 20 you expert in what is good, and guileless in what is evil. Soon shall the God of peace trample Satan beneath your feet.

The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

COLOSSIANS

THE Colossian church was Pauline only (14. 8 21) in an indirect sense, but Paul's authority to address these Christians seems to have been unquestioned, and the epistle contains evidence (42-18) of a warm, mutual interest. The danger which he sought to combat lay in the pretensions (24) made by several members, under Jewish influences, to a higher Christian life. These involved ritual and ascetic practices, which in turn derived their motives and justification from certain speculative and theosophic principles, e.g. the mediation and mission of angels, and a cosmical dualism. To reach the practical question Paul strikes at the theory, exposing the uselessness and danger of such habits by a proof that Christ is absolutely sufficient as a redeeming power. The Christology 1 is an advance in some respects upon the previous epistles (cp. Ro 1136 and Col 116). But the advance is conditioned by the special circumstances of the Colossian church, and is not cut off from the genuinely Pauline basis. Paul adopts and adapts certain ideas and phrases 2 to reiterate the absolute adequacy and efficacy of Christ in his organic relation to the church and the world alike. Faith in him requires no outside philosophy or esoteric cult to perfect itself. Through union with Christ and Christ alone the Christian life rises to the height and fulness of its moral destiny, and no so-called "Higher Life" is to be dreamt of. Any external or additional aid (219) is gratuitous and harmful. This thesis is urged upon lines which Paul in part had already traversed (in 1 Co and Ro), in part found opening up now freshly to his mind. The style and inner evidence of the writing, combined with a fair view of the errors attacked and the doctrine adduced, serve-in the absence of many ✔ historical traits—to indicate that the letter is a genuine product of the apostle. It is intended to stamp as authentic and exhibit as final the gospel which the Colossians had learned from his pupil, Epaphras.

3

1 Dr. Fairbairn (Christ in Mod. Theol. pp. 318-320) puts this with characteristic terseness: "Christ occupies not simply a historical, but a cosmical place. . . . At the touch of evil the cosmology becomes a soteriology; for when sin enters the world, the Creator, who is good, has no choice but to become the Saviour. The categories of time and history have thus ceased to be here applicable; sin is no longer an affair of man or earth, but of the universe. The conflict against it is extra-temporal; its field is the whole realm of mental being, the protagonists God and the devil." Cp. Knowling, Witness of Epistles, pp. 256-290.

2 He may have become acquainted with the current terminology of the Greek mysteries in Rome, even if he had not some previous knowledge of them. Cp. the essay in Lightfoot's edition, pp. 71-111, on "The Colossian heresy." The exact features of the theosophy at Colossê are difficult to make out, and have been variously interpreted. It is clear that they were not "Gnostic," in the later and technical sense of the term; possibly they were syncretistic, a local blend of polytheism, mysticism, and theosophy.

3 For the reality and limits of the advance in Paulinism which marks off the letters after "Ronians," cp. Weiss, NTTh, ii. pp. 75-124, and Zahn, Einl. i. p. 347 f., particularly the latter, who harmonises the conceptions of the earlier and later Paulinism without straining exegesis unduly.

Up to a comparatively recent period, the epistle was upon the whole assigned to the second century (110-130 A.D.) by most critics, from Mayerhoff downwards, partly owing to the supposed development of the Christology, but mainly on account of its references to what were considered fairly mature forms of Gnosticism. Baur especially (Paul, ii. 1-44), followed by the majority of his school,1 found the atmosphere of the writing not earlier than this period, and Weizsäcker (AA, ii. pp. 240–245) still holds a similar view; he regards "Colossians" as a product, along with the fourth gospel, of the Ephesian school which developed Paulinism to counteract the contemporary tendencies of encratitic thought. So Brückner, Chron. pp. 41-56, 257-276. Yet this rigorous verdict has to be modified. It must be admitted that there are no definite traces of any great Gnostic system in this writing, nor can there be any reason for denying that Paulinism in Paul's hands could have embraced certain semi-metaphysical ideas which are called Alexandrian, or that the conceptions in Colossians were necessarily foreign to his mind simply because they had not as yet come to such full expression. The possibility of such a speculative advance in the writer's mind becomes of course considerably greater when Philippians-with its bold development of Christology-is accepted as genuinely Pauline.

