Colossae, the home of the church to which Paul’s letter to the Colossians was addressed, was a city in the Lycus valley of Western Anatolia (Asia Minor). Two neighboring cities, also in the Lycus valley, are mentioned in the letter-Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col. 2:1; 4:13, 15–16).
The river Lycus1 (modern Çürük-su) is a tributary of the Maeander (modern Büyük Menderes). In antiquity the territory through which the Lycus ran was the southwestern part of the kingdom of Phrygia. Phrygia became the dominant power in Anatolia with the decline of the Hittite Empire after 1200 B.C., but was weakened by the Cimmerian invasion about 700 B.C., and had to yield to the hegemony of Lydia. When Cyrus the Great conquered Croesus, the Lydian king, in 547 B.C. and captured his capital, Sardis, Phrygia was incorporated into the Persian Empire and remained so until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. and the following years. In the division of Alexander’s empire after his death south-western Phrygia fell ultimately to the Seleucid monarchy.
A new, expansionist power, the kingdom of Pergamum, arose to the north of this territory after 283 B.C., when Philetaerus, governor of Pergamum under Lysimachus (ruler for a time of Macedonia and part of Anatolia), made a unilateral declaration of independence. His successors from 241 B.C. onward assumed the title of king. Between 277 and 230 B.C. Northern Phrygia was taken over by the Galatians, immigrant Celts from Europe, who were first invited into Anatolia as mercenary soldiers by the king of Bithynia.
When Antiochus III succeeded to the Seleucid throne in 221 B.C., he had to win back large areas of his kingdom in Anatolia which had been annexed by the king of Pergamum. In this he was aided by his mother’s brother Achaeus, an able military commander. But when Achaeus recovered those areas, he proclaimed himself independent ruler over them and had himself crowned king at Laodicea in 220 B.C. Antiochus had to enter into a temporary alliance with Pergamum in order to put down Achaeus, who was captured and killed at Sardis in 214 B. C.2 For the next quarter of a century the Lycus valley remained part of the Seleucid realm.
In 192 B.C., by crossing the Aegean and intervening in the affairs of the Greek city-states, Antiochus III clashed with Rome, which had lately proclaimed itself liberator and protector of those states. So began the long-drawn-out decline of his kingdom. The Romans drove him out of Greece, pursued him into Asia, and defeated him at the battle of Magnesia in 190 B.C. Two years later they imposed on him the Peace of Apamea (a Phrygian city near the source of the Maeander), by the terms of which he had to surrender most of his Anatolian possessions, many of which (including southwestern Phrygia) were handed over to the king of Pergamum, Rome’s faithful ally.3
The last king of Pergamum, Attalus III, died without heirs in 133 B.C. and bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman state. When the Romans agreed to accept the legacy, they reconstituted the kingdom of Pergamum as the province of Asia. The cities of the Lycus valley were thenceforth subject to the authority of the Roman proconsul of Asia (apart from the three years following 88 B.C. when the Romans were forced to abandon the province by Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, and the brief overrunning of Anatolia by the Parthians in 40 B.C.).
Colossae was situated on the south bank of the Lycus. The spelling Kolassai, found in some NT manuscripts, may represent an earlier, possibly Phrygian, pronunciation. (If so, then the spelling Kolossai could represent an attempt to provide the place-name with an artificial etymology.4
Colossae first appears in extant history in Herodotus, who tells how Xerxes, in his westward march against mainland Greece in 480 B.C., “came to Colossae, a great city of Phrygia, situated at a spot where the river Lycus plunges into a chasm and disappears. The river, after flowing underground for about five furlongs, reappears once more and … empties itself into the Maeander.”5 This statement rests on a misunderstanding or a distorted report. Colossae stood at the beginning of a steep gorge, two and a half miles long, into which the Lycus descends rapidly from the upper to the lower valley. At some points in the upper part of the gorge the water penetrates the limestone bed and disappears, and this may account for the tale of an underground flow.
Eighty years later Cyrus the Younger, marching east from Sardis with an army of mercenaries in his bid for the Persian throne, crossed the Maeander and, after a day’s march through Phrygia, arrived at Colossae, “an inhabited city, large and prosperous,” where he stayed for seven days.6
The autonomous civic status which Colossae enjoyed under the Seleucid and Pergamene kings was retained under the Romans. It has sometimes been inferred from Strabo that, by the beginning of the Christian era, Colossae had dwindled in importance and become one of several unimportant small towns, but the inference is invalid because of a lacuna in Strabo’s text at this point.7 There is inscriptional evidence that Colossae retained its importance into the second and third centuries A.D.8 The elder Pliny (died A.D. 79) includes it in a list of famous towns of Phrygia (although this list is extracted from an older source).9
The site of Colossae was discovered by W. J. Hamilton in 1835. Re identified its ruins and acropolis south of the river and its necropolis on the north bank. Later the Byzantine church of St. Michael the Archistratēgos, fated to be destroyed by Turkish raiders in 1189, was erected on the north bank. According to W. M. Ramsay, its ruins were still “plainly visible in 1881”10 It remained the religious center of the district after the population of Colossae moved to Chonai (modern Honaz), three miles to the south, at the foot of Mount Cadmus (Honaz Daǧ). Since the site of Colossae remains unoccupied, it presents an inviting prospect to archaeologists.
Laodicea (near modern Eskihisar, five miles northeast of Denizli)11 was founded by the Seleucid king Antiochus II and named in honor of his wife Laodice-plainly at some point between his ascending the throne in 261 B.C. and his divorcing her eight years later. Like Colossae, it was situated on the south bank of the Lycus, ten or eleven miles downstream. According to the elder Pliny, it was founded on the site of an older settlement called first Diospolis and then Rhoas.12 It makes one of its first appearances in history when Achaeus, rebelling against his nephew Antiochus III, had himself crowned king there in 220 B.C.
