(3) The Church at Colossre. The church to which this letter was addressed was one of sev eral in the same general neighborhood. The town of Colossi (see CoLoss.E) was situated in the val ley of the Lycus. Not far from it were the cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis. In these two, as well as at Colossi', Christian communities had been established and had existed for some time before the writing of the epistle. The founder of the church at Colossa• was Epaphras, a Gentile from Phrygia.converted to the Gospel under the preach ing of Paul, (iv :s2). It has been supposed that this Epaphras became the missionary of the gen eral region and founded not only the church at Colossx,but also those at Laodicea and Hierapolis. In any case, the Apostle himself declares that he was personally unknown to all these churches; 8, 9; 5), though lie had come in con tact with individual members in them, such as Philemon and Epaphras, and he reckons them as fruits of his ministry inasmuch as Epaphras him self, as already said, was one of his converts and, in a manner his vicar.
The conditions already described as prevailing in the Colossian church. and calling for such a letter as Paul wrote, must have been to some extent the same as those found at Laodicea ; for Paul directs that the letter lie read in the church at Laodicea, (iv :t6), and betrays some concern as to the peace and welfare of that church also, (ii:t). From an allusion made in this connection to a letter to the church in Laodicea. (iv :if)). it has been inferred that Paul wrote such an one and that it has not been preserved. Another inference from this al lusion identifies the letter to the Laodiceans with the Epistle to the Ephesians (see EPIIESIANS). it is impossible to reach a definite conclusion in this subject beyond the negative one that the epistle current in the ancient church under the title of Laodiceans was not the document alluded to in Col. iv:16.
(4) Time and Place of Composition. The question now may be approached, in what place and at what time of his life did Paul write the Epistle to the Colossians? In the received text (Textus Receptus) the subscription answered the first part of the question by assigning the letter to Paul's Roman sojourn. The correctness of this subscription has been, however, recently disputed. Several excellent scholars ( Schulz, Thiersch, Reuss, Sabatier, Weiss, and Meyer) have found reasons for believing that the epistle was written from Cesarea during the Apostle's imprisonment in that city. Upon examination, these reasons prove inconclusive. On the other hand, the state
ment of the subscription is borne out by stronger considerations than any adduced for Caesarea as the place of the composition of the letter. Con sequently, the more recent scholars are inclined to accept the older view and assign the letter to Paul's Roman imprisonment (see IIoltzmann, Go (let. T. R. Abbott. Zahn. etc 1 But if Paul wrote to the Colossians from Rome, the most probable date for his writing seems to be the end of the year 62 or the beginning of 63 A. D.
The occasion and design of writing have been partly given already. The Colossian Christian community was composed chiefly of converts from among the Gentiles, (i:13, 21-27; ii :13; iii :6, 7). Epaphras, the founder of the church, was a disciple of Paul. He had doubtless taught it the gospel as he had heard it from Paul. But his teaching was in danger of being corrupted by the rise in the community of a certain system of error (the "philosophy" already characterized above). In his perplexity, he resorted to Paul to lay the case before him. In the epistle, we have Paul's re sponse to the personal appeal of Epaphras.
(5) Genuineness. But did Paul write the letter after all ? This question was answered in the negative first by NI eyerhoff in 1838. The reasons upon which this scholar based his conclusion were mainly these three : (1) That the style of the epistle was different from the style of the other Pauline writings. (2) That the heresy combated in it was the Gnosticism of Cerinthus which arose only after the days of Paul. And (3) that Colos sians appeared to be a condensation of Ephesians. The view of Mayerhoff was taken up and elab orated by the leaders of the Tubingen school of criticism. Baur and Schwegler, upon grounds similar to those already cited, and further because the denial of the genuineness of the epistle harmon ized with their preconceived philosophy of the de velopment of thought in the apostolic age, argued strenuously against the Pauline authorship of Colossians.
Out of the efforts to prove the spuriousness of the epistle, arose two efforts to assign to it a semi-authentic character. First Ewald conceived the idea that the substance of the thought was Paul's, but that it was written down by Timothy, to whom the apostle had committed this task. after explaining the situation to him and approv ing of some suggestions made by him. This the ory required the introduction of a large subjective element into the solution of the problem and found no favor.