The undoubted basis of Pauline ideas, however, suggested to Holtzmann his ingenious and complicated interpretation theory (Kritik der Ephes. u. Kolesserbriefe (1872); Einl. pp. 251-267), by which, after Ewald and in part Hitzig, he endeavoured to distinguish an original and genuine epistle to the Colossians directed against their legal and ascetic errors. This was first used by the autor ad Ephesios against a Jewish-Christian theosophy; afterwards he turned back and interpolated his earlier source into our extant Colossians." Such filigree-criticism has not proved convincing, and has only been accepted with considerable modifications. It is to be noted that most critics incline to the simpler conclusion of accepting at least "Colossians" as a genuine and substantially Pauline document, a position which is fast becoming axiomatic.

2

This recognition of the authenticity and unity of Colossians had been already advocated by Schenkel (Christusbild d. Apostel, pp. 83–86), Weiss (INT, i. pp. 323-338, AJT, ì. 371–377), Reuss (pp. 110-119), J. Koster (De Echtheid van de brieven aan de Kolossers en de Ephesiërs, 1877), Renan (S. Paul, pp. ix-xii), Lightfoot, Beyschlag, Godet, Salmon, and Hort (Jud. Christianity, p. 116 f.), besides the brilliant studies

1 Cp. especially Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. pp. 95-119; Urc. p. 670 f., who admits, however, the possibility of a Pauline nucleus in the letter; also, from a slightly different standpoint, Schmiedel, EWK, ii. 38, article "Kolosser u. Epheser" (1886), p. 138 f., who takes the heresy to be a form of Ebionitism with Gnostic tendencies; and Cone, Gospel and its Interpretations, pp. 249–260.

2 Cp. von Soden's examination: JpTh (1885), pp. 320-368. The parallels are reprinted by Haupt (-Meyer), Einl. pp. 27, 28, 79-81.

3 Possibly the stylistic difficulties might be eased, were it a feasible conjecture here, as in the case of 2 Thess., that Timothy's share in the epistle was something more than merely nominal. Cp. Renan, L'Antechrist, chap. iv.

4 Hort and McGiffert, however, reject the ordinary hypothesis of Essene influence. A connection with some popular Greek ethical philosophy the former regards as undeniably possible; but he considers the Colossian heresy to be essentially a Judaic development and extension to which a specious quasi-Hellenic varnish of "philosophy" was given in order to disarm Western prejudice. More simply and satisfactorily, McGiffert, like Schenkel, von Soden, and Erbes (Offenbar. Joh. p. 135 f.) prefers to believe that the errorists were under the influence of Alexandrian rather than Palestinian Judaism. The term qıλorogia was applied by Philo and Josephus to Jewish

of Sabatier (Paul, pp. 229-234) and Klöpper (Der Brief an die Kolosser, 1882). Recently the support has become even more extensive. Among others, the Pauline authorship is accepted by L. Schultze (Handbuch der theolog. Wissenschaften, Band. i. Abth. 2, pp. 91-95), Schäfer (Einl. pp. 132-136), Oltramare (Commentaire sur les épîtres de S. Paul aux Col. Ephes. (1891), vol. i. pp. 66-91), Clemen, Harnack, Jülicher (Einl. pp. 89-91; EBi, i. 860 f.), Blass (Acta Apost. prolegomena, p. 1), McGiffert (AA, pp. 266-374), E. H. Hall (Papias (1899), pp. 283-286), Bartlet (AA, p. 186f.), T. K. Abbott (ICC. pp. 1-lix), Adeney, BI, pp. 389–391, Zahn (Einl. 1. pp. 347-368), and with exceptional ability by Haupt (-Meyer) and von Soden (JpTh (1885), pp. 320 f., 497 f., 672 f.; HC, iii. 1, pp. 1-18).