Laodicea rapidly gained in importance, to the point where it rivalled Colossae. Like Colossae, it retained its civic status under the Romans. From Cicero, to whose jurisdiction this part of Phrygia and other territories were added during his proconsulship of Cilicia (51–50 B.C.), we know that it was the center of a conventus or judicial circuit13 (to which Hierapolis and, later, Cibyra belonged), and that it was also a center of financial and banking operations.14 Its economic prosperity is attested at the beginning of the first century A.D. by Strabo.15 It suffered repeatedly from earthquakes. One is recorded in the principate of Augustus: the case for relieving its citizens, together with those of Thyatira and Chios (who suffered in the same earthquake), was presented before the Roman senate by the emperors stepson Tiberius.16 A later one devastated the area under Nero, about the time when the letter to the Colossians was written (A.D. 60); Laodicea was destroyed, but was rebuilt from its own resources with no assistance from Rome.17 In addition to its natural wealth, Laodicea benefited from the munificence of some of its grateful sons.18 It appears also to have been the chief medical center of Phrygia.19
When the provincial system of the Roman Empire was reorganized toward the end of the fourth century, Laodicea became the seat of government of the newly constituted province of Phrygia Pacatiana.20
Hierapolis self-evidently means “the holy city.”21 It may have originated as a settlement attached to the temple of the Great Mother. It has been thought to have first received the status of a city (polis) from Eumenes II of Pergamum (197–160 B.C.), but was more probably a Seleucid foundation, going back to the time of Antiochus 1 (281–261 B.C.).22 It stood on a road which left the main highway from Iconium to Ephesus at Laodicea and which led northwest across the mountains to Philadelphia, Sardis. and the Hermus valley-the road which Xerxes took to Sardis after leaving Colossae.23 It looked across toward Laodicea from a terrace three hundred feet high on the north bank of the Lycus. In the plain below the terrace the Lycus flows into the Maeander. Behind the site a hot mineral spring wells up, covering the rocks beneath with white deposits of lime, producing stalactite formations which have given the place its Turkish name Pamukkale (“Cotton Castle”).
The cave from which the spring emerges was believed to be an entrance to the lower world; the eunuch priests of the Great Mother were said to be the only living beings not to be asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide generated in the cave.24 At a more practical level, visitors came to bathe in the hot water and their presence added to the prosperity of the city.
In the history of human thought the city’s principal claim to fame lies in its having been the birthplace (c. A.D. 50) of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.
The chief industry carried on in those cities was the manufacture and preparation of woolen fabrics. This was in fact the chief industry of all the cities in the Maeander and Hermus basins, for they had excellent communications with the Aegean ports through which their wares were exported. Although the cities of the Lycus valley began their production of those wares later than the older cities of Ionia and Lydia, they soon became famous for the high quality of their products. The glossy black wool of Laodicea was esteemed as finer even than that of Miletus, which was renowned for its excellence throughout the Near East from the sixth century B.C. until well into the Christian era.25 Hierapolis in particular was famed for its superior dyeing processes. The color of the Colossian product was known as colossinus, a word used by Pliny the elder to describe the color of the cyclamen bloom.26
The Phrygian inhabitants of the Lycus valley were only gradually hellenized, except for those who lived in the cities. The new cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis were Greek cities from their foundation. When they came under Roman authority after 133 B.C., the cities were in some smaller degree romanized, but none of them was reconstituted as a Roman colony, as several cities farther east were.27
II. JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN THE LYCUS VALLEY
Some Jewish settlement in Western Anatolia can be traced back to quite an early date: apparently there were Jewish exiles in the Lydian city of Sardis in the time of the prophet Obadiah.28 According to Josephus, Seleucus I (3 12–281 B.C.), founder of the Seleucid dynasty, granted Jews full civic rights in all cities which he founded29 (it is wise to consider carefully what Josephus and other Jewish writers mean when they mention the enjoyment of full civic rights by Jews in a Hellenistic city). Antiochus II (261–248 B.C.) is said to have planted Jewish colonies in the cities of Ionia.30 But Jewish settlement in Phrygia, on any substantial scale, is to be dated late in the third century B.C., when Antiochus III, having recovered Phrygia and Lydia from the Pergamenes and from his rebellious uncle Achaeus, ordered his satrap Zeuxis to send two thousand Jewish families, with their property, from Babylonia as military settlers in the garrisons and other vital spots of those two Anatolian regions. Houses and cultivable lands were to be provided for them, they were to be exempt from taxation for ten years, and they should have the right to live under their own laws.31
There is no reason to doubt the essential credibility of this report by Josephus, or of the royal decree which it embodies. The king’s letter to Zeuxis, says M. Rostovtzeff, “undoubtedly gives us exactly the normal procedure when the Seleucids founded a colony.”32 The settlement should be dated shortly after 213 B.C., when Phrygia and Lydia were reincorporated in Antiochus’s empire. One Zeuxis was satrap of Babylonia about 220 B.C.; he may be identical with the Zeuxis who was satrap of Lydia between 201 and 190 B. C33
If it be asked why Babylonian Jews should have commended themselves to Antiochus as the kind of settlers who would help to stabilize disaffected areas of his empire, an enigmatic reference in 2 Maccabees may point to an answer. Judas Maccabaeus is said to have encouraged his troops on one occasion, when they were threatened by a much superior Seleucid army, by reminding them of “the battle with the Galatians that took place in Babylonia, when 8,000 Jews in all went into the affair, with 4,000 Macedonians; and when the Macedonians were hard pressed, the 8,000, by the help that came to them from heaven, destroyed 120,000 and took much booty” (2 Macc. 8:20).34 This tradition, which has evidently lost nothing in the telling (especially as regards the numbers involved), probably relates to the earlier part of the reign of Antiochus III. The Galatians habitually hired out their services as mercenaries; presumably on this occasion Galatian mercenaries were engaged on the side of one of Antiochus’s enemies. The help then given him by Babylonian Jews could well have moved Antiochus to settle a number of them in Phrygia and Lydia as guarantors of the peace of those territories.
The political changes by which the Lycus valley passed successively under the rule of Pergamum and Rome made little difference to the Jews who resided there. Even Mithridates’s conquest of proconsular Asia in 88 B.C., and the ensuing twenty-five years’ war, did not seriously disturb them.35 Almost immediately after the end of the Mithridatic wars we have evidence which points to a large and thriving Jewish population in the Lycus valley and elsewhere in Phrygia.
