COLOS'SZE (Lat.. from Gk. KoXoccal, Kolos sai, also spelled KoXaccrat, Kolassai). An an cient city of Phrygia in Asia Minor, on the river Lyens, a tributary of the Alxander. Colosaaa was on one of the great ancient trade routes travers ing Asia Minor, and is mentioned by Ilerodotus and Xenophon in such a way as to imply that it was at the time a city of considerable importance. Like its near neighbors, Laodicea and Hierapolis, it probably carried on an extensive trade in the dyed woolen goods for which the region was famed. In Roman times the town had lost a large share of its former importance. Christianity made its way to Colossme in the days of Paul, not through his personal visitation, but probably through the evangelistic work directed during his long sojourn at Ephesus (cf. Acts xix. 10). During his first imprisonment at Rome Paul sent hither two letters, one addressed to the Church of Colossre and the other to Philemon, an individual belonging to the church. (See COLOSSIANS ; and PHILEMON.) During the third century A.D. the town seems to have been insignificant, perhaps due to its not being able to recover from the great earthquake of about A.D. 60, which laid many towns in the neighborhood in ruins. Its place was taken by Cholla', the modern Khonas, about three miles south of the ancient town.
COLOSSIANS, 1:6-1(1s1V1•anz or k4-losh'unz, EPISTLE TO TIIE ( Gk. vpbs KoXocrcracis, se. iino-roX7), pros Kolossneis, to the Colossians, sc. (piston•, epistle). One of the 'New Testament group of Paul's Epistles. It is addressed to the Christians at Colossie (q.v.).
It belongs, with Ephesians 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. With Philemon it is connected by an identity of personal references: to Ephesians it is bound by a significant community of contents.
Its Pauline authorship has been vigorously assailed by such individual critics as INlayer hot" (1838) and Holtzmann (1872), and by such schools as that of Tubingen (I845)—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 century 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 ill 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.
Within the circle of those who accept its Paul inity, 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 Judaistic type (the references to circumcision in ii. II 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 went beyond this type (see the mention of 'Drink' in the warning of ii. 16, an clement which did not enter into the restrictions of the .Tudaizers; 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 Judaistic 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 Judaistic 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— as eeticism 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-worship, 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 terms 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." This idea is repeated in verse I5—"having despoiled the principalities and powers" — 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"—`'Ile 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 placed by the Apostle upon the supre macy of Christ, in both the physical and the spiritual worlds, and the absolute essentiality of with Him in order to foster spiritual life and well-being. This would 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 mystery for the initiated (ii. 2-3; iii. 3).