i

The determining factor in this recognition of Colossians as an authentic work of Paul 2 has been the recognition of Gnosticism in its pre-Christian sources, Persian, Phrygian, and Philonic. Investigation into theosophic ideas early in the first century has revealed symptoms and developments of what is called at a later period "Gnosticism" (cp. Krüger, RTK, vi. pp. 728-734). The Essenes, especially, represent aptitudes which can be taken as precursors of the tendencies combated in Colossians ; in fact, the widely diffused and popular forms of theosophy among Jewish (Ac 1913) communities give a religious climate for the seventh decade of the century, amply sufficient to explain the ideas and language of this epistle. Gnosticism was the word originally for an atmosphere rather than for a theory. It stood for a syncretism, a mental temper whose incipient and elementary forms can be detected in various quarters during the earlier half of the first-century. Indeed, at

4

5

theology. It would connote any transcendental theory of God and the world, especially among Jewish Christians. With the appeal to human traditions and the significance attached to questions of food (Col 2-Ro 14), Paul was already familiar.

1 Haupt is dissatisfied with both the Essene and the Alexandrian theories of the Colossian heresy. He prefers to regard it as a phase of contemporary Judaism, which in the Phrygian atmosphere of theosophy and mystic cults attempted to erect a religious system by means of angel-worship and asceticism, with the aid of oral teaching imparted to the initiated. Jülicher again is unable to detect any specifically Jewish element at all in the Colossian heresy.

2 Evidently Epaphras and the other teachers at Colossê were unable to cope with the ramifications of the local theosophy. The predominance of abstract teaching in Paul's letter over personal references is natural when it is remembered (i.) that the readers were not directly converts of Paul, and (ii.) that the letter was to be supplemented by Tychicus' (47) oral information upon the writer's situation and prospects.

3 Grammatical usage and the inherent probabilities of the case are, upon the whole, against the suggestion that the term undeís (218 etc.) and the use of the singular denote a person-some teacher of marked influence and authority as in the case of the Galatians (Gal 31 57. 9). The reference seems purposely vague and general. Had Paul heard of some particular individual, his treatment would in all likelihood have been of a different character.

4 On the novelties of style and vocabulary, cp. especially Haupt's serviceable analysis (-Meyer, pp. 27-32). As he points out, most of the peculiarities-the occurrence of strange expressions, and the absence of distinctively Pauline terms-are to be found in the first half of the epistle. Both Haupt and von Soden agree that "Colossians" is an example of the truth that the style is not always the man; it is frequently to be explained by his mode and circumstances at the time of writing. Paul's "theology as a whole never became fully rounded and complete in such a sense as to exclude fresh points of views or new expressions" (Jülicher).

5 Cp. besides the candid and final discussion in Klöpper, op. cit. pp. 58-119, Sanday, Smith's Dict. B. (1893), i. pp. 624-631, and Zahn, Einl. i. pp. 310-368. After making allowance for some exaggerations (with Schürer, ThLz (1899), 167 f.),

any time after 40 A.D., early Christianity was upon the edge of those tendencies which came afterwards to be named "Gnosticism." A discussion such as that presented in "Colossians" is unprecedented, so far as regards Paulinism, but it is a long way from being historically a prolepsis.

one must also admit that Friedländer has proved the existence of an incipient preChristian Gnosticism in some form or other within Judaism (Der vorchristliche Jüdische Gnosticismus, 1898). Holtzmann is in agreement with the main points of this theory (NTTh, i. pp. 476-486, "Die Gnosis im NT"), but he still adheres substantially to the rather mechanical hypothesis already noted (ibid. ii. pp. 225-258), which has recently been favoured in a tentative way by J. Weiss (ThLz, 1900, pp. 553-556). The latter critic rejects Ephesians in toto, but accepts Colossians as an interpolated production of the apostle; e.g. passages like 123 (oû hnoíσate... οὐρανόν), 21 (καὶ ἴσοι . . . σαρκί), 22 (αὐτῶν), etc., are insertions made by an editor who wrote at the time when the Pauline epistles were being collected and used for catholic ends. It must be admitted that such changes in the text of a letter like this were not improbable in the second century, especially as scribes had always the temptation of conforming Colossians to Ephesians. But I do not think it likely that any glosses which may be detected in Colossians were due to the author of Ephesians (when that writing is taken as sub-Pauline), or that they affect the Pauline authorship and primitive Gnosticism of the former epistle, whose coefficients of age and situation are best supplied by the seventh-decade date and the impact of Asiatic theosophy upon the apostle's mind.