In 62 B.C. Lucius Valerius Flaccus, proconsul of Asia, impounded the proceeds of the annual half-shekel tax which the Jews of his province, in common with male Jews twenty years old and upward throughout the world, contributed for the maintenance of the temple in Jerusalem. His action was in line with the official ban on the exporting of gold and silver from the empire to foreign countries. It is likely indeed that by use and wont, if not by senatorial decree, an exception had been made in respect of the Jewish temple tax, and in any case it could be argued that from 63 B.C. Judea itself was part of the empire and no longer a foreign country. Flaccus was brought to court in 59 B.C. on a charge of acting illegally in the matter; he was defended by Cicero, whose speech for the defense has been preserved.36 Cicero argued that the province was being impoverished by the export of so much wealth year by year; one should therefore be prepared for some exaggeration in the estimate of the sums of money involved.
At Apamea, Cicero states, gold amounting to just under one hundred Roman pounds (librae), had been impounded; at Laodicea just over twenty pounds.37 Since at this time the Pompeian standard of thirty-six aurei, (gold denarii) to the gold libra, was in force, and the aureus, was reckoned to be equivalent to twenty-five drachmae or denarii, it has been calculated that nearly forty-five thousand half-shekels (didrachma), were collected at Apamea, and over nine thousand at Laodicea. These figures do not mean that there were respectively forty-five thousand and nine thousand male Jews of the appropriate age resident at Apamea and Laodicea, since these cities were centers to which the money collected in the surrounding districts was brought for conversion into more manageable form and eventual dispatch to Jerusalem. But even when allowance is made for some exaggeration, the Jewish population of Phrygia was considerable.
Later in the same century the collection and export of the half-shekel were expressly safeguarded by successive decrees of Julius Caesar38 and Augustus.39 Augustus’s right-hand man Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa took specific measures in 14 B.C. (at Herod’s request) to protect the Jews of Asia Minor against interference with this privilege (and also against compulsory appearance in law-courts on the sabbath).40
Josephus quotes a letter sent by the magistrates of Laodicea about 45 B.C. to a high Roman official, probably the proconsul of Asia, confirming that, in accordance with his directions, they would not impede the liberty of Jewish residents to observe the sabbath and other practices of their religion.41 In A.D. 2/3 Augustus issued a full statement of Jewish rights in that part of the empire: it was posted in Ancyra, capital of the province of Galatia.42
After A.D. 70 the half-shekel payment was diverted to the upkeep of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome;43 otherwise the Jews of the dispersion continued to enjoy their privileges. There is documentary evidence for this in Alexandria44 and Syrian Antioch;45 the situation would not be different elsewhere in the eastern provinces. W. M. Ramsay discerned evidence for a specific provision safeguarding Jewish privileges at Apamea, in a tomb inscription of the third century A.D. directing that no one was to be buried in the tomb except its owner, Aurelius Rufus, and his wife Aurelia Tatiana. “If anyone acts [contrary to this direction],” the inscription concludes, “he knows the law of the Jews”:46 Ramsay thought at one time that “the law of the Jews” here could not be the Mosaic law, but a local regulation registered with the city authorities, protecting the burial privileges of the Jewish community.47 This might be so, but two Jewish tomb-inscriptions of the mid-third century, from Blaundos and Akmonia in West-central Phrygia, invoke on the violator “the curses written in Deuteronomy” (presumably in Deut. 28:15–68);48 thus the “law of the Jews” in the inscription from Apamea could very well be the Mosaic law. (A similar inscription from Hierapolis, of around A.D. 200, stipulates that for any unauthorized burial in the tomb a fine shall be paid to the Jewish community in that city.49)
Ramsay deduced from a comparative study of Greek inscriptions in Phrygia that the local Jewish communities were marked by a degree of religious laxity exceptional in the diaspora-that members of Jewish families could combine the office (or at least the tide) of ruler of the synagogue50 with responsible participation in pagan cults. The evidence is not so clear. For example, he quoted from an inscription from Akmonia a reference to one Julia Severa who was honored by the local synagogue51 and who is mentioned on local coins of Nero, Agrippina, and Poppaea as having held municipal office together with her husband Servenius Capito (say, between A.D. 54 and 65).52 It was difficult to hold such a magistracy without at least some involvement in local cults, or even in the imperial cult. But Julia Severa appears to have been a descendant of Herod53 and members of the Herod family were not typical Jews.
The inscription which mentions Julia Severa refers to Gaius Tyrronius Cladus as a lifelong ruler of the synagogue. Ramsay judged that “the strange name Tyrronius … may in all cases be taken as Jewish,”54 and went on to draw inferences of doubtful cogency from its other inscriptional occurrences-a course which he himself admitted to be one “of speculation and uncertainty, where each step is more slippery than the preceding one.55 Some outward conformity with pagan rituals on the part of influential Jews in Phrygia may be taken as established; but it would be precarious to draw conclusions from this about forms of syncretism which might be reflected in the beliefs and practices deprecated in the letter to the Colossians.
The influence of the Jewish settlements on the folklore of Phrygia is well illustrated by the way in which the story of Noah was taken over at Apamea56 as a local cult-legend. Probably a local flood legend was there already, before Jewish settlement in the area began, but under Jewish influence it was merged with the flood narrative of Genesis. On Apamean coins of the third century A.D. there appears an ark with the inscription NŌE (the Greek form of Noah’s name given in the Septuagint), floating on water; in it are two human figures, and two others, a male and a female, stand beside it; on top is a raven, and above it is a dove with an olive branch in its beak. Two phases of the story are thus represented-in one, Noah and his wife are in the ark; in the other, they are on dry land, returning thanks for their preservation.57
This Phrygian setting for the story of Noah is recorded in the Sibylline Oracles:
In the land of Phrygia is the steep tapering mountain of Kelainē, called Ararat, whence the springs of the great Marsyas have their origin. The ark remained on the peak of that height when the waters abated.58
The Marsyas or Catarrhactes (modern Dinar-su) rises in a recess under the acropolis of ancient Celaenae; it flows through Apamea (modern Dinar), on the outskirts of which it falls into the Maeander. Evidently the Sibylline author identifies the acropolis of Celaenae with Ararat.
III. CHRISTIANITY IN THE LYCUS VALLEY
The inclusion of Phrygia among the places from which Jewish pilgrims came to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost following the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:10) may be designed to prepare the reader for the eventual evangelization of that region59 Whether that is so or not, Phrygia was evangelized within a quarter of a century from that date. In Phrygia Galatica (“the Phrygian and Galatian region” of Acts 16:6) the cities of Pisidian Antioch and Iconium—“the last [i.e., easternmost] city of Phrygia,” as Xenophon calls it60—were evangelized by Barnabas and Paul in A.D. 47 or 48 (Acts 13:14–14:4). As for Phrygia Asiana farther west, including the Lycus valley, it was evangelized a few years later, during Paul’s Ephesian ministry (A.D. 52–55), when “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10).
