Colossae has never been excavated; however, excavations are planned in a joint project directed by Flinders University (Australia) and Pamukkale University (Turkey).12 We can anxiously await the results since it may significantly alter much of what we claim to know about Judaism, indigenous religions, and Christianity in Colossae. In fact, Colossians commentaries may need to be rewritten in light of the evidence that emerges.
Relationship of Colossians to Ephesians
Colossians stands conceptually between Galatians and Ephesians, while Philemon is probably the closest in style to Philippians. Colossians has a mix of Pauline polemics indicative of Galatians and the lavish language and high Christology of Ephesians. Ephesians and Colossians are similar in many respects as both are said to be delivered by Tychicus (Col 4:7–9; Eph 6:21), they exhibit similar language, theological concerns (e.g., “mystery,” “raised with Christ,” catholic “Church”), and share fifteen words not found elsewhere in other New Testament writings. The literary parallels between Colossians and Ephesians are numerous (see the table below) and have usually led to a literary relationship being posited between the two documents.13 Although some have argued that Colossians depends on Ephesians, the reverse seems far more likely given the use of Old Testament quotations and allusions in Ephesians that is lacking in Colossians. These quotations and allusions are more likely to have been added than subtracted by an author or redactor. There is also a greater focus on the church universal and more attention given to the Holy Spirit in Ephesians, which suggests theological explication of something found in Colossians. These letters are genetically related, but also somewhat independent of one another given the differences in purpose, audience, and even contents, showing how complicated the issue of literary dependency really is.14 The historical circumstances of their common relationship can only be judged once the questions of the authorship and the provenance of Colossians and Philemon are satisfactorily answered.
| Ephesians | Colossians | Section |
| 1:1–2 | 1:1–2 | authors and addressees |
| 1:22–23 | 1:17–19 | headship of the Messiah |
| 2:13–18 | 1:20–22 | reconciliation through the cross |
| 4:16 | 2:19 | unity in the body |
| 5:19–20 | 3:16 | Christian worship |
| 5:22–6:9 | 3:18–4:1 | household code |
| 6:19–20 | 4:3 | Paul’s evangelism activities |
| 6:21–22 | 4:7–8 | Tychicus’s commendation |
Authorship
Philemon is ordinarily regarded as genuinely Pauline and no new reasons have been adduced to doubt this fact. The style and vocabulary of Philemon, typified by the opening and closing sections, is characteristically Pauline. The overall linguistic variation of the contents also remains well within the diversity attested by the undisputed letters of Paul. Philemon would also seem to be an odd letter for a pseudepigrapher to compose given that it lacks doctrinally polemical content. Thus, we possess every confidence that it was written by Paul. The authorship of Colossians, on the other hand, is (with Second Thessalonians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles) disputed.15 It is proposed by many that Colossians is a pseudonymous letter (but not necessarily an ill-intended forgery) written in Paul’s name by a post-Pauline disciple. It was given the appearance of verisimilitude by fictitiously addressing the letter to an obscure community that Paul did not visit and one that probably ceased to exist after the earthquake of 61–62 CE. This would ensure the unlikelihood of any one being able to falsify its origins, whereas it was really intended as a general admonition for churches in Roman Asia sometime around the 70–80s.16
There are a number of legitimate reasons for disputing the letter’s authenticity: (1) The language of Colossians is somewhat different from the Hauptbriefe or “main letters” of Paul—Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, and Galatians—as well as the undisputed letters of First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. (2) The theology of Colossians is also said to be more developed than the main epistles, particularly in its high Christology, catholic ecclesiology, and realized eschatology. Nonetheless, most acknowledge that Colossians still has a very Pauline buzz about it in terms of cadence, ethos, tone, and content; it is as close to his mind as one might expect. For this reason, many commentators have followed Ernst Käsemann’s dictum: “if genuine, as late as possible, because of the content and style; if not genuine, as early as conceivable.”17
It is my contention, however, that despite some valid objections, Colossians is authentic and written during the apostle’s own lifetime in collaboration with his coworkers.18 First of all, a number of authors have argued that Colossians is pseudonymous based on statistical and linguistic comparisons with the undisputed letters.19 For instance, there are thirty-four hapax legomena in Colossians (i.e., words that occur nowhere else in the New Testament), twenty-eight words that appear elsewhere in the New Testament but nowhere else in Paul, several stylistic peculiarities such as synonymous expressions (e.g., “praying and asking,” 1:9) and dependent genitives (e.g., “the word of truth, of the gospel,” 1:5), and the absence of key Pauline words like “law,” “righteousness/justification,” “salvation” and “sin” that one might expect Paul to have used in tackling a philosophy with Jewish traits.20 Yet the linguistic data may not be fully decisive against Pauline authorship.
(1) We do not have a pure “control” sample of Paul’s own writings that we can be absolutely sure are exclusively his own wording/writing and thus make use of it as a template for comparison with Colossians. Apart from the fact of textual variations in the manuscript tradition itself, we have to admit that even the undisputed letters of Paul may be the result of an amanuensis or secretary and are not necessarily from Paul’s own hand. So comparing the style and language of Romans and Colossians may not in actual fact be comparing an authentic and pseudonymous piece of writing, but amount to comparing Tertius (Rom 16:22) and Timothy (Col 1:1) as Paul’s secretary and coauthor in two different letters. We would do well also to consider the observation of Matthew Brook O’Donnell about the limits of statistical analysis:
It seems unlikely that by simply counting words it is possible to differentiate between authors. While a particular author may have a core or base vocabulary, as well as an affinity for certain words (or combination/collocation of words), there are many factors, for instance, age, further education, social setting, rhetorical purpose and so on, that restrict or expand this core set of lexical items. In spite of this, New Testament attribution studies and many commentaries (sadly, some rather recent ones at that) have placed considerable weight on counting the number of words found in one letter but not found in a group of letters assumed to be authentic.21
(2) It should be noted that a significant number of hapax also occur in Galatians, Philippians, and even Philemon. As for absences of key terminology, the term “justify” does not appear at all in First Thessalonians or Philippians, while “law” is absent from Second Corinthians, and even “salvation” does not appear in Galatians or First Corinthians.22 In addition, there are some genuine stylistic and grammatical affinities with Paul’s other