Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/224

* COLOSSI. 178 COLOSSIANS. iovra seems to have been insignificant, perhaps line to its not being able to recover from the great eai-thquake of about a.d. 00, which Uiid many towns in tlie neighborliood in ruins. Its phice was taken by Clion;e, tlie modern Ivlionas, about three miles soulli of the ancient town. COL'OSSE'XJM. See Amphitheatre. COLOSSIANS, ko-losh'i-nnz or k6-losh'anz, EPLSTLE TO THE ( Gk. Trpbs KoXoffffaels, SC. ^TTKTToX^, p7-os Kolossoeis, to the Colossiaus, sc. cpistoW; epistle). One of the New Testament group of Paul's Epistles. It is addressed to the Christians at Colossie (q.v. ). It belongs, with Ejihesiaus and Philemon, to a closely connected group of three writings of the Apostle, addressed to this same general region and produced within the same general time, evi- dently at Rome during the captivity mentioned in Acts. W'iih Philemon it is connected by an identity of personal references; to Ephesiaiis it is bound by a significant conmiunity of contents. Its Pauline authorship has been vigorously assailed by such individual critics as Mayer- lioflf (1838) and Holtzmann ( 1872), and by such schools as that of Tubingen (1845) — the critics holding that it gives proof of a literary imitation of other writings (Ephesians) which prevents it from being considered genuinely Paul's; the school claiming that it betrays such a presence of second centuiy Gnostic ideas as to make it nec- essary to assign it to that post-Pauline age. Neither of these contentions is accepted by the best scholars of the present time. As a matter of fact, assuming, as a working hypothesis, the claim involved in the Epistle's greeting that it was written by Paul, the document shows itself throughout so consistent with the claim as to make it critically impossible to deny its validity. ithin the circle of those who accept its Paul- iuity, however, the chief question among critics to-day concerns the nature of the errors opposed by the Apostle. From a careful study of the Epistle the following facts are apparent: (1) The errors had not so developed as to cause separation from the Church (the phrase in ii. 19 "not holding fast to the Head" could hardly be said of full separatists). (2) The teachers were Jews, and Jews of a Judaistie type (the references to circumcision in ii. 11 and to the ordinances of the law in ii. 14 show that Paul was opposing propagandists of a Jewish legal- istic character). (3) At the same time they w-ent beyond this type (see the mention of •Drink' in the warning of ii. 16, an element which did not enter into the restrictions of the Judaizers; see also the designation of their position as being "according to the traditions of men," ii. 8, and "according to the precepts and teachings of men," ii. 22. which would not have been Paul's way of designating the Judaistie position that rested on the authority of the Old Testament law: notice also the absence of all antithesis between faith and works and of any insistence on legalism as necessary to salvation, which were characteristics of the Judaistie propa- ganda). (4) In fact, there are passages which seem to show these teachers to have been open to the influence of Essenism, though they do not show them to have been Essenes (e.g. ii. 20-23, which describes their regulations as an ascetic severity toward the body — 6.(peiSla — though as- ceticism is evidently not represented as practiced as an end in itself, as it was with the Essenes; ii. 18, which shows them to have been given to angel-worshiiJ, a cult which was more consonant with Essenism than with the practice of Juda- izers, though this worship was apparently ac- companied by visions which were foreign to Essenism). . (5) There are passages which seem to indicate the presence of Gnostic elements in these errors (e.g. ii. 2-9, which give us character- istic Gnostic terras such as "the mystery of God," "all the fullness of the Godhead," also ii. 10, which discloses the distinctive Gnostic idea of a graded series of supernatural beings, con- ceived of as emanations from God — "who is the head of all principalities and powers." Tliis idea is repealed in verse 15 — "having despoiled the principalities and powei's" — and ap- pears in various forms in the long passage i. 15-20, e.g. "the first-born of all creation" — •'in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or prin- cipalities or powers" — "He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first- born from the dead," which latter passage, to- gether with ii. 9-11, 15, 19, shows the significant emphasis ))laced by the Apostle upon the supre- macy of Christ, in both the physical and the spiritual worlds, and the absolute essentiality of union with Him in order to foster spiritual life and well-being. This wovild combat the Gnostic tendency to subordinate Him to the category of these angelic emanations, which would thus seem to have been one of the Errorists' ideas). (6) These errors, moreover, while vague and indeter- minate, appear to have had with these false teachers an inter-related form and to have been promulgated in a dogmatic way (cf. ii. 4, 8, 18). being held forth as a mysterv for the initiated (ii. 2-3; iii. 3). • It would thus seem that these errors consti- tuted a teaching of a more or less systematic kind, in which the underlaying speculative prin- ci])les were brought lo bear upon the rule and liabit of life; that it was something more than mere Judaism, even Jtidaistic Judaism; that, in its main features, it was influenced by the Es- senic attitude of mind and possessed elements which appear in the Gnosticism of the second century. The great diffietilty is in historically locating such a combination as is thus presented before us. In the effort approximately to accompli.sh this locating it is to be remembered: (1) That, while these errors constituted a system of teaching, the system was not a fully developed one — at least Paul does not so treat it. (2) That Gnosticism was. in reality, an attempt to assimilate Chris- tianity and philosophy, and that its philosophic element ^^'as a mystical rather than a logical one; so that we should be pre])ared to find the place of its beginnings in the East rather than the West. (3) That this attempt at assimilation was made on the principle of eclecticism. Gnos- ticism being, in fact, a combination of Jewish, Pagan, and Christian elements, the Jewish ele- ment being furnished by Essenism, the Pagan by Hellenic philosophy and Oriental theosophy, the Christian by the evangelistic preaching. (4) That Essenism, in particular, was a thoughtful tendency working in all Jewish minds, which, while never passing, as an organization, beyond Syria, where it originated in the second century