The Lycus valley was not evangelized by Paul himself: it is plain from Col. 2:1 that he was not personally acquainted with the churches there. He had certainly met individual members of those churches like Philemon of Colossae, who indeed appears to have been one of his converts (that is the natural sense of his reminder to him in Philem. 19b: “you owe me your very self”). The preaching of the gospel and planting of churches in the Lycus valley were evidently the work of Epaphras, whom Paul calls his “fellow-slave”61 and “fellow-prisoner.”62
It is possible that when Paul journeyed overland from the east to Ephesus to take up his ministry there in A.D. 52, he went by way of the Lycus valley. When Luke says that he arrived in Ephesus after passing through “the upper parts” (Acts 19:1), it may be the Lycus route that is indicated. Any district up-country could be called “the upper parts” from the standpoint of Ephesus and the coastal region. But it is more probable that he did not take the Lycus route but a higher road farther north, which left the road leading to the Lycus valley at Apamea and approached Ephesus on the north of Mount Messogis (Aydin Daǧlari), not on the south of it, as the Lycus route did.63
It is a reasonable inference from Luke’s account that, while Paul’s personal headquarters were in Ephesus during the years of evangelization of proconsular Asia, his fellow-workers (such as Epaphras in the Lycus valley) were active in other parts of the province. Probably all seven of the “churches of Asia” to which the Johannine Apocalypse was later addressed, and other Asian churches, were planted during that fertile period.64
The only direct information the NT supplies about Christianity in the Lycus valley is contained in the letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, and in the letter to the Laodicean church in Rev. 3:14–22. The last-named document shows how the churches of the Lycus valley shared the general prosperity of their environment; the cutting edge of their distinctive witness was accordingly blunted. Among various touches of local color in the letter is the lukewarmness for which the church is rebuked: in contrast to Hierapolis with its medicinal hot springs or Colossae with its refreshing supply of cold water, Laodicea had to fetch its water through high-pressure stone pipes from hot springs at Denizli, some five miles away, and by the time it reached Laodicea the water was lukewarm. Probably, like the water which the villagers of Eçirli are reported as drawing today from the hot springs of Pamukkale, it had to be left standing in stone jars until it was cool65
Excavations took place on the site of Laodicea between 1961 and 1963. The most impressive discovery was of a nymphaeum with public fountains. After its destruction by an earthquake late in the fifth century the building was repaired for use as a Christian meeting-place.66
Sometime after the writing of the letter to the Colossians a large-scale departure from Paul’s teaching is implied by the statement: “you are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me” (2 Tim. 1:15). Something to the same effect may be gathered from the warning to the leaders of the church at Ephesus in Acts 20:29–30 that from within their own ranks “will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”
As far as the churches of the Lycus valley are concerned, their faith received fresh stimulus in the latter part of the first century from the immigration of some Palestinian believers whose association with the Christian movement went back to early days. Among these were Philip and some at least of his four prophesying daughters, whose tombs were pointed out at Hierapolis toward the end of the second century.67 There is some confusion in Eusebius or his sources between Philip the apostle and Philip the evangelist, but there is little doubt that we are to think of Philip the evangelist, with whom Paul and his companions spent several days at Caesarea in A.D. 57 before completing their fateful journey to Jerusalem (Acts 21:8–14). It is not surprising that Philip in due course had a church dedicated in his honor at Hierapolis.68
When Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was taken to Rome about A.D. 110 to be exposed to the wild beasts in the Colosseum, he passed through Asia Minor.69 It is not clear whether his military escort took the road through the Lycus valley or the higher road which forked right at Apamea and ran north of Mount Messogis. If they went through the Lycus valley, they would have turned north at Laodicea, passing through Hierapolis and going on by Xerxes’ route to Philadelphia and Smyrna. Ignatius makes no mention in his letters of any city through which he passed before his arrival at Philadelphia.
In the first half of the second century the bishop of Hierapolis was Papias,70 contemporary of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and probably, like Polycarp, a hearer of John, “the disciple of the Lord.”71 Even if Papias’s intelligence was as small as Eusebius reckoned it to be (and it probably was not)72 the loss of his five volumes of Exegesis of the Dominical Oracles is to be greatly regretted. Whatever might be the historical value of the remnants of oral tradition which he gathered together in these volumes, it would be useful to know what they were.
Another bishop of Hierapolis, in the second half of the same century, was Claudius Apollinaris, who about A.D. 172 presented a work in defense of the Christian faith to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. This work is lost, as are other works of his, including five volumes Against the Greeks, two volumes Against the Jews, two volumes On the Truth, and one or more treatises against the Montanists.73
The Montanists arose in Phrygia soon after the middle of the second century.74 Their leader, Montanus, prophesied that the new Jerusalem would soon descend from heaven and take up its location near Pepouza, a city about thirty miles north of the Lycus valley, between the Maeander and the Senaros (Banaz Çayi). From its place of origin Montanism was known in other parts of the Christian world as the Phrygian heresy.
But orthodoxy remained vigorous in the Lycus valley, especially at Laodicea. A synod held at Laodicea around A.D. 363 promulgated sixty rules, the “Canons of Laodicea,” which were acknowledged by later church councils as a basis of canon law.75
The recipients of the letter to the Colossians are warned against a “human tradition” which is characterized as “philosophy and empty illusion” (Col. 2:8). In the following words of ch. 2 more detailed indications are given of this “tradition.” From this warning it has usually been inferred that there was a particular form of teaching current in the Lycus valley, to which the church of Colossae and the neighboring churches were exposed. This teaching was superficially attractive, but in fact its tendency was to undermine the gospel. Hence a warning was deemed necessary.
This reading of the situation was challenged in 1973 in a study by M. D. Hooker entitled “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?”76 Professor Hooker did not answer her own question with a dogmatic “No,” but she suggested that the data could be accounted for if Paul was arming his readers against the pressures of contemporary society with its prevalent superstitions, just as “a Christian pastor in twentieth-century Britain might well feel it necessary to remind those in his care that Christ was greater than any astrological forces.”77 The language, however, points to a specific line of teaching against which the readers are put on their guard, and the most natural reason for putting them on their guard against it would be that they were in some danger of being persuaded by it. It will be referred to henceforth for convenience as the “Colossian heresy.”
The “human tradition” against which the Colossian Christians are warned is not a tradition “according to Christ” but a tradition “according to the ‘elements (stoicheia) of the world.’ ” They themselves had evidently been subject to those “elements” at one time but, through faith-union with Christ, they had “died” in relation to them and so were no longer bound to obey them (Col. 2:20). The “elements” or “elemental forces” play the same part here as in the argument of Gal. 4:3, 9, where for Christians to submit to circumcision and similar requirements of the Jewish law is said to be reversion to slavery under the “elemental forces.” So in the present argument, to submit to the prohibitions “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” would be to reenter the state of bondage under the elemental forces from which those addressed had been delivered by their new life in Christ.
It is plain from the context that the prohibitions imply a degree of asceticism not usually associated with Jewish tradition. They refer to things that are ethically neutral, not to things that are sinful in themselves. Food, according to Paul, is ethically neutral, and “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” is a vivid way of denoting various kinds of food restriction. Voluntary self-denial in matters of food can be a helpful spiritual exercise, and may on occasion be dictated by considerations of Christian charity,78 but what is deprecated here is a form of asceticism for asceticism’s sake, cultivated as a religious duty. Its association with angel worship (Col. 2:18) and “would-be religion” (Col. 2:23) could provide further help in identifying its nature and purpose.
But the most help seems to be provided by the Jewish reference in “festival or new moon or sabbath” (Col. 2:16). Festivals and new moons were observed by non-Jews as well as Jews, but the sabbath was distinctively Jewish. As the Galatians’ observance of “days and months and seasons and years” was a sign of their renewed and untimely subjection to the “weak and beggarly elemental forces” (Gal. 4:9–10), the same could be said of the Christians in Colossae or elsewhere if they allowed themselves to be dictated to with regard to the observance of “festival or new moon or sabbath.”
Another Jewish reference may be recognized in Col. 2:11, where the inward purification symbolized in Christian baptism is called “a circumcision not made with hands”—probably in deliberate contrast to Jewish circumcision.
When an attempt is made by such indications to reconstruct the outlines of the Colossian heresy, the question naturally arises whether the reconstruction bears any resemblance to Systems of thought of which something is already known.
John Calvin’s acute and well-informed mind led him to identify the proponents of the heresy as Jews-but Jews of a speculative tendency, who “invented an access to God through the angels, and put forth many speculations of that nature, such as are contained in the books of Dionysius on the Celestial Hierarchy, drawn from the school of the Platonists.”79 The “celestial hierarchy” of pseudo-Dionysius comprised nine orders of angels, by whose mediation God ordained that human beings should be raised to closer communion with himself.80 His presentation of this scheme reflects a much later outlook than that of the first century, but the idea of a gradation of intermediaries which he elaborated certainly seems to have been present in the Colossian heresy.
In more recent times there has been a tendency to discern Pythagorean rather than Platonic influence. In 1970 Eduard Schweizer found analogies to the Colossian heresy in a Neopythagorean document of the first century B.C., in which he recognized the concentration of all the themes of the heresy with the exception of sabbath observance. The presence of sabbath observance in the teaching at Colossae suggested to him that it was a Jewish brand of Neopythagoreanism in which a central place was given to the purification of the soul from everything earthly and its ascent to the upper ether, the dwelling place of Christ.81
Two generations ago the origin of the heresy was sought in an Iranian redemption myth, the outlines of which were reconstructed by Richard Reitzenstein in 1921.82 Reitzenstein adduced various passages from Colossians to illustrate his reconstruction, but with the passage of time it has become increasingly evident that the Iranian “mystery of redemption” was more his invention than his reconstruction
In a careful study published in 1917 Martin Dibelius traced detailed resemblances to the heresy in the record of initiation into the Isis mysteries preserved in the Metamorphoses of the second-century Latin writer Apuleius of Madaura.83 It was not, of course, the Isis mysteries that attracted the Colossian Christians, but Dibelius brought out a number of striking analogies. These analogies remind us that there is a generic likeness between the actions or technical terms of many forms of initiation, no matter into what mystic cult or secret society people are initiated.
If it is asked how far initiation played a part in the Colossian heresy, the answer is presented in Col. 2:18, where it appears that the false teacher lays special weight on “the things which he has seen at his initiation.”84
Initiation was involved in some of the gnostic movements of the second century-the Naassenes come to mind85—and it is easy to categorize the Colossian heresy as a first-century form of incipient gnosticism. It is not so easy, however, to relate it to any of the particular forms of developed gnosticism known from Irenaeus or Hippolytus or (more recently) from the Nag Hammadi texts. It may be that the christological use of the term plērōma in Colossians was designed to refute gnostic ideas associated with that term;86 but it is impossible to be sure whether the term was used technically in the Colossian heresy or, if so, in what precise sense it was used.
There would be nothing extraordinary in the expansion of a system of incipient gnosticism in such a way as to make room within it for elements of Christianity. An instance of just such an expansion has been detected in the relation of two of the Nag Hammadi texts—Eugnostos the Blessed and The Sophia of Jesus Christ. Eugnostos takes the form of a didactic letter addressed by a teacher to his disciples; the Sophia takes the form of a revelatory discourse delivered by the risen Christ to his followers. While Eugnostos has no explicit Christian content, its substance is incorporated in the Sophia and christianized by means of expansions87
But gnosticism, and even “incipient gnosticism,” must be defined before they can be used intelligently in such a study as this. A suitable definition of gnosticism is that proposed by Gershom Scholem-it is the more suitable for our present purpose in that he had in mind especially what he called “Jewish gnosticism.” He defined gnosticism as a “religious movement that proclaimed a mystical esotericism for the elect based on illumination and the acquisition of a higher knowledge of things heavenly and divine”—the higher knowledge being “soteric” as well as “esoteric.”88
Some circles in Paul’s mission field plainly set much store by knowledge (gnosis) in the sense of intellectual achievement. It was to discourage such an attitude that he told the Corinthians that, by contrast with the upbuilding power of love, knowledge merely inflates the mind: “if anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know” (1 Cor. 8:1–2). This is reminiscent of Socrates’ comment that the Delphic oracle, in calling him the wisest of men, must have meant that he knew that he did not know, whereas others equally did not know, but thought they did.89 But when knowledge was cultivated for its own sake, as it was in some sections of the church of Corinth, it can be appreciated “into how congenial a soil the seeds of Gnosticism were about to fall.”90
While the Colossian heresy was basically Jewish, it is not the straightforward Judaizing legalism of Galatians that is envisaged in Colossians, but a form of mysticism which tempted its adepts to look on themselves as a spiritual elite.
There were certainly movements within Judaism in which a higher knowledge was cultivated. Those who were caught up into such movements were unlikely to be uninfluenced by contemporary trends like incipient gnosticism and Neopythagoreanism. One body of Jews which laid claim to higher knowledge and special revelation was the Essene order. Bishop Lightfoot, with characteristic acumen, discerned elements of Essenism in the Colossian heresy: indeed, his three dissertations on the Essenes, included over a hundred years ago in his commentary on Colossians,91 provided one of the most reliable accounts of the Essenes until the discovery of the Qumran texts in 1947 and the following years brought to light a wealth of literature emanating from one important branch of the Essene order.92 The members of the Qumran community repeatedly thank God for granting them knowledge of his “wonderful mysteries” which remain concealed from the uninitiated majority.93 In doing so they have in mind the insight which they enjoyed into God’s secret purpose and the epoch of its fulfilment. His purpose had been communicated to the prophets of earlier days, but many of its details, and especially the time of its fulfilment, had remained unrevealed. The time of its fulfilment was now approaching: this had been disclosed to the Teacher of Righteousness, together with other details of the interpretation of the prophetic oracles, and what was disclosed to him he imparted to his followers.94 With regard to these mysteries Daniel had been told, “None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise (maśḵîlîm) shall understand” (Dan. 12:10). The men of Qumran, regarding themselves as the elect of the end-time, believed that this promise had been made good to them.95
It is unlikely that the Qumran community had members, even associate members; among the Jews of Phrygia; to follow anything like the Qumran way of life in such an environment as that would have been difficult indeed. But the Qumran community, and the wider Essene order, represented a far-flung tendency sometimes called Jewish nonconformity. This tendency is attested as far west as Rome; some features of Jewish practice there were markedly “nonconformist” in character, and persisted in later generations in Roman Christianity.96
To look to movements within Judaism for the sources of the Colossian heresy is a wiser procedure than to postulate direct influences from Iranian or Greek culture. There was no doubt a measure of religious syncretism in the Jewish communities of Phrygia, but some of the features of the Colossian heresy that have been thought to point to syncretism are in fact features that tend to recur in mystical experiences belonging to a wide variety of religious traditions. And not only in Jewish nonconformity but in what was destined to establish itself as normative Judaism there was present, as early as the first century B.C., a form of religious mysticism which was to endure for centuries.
This is the form known as merkabah mysticism, because of the place which it gave to exercises designed to facilitate entry into the vision of the heavenly chariot (merḵāḇāh), with God visibly enthroned above it-the vision granted to Ezekiel when he was called to his prophetic ministry (Ezek. 1:15–26).97 For the gaining of such a vision punctilious observance of the minutiae of the law, not least the law of purification, was essential.
Moreover, in addition to what the law required of every pious Jew, a period of asceticism, variously estimated at twelve or forty days, was a necessary preparation. Then, when the heavenly ascent was attempted, the mediatorial role of angels was indispensable; it was important, therefore, not to incur their hostility, for the ascent was attended by great perils.
There is a well-known account in rabbinical tradition of the privilege of entering Paradise once granted to Rabbi Aqiba and three of his colleagues.98 Aqiba was the only one of the four to return unscathed. Of the others, one died, one went mad, and one committed apostasy. The apostasy of Elisha Ben Abuyah perhaps illustrates the dangers of the mystical ascent even better than what befell his two unfortunate companions: even for one who came through physically unharmed there was the risk of being so unbalanced by the experience that it was no longer possible to distinguish truth from error.
It is inevitable that one should recall how Paul himself once had (involuntarily, as it appears) a mystical experience of this kind, the details of which he could not or dared not divulge. As a memento of it he had to endure for the rest of his life a humiliating “thorn” in his flesh (2 Cor. 12:2–9). Whatever this physical affliction was, Paul learned to accept it as a prophylactic against the spiritual pride which was prone to beset those who had made the heavenly ascent. Such spiritual pride was evidently a strong temptation for those who had shared the mystical experience associated with the Colossian heresy: Paul describes one of those who boasted in the visions he had seen during such an experience as “inflated to no purpose by his carnal mind” (Col. 2:18).99
According to Gershom Scholem, the leading twentieth-century authority on merkabah mysticism, it was originally “a Jewish variation on one of the chief preoccupations of the second and third century gnostics and hermetics: the ascent of the soul from the earth, through the spheres of the hostile planet-angels and rulers of the cosmos, and its return to its divine home in the “fullness” of God’s light, a return which, to the Gnostic’s mind, signified Redemption.100 In terms of Scholem’s definition of gnosticism (quoted above), merkabah mysticism may well be described, in his words, as “Jewish gnosticism.101 The throne-world into which the merkabah mystic endeavored to penetrate was to him “what the pleroma, the “fullness”, the bright sphere of divinity with its potencies, aeons, archons and dominions is to the Hellenistic and early Christian mystics of the period who appear in the history of religion under the names of Gnostics and Hermetics.102
Perhaps the earliest description of the heavenly ascent in the literature of this mystical tradition is found in 1 Enoch 14:8–23, belonging probably to the early first century B.C. Here Enoch describes his upward flight to the dwelling-place of God, the “Great Glory” seated on the chariot-throne, attended by the cherubim. The description is based partly on Ezekiel’s account of his inaugural vision and partly on Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9–10).
As time went on, the details were elaborated. Enoch speaks of two celestial houses, the throne room of God being situated in the second and higher of the two; but later descriptions of the ascent speak of the seven heavens which have to be passed through,103 each controlled by its archon,104 while within the seventh heaven itself the mystic must pass through seven halls or palaces (hêḵālôṯ),105 each guarded by its angelic gatekeeper.106 Only after all these had been safely negotiated could he behold the throne of glory. Before the throne of glory stood the angels of the divine presence, singing the praise of God; to participate in their worship and repeat their hymns was a prize highly valued by those who had completed the ascent. This is part at least of what is involved in the “angel worship” of Col. 2:18, but there is nothing reprehensible in the action of the people of God when, “with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven,” they “laud and magnify” his “glorious Name; … saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.”107 However, the necessity of placating angelic powers in the course of the mystic ascent may have involved the offering of worship to angels over and above sharing in the.worship offered by angels.108 Moreover, where there was the slightest tendency to syncretism, it was almost inevitable that the seven heavens under their respective archons, or the seven palaces guarded by their respective gatekeepers, should be correlated with the seven planetary spheres ruled by their respective lords. Those who passed through the realms where such powers held sway would be careful not to offend them; otherwise, even if they succeeded in completing the upward journey, they might be impeded or injured on the way back.
It cannot be proved that the Colossian heresy involved an early form of merkabah mysticism, but the heavenly ascent implied in Col. 2:18 appears to have been of the same character as the experience which the merkabah mystics sought. The Colossian heresy evidently encouraged the claim that the fullness of God could be appreciated only by mystical experiences for which ascetic preparation was necessary. Paul’s answer to such a claim is that the fullness of God is embodied in Christ, so that those who are united to him by faith have direct access in him to that fullness and have no need to submit to the ascetic rigor which the Colossian Christians were being recommended to practice, with its attendant spiritual dangers.109
The teaching of the letter to the Colossians is concerned with those aspects of the gospel which were chiefly threatened by the Colossian heresy—the uniqueness of the person of Christ, in whom the plenitude of deity was embodied; the perfection of the redeeming and reconciling work which he accomplished by his death on the cross, and the spiritual liberty enjoyed by all who by faith were united to him.
The letter was evidently called forth by the news which Epaphras had brought from the Lycus valley to Paul’s place of imprisonment; Tychicus, a member of Paul’s circle, was about to set out for proconsular Asia and the letter was entrusted to him for delivery.110
The antidote to the “human tradition” which, according to Epaphras, the Colossian Christians were disposed to accept (Col. 2:8), was a statement of the one trustworthy tradition, the true doctrine of Christ. This doctrine is presented in the words of what appears to have been an early Christian hymn (Col. 1:15–20). In two parallel strophes this hymn celebrates Christ as the image of God, the one through whom the universe was created, and also the one through whom the universe has been, or will ultimately be, reconciled to God.111 This implies that the universe which God created has become alienated from him, so that a good relationship needs to be restored. In this regard special attention seems to be attached to “principalities and powers,” forces in the spiritual world, which are evidently included among the objects of Christ’s creative and reconciling agency alike.112
In Col. 2:8 a warning is uttered against the “human tradition” which, it is said, is in line with “the elemental forces of the world.”113 It is difficult not to associate these “elemental forces” (stoicheia) with the “principalities and powers,” if not to identify them outright, and the protest against “angel worship” in Col. 2:18 probably refers to these same forces. In a vivid picture in Col. 2:14–15 Christ on the cross is portrayed as cancelling his people’s indebtedness, incurred through their violation of the law, and at the same time as overcoming the “principalities and powers” and exposing their impotence.114 This implies that his “reconciliation” of the principalities and powers amounted to their pacification through conquest, and also that their cult imposed a strict code of practice on its devotees. Emphasis is laid on the superiority of Christ to those forces, as their creator and conqueror, in order to point up the preposterousness of his people’s being in bondage to them, disabled and discredited as they now are. His people have died with him and been raised to new life with him: his life is theirs—indeed, he is their life. Therefore his victory over the powers is theirs: let them enjoy the freedom which he has won for them!
A firm grounding in Christology, then, and in its practical implications for the daily life of believers was the best defense against the illusory attractiveness of the Colossian heresy. This appears also to be the most acceptable explanation of the almost entire absence of any reference to the Holy Spirit in this letter,115 in contrast to most of the Pauline letters, including Ephesians. The role assigned to the Spirit in other letters is in Colossians assigned to the risen Christ. Thus, if elsewhere the indwelling Spirit is the pledge of coming glory (Rom. 8:11, 14–16, 23; 2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13–14), in this letter the indwelling Christ is his people’s “hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). But time and again in Paul one comes upon parallel affirmations in which now the risen Christ and now the Spirit are said to communicate to believers the blessings of salvation. “The Spirit conveys what Christ bestows.”116 Theoretically and in principle the indwelling Christ and the indwelling Spirit are distinguishable, but practically and in experience they cannot be separated. Paul spoke of what he knew to be true in his own life and in the lives of his converts; and one of the most important things that he knew to be true was that the exalted Christ imparted his life and power to them through the Spirit. Dynamically, therefore, the exalted Christ and the indwelling Spirit were one, even if they were otherwise distinct.117 If, in writing to the Colossians, Paul emphasized the present ministry of Christ rather than that of the Spirit, it was because he knew which emphasis was better calculated to help those particular readers in their current situation.118
It is not to be urged against the Pauline authorship of Colossians that such a heresy as is rebutted in the letter cannot have arisen before the second century A.D. If the “Colossian heresy” exhibited the features developed Valentinianism or another of the gnostic systems expounded in some of the Nag Hammadi papyri or attacked by Irenaeus and Hippolytus, then the letter could scarcely be dated in the first century. But, insofar as the heresy can be characterized as gnostic, its gnosticism is but incipient and (as has been argued) predominantly Jewish in its affinities.
Another argument that has been brought against the Pauline authorship boils down to the feeling that the author of the letters to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans could not have adapted himself as the author of Colossians.does to the situation with which this letter deals. But this imposes an unwarranted limitation on Paul’s intelligence, versatility, and originality.119 The apostle whose settled policy was to be “all things to all men” for the gospel’s sake was not incapable of confronting the false gnōsis and worldly askēsis taught at Colossae with the true gnōsis and spiritual askēsis of Christ. While he opposes an uncompromising negative to the teaching which he attacks, he takes up some of its distinctive terms and shows how the truth which they vainly try to convey is embodied in Christ, the perfect revelation of God.
It has been said that Paul in this letter is doing two things at once: he is acting as the apologist for Christianity to the intellectual world of paganism at the same time as he is defending gospel truth within the church. As apologist to the Gentiles, he may have been the first to meet his pagan opponents on their own ground and use their language in a Christian sense, in order to show that the problems to which they unsuccessfully sought an answer elsewhere found their solution in the gospel.120
This employment of the distinctive vocabulary of the false teaching in what has been called a “disinfected” sense121 goes some way to account for the difference in terminologv which has been discerned between this letter (and Enhesians) on the one hand and the “capital” letters on the other. It may also have been partly in reaction to the false teaching that Paul developed his earlier picture of Christian fellowship in terms of the relation borne to one another by the various limbs or organs of one body to the point (reached in Colossians and Ephesians) where the church is viewed as the body of which Christ is the head. In this way not only the living fellowship among the members but the dependence of all the members on Christ for life and power is vividly brought out, and the supremacy of Christ is vindicated against a system of thought which threatened to cast him down from his excellency. That, in consequence, “body” is used in Colossians and Ephesians in correlation with “head,” rather than (as in the earlier letters) with “spirit”,122 is granted; but this provides no corn-pelting reason for denying that the writer of the earlier letters could also have been the author of these two.
Again, some of the stylistic distinctiveness of this letter is bound up with its sustained notes of thanksgiving and credal affirmation, which probably echo the language of primitive Christian worship and confession.123 For the rest, there is evidence within the letter that Timothy’s name is not attached to Paul’s in the prescript merely as a courtesy, but that he was in some degree joint-author (more so in Colossians than in any other letter which includes his name in the prescript).124 Eduard Schweizer, who finds that this letter is neither Pauline nor post-Pauline, finds in the mention of Timothy a clue to its possible authorship. Paul, he concedes, was happy to endorse it with his signature at the end and made some personal contributions (as at Col. 1:23). According to Schweizer, the treatment of the law in Colossians is more positive than in Paul: to describe the law as a “shadow” of the reality which was embodied in Christ (Col. 2:17) is to give it a higher status than Paul would allow.125 But if Paul and Timothy were in any degree joint-authors of a letter, the probability is that, while the literary style might be Timothy’s, the ultimate authorship would be Paul’s.
Some scholars, represented mainly by H. J. Holtzmann in the nineteenth century126 and Charles Masson in the twentieth,127 recognizing indubitable Pauline elements in Colossians, have tried to account for the presence of elements felt to be un-Pauline by supposing that the letter which Paul sent to the Colossians was shorter than the letter now in our hands. The shorter letter was drawn upon by the Paulinist who is supposed to have written the letter to the Ephesians. Then this Paulinist, not content with composing such a masterpiece as Ephesians, interpolated passages from Ephesians into the genuine Colossians, together with warnings against gnosticism, and thus produced the expanded document which has come down to us as the letter to the Colossians. Holtzmann attempted by this hypothesis to explain the curious phenomenon that, in passages substantially common to the two letters, sometimes Colossians and sometimes Ephesians appears to be the earlier. But A. S. Peake’s comment on Holtzmann’s formulation, “the complexity of the hypothesis tells fatally against it”,128 is equally applicable to its formulation by Masson and more recent writers.
Yet the hypothesis continues to be resurrected in one form or another. Johannes Weiss thought that such a hypothesis would solve not only this particular problem but also further difficulties in NT criticism.129 John Knox thought Holtzmann’s formulation had been dismissed too quickly.130 P: N. Harrison identified three passages in Colossians (1:9b–25; 2:8–23; 3:14–16) which, with one or two minor pieces, he believed to be inserted into the original text of Colossians by the author of Ephesians. Following John Knox and E. J. Goodspeed, he held the author of Ephesians to be Onesimus.131 The interpolated passages (especially Col. 2:8–23) he found to be un-Pauline in style and vocabulary but quite similar in these respects to Ephesians. After writing Ephesians, he suggested, Onesimus “felt moved to add to this letter [Colossians], which meant so much to him, what he sincerely believed the Apostle would have added had he known what the future had in store for Christ’s people.132
Without becoming involved in such complex hypotheses, others have found evidence for the influence of Ephesians on Colossians. F. C. Synge has found few followers in his theory that Ephesians was a genuine letter of Paul and Colossians a feeble imitation of it.133 A more careful comparative study by J. Coutts argues for the priority of Ephesians on the ground that. where literary dependence of one letter on the other is argued for. a Colossians passage (e.g., 2:19) can be derived in its entirety from one passage in Ephesians (e.g., 4:15b–16), whereas the Ephesians passage (4:15b–16) would. if dependent. have to be derived from three passages in Colossians (not only 2:19, but also 2:7 and 2:2). The repeated occurrence of this situation. together with evidence (as he saw it) that Colossians makes passing and even abrupt allusion to doctrinal statements which are carefully worked out in Ephesians, ruled out the view “that Ephesians is directly dependent on Colossians.” although the possibility was left open that the relation between the two letters “is more complicated than that of simple dependence of either on the other”.134
A more complicated relation is defended by Winsome Munro so far as the household codes in the two letters (Col. 3:18–4:1; Eph. 5:21–6:9) are concerned.135 She goes along for the most part with C. L. Mitton’s argument that Ephesians is predominantly dependent on Colossians, but maintains that “Col. 3:18–4:1 is dependent on, and therefore subsequent to, Eph. 5:21–6:9” (Eph. 5:21–6:9 being, as she further argues, a later interpolation into the text of Ephesians).136
In fact, the household code of Col. 3:18–4:1 belongs to the paraenetic tradition of the Pauline circle, as the hymn of Col. 1:15–20 belongs to the liturgical tradition. When we find arguments for the dependence of Ephesians on Colossians balanced by arguments for the dependence of Colossians on Ephesians, we may conclude that the relation between the two letters is not a purely literary one, but rather that both letters took shape at the same time in the circle of Paul and his co-workers. The one person to be recognized as the author is Paul, whatever part may have been played by Timothy or any other of his companions who were with him at the time.
As for the date and place of writing. dogmatism is to be avoided. Paul’s Roman confinement at the beginning of the 60s is the life-setting preferred here-largely because it allows adequate time for the development of Paul’s thought from the stage represented by his Corinthian correspondence. To date Colossians to the same period as the Corinthian correspondence, which would be required if it were assigned to an Ephesian imprisonment, is extremely difficult. To assign the letter to Paul’s Caesarean imprisonment is much less difficult, but no argument in its favor can be produced either from internal evidence or from tradition; and one cannot readily envisage Onesimus as making his way from the Lycus valley to Caesarea.137