' It would thus seem that these errors consti tuted a teaching of a more or less systematic kind, in which the underlying speculative prin ciples were brought to bear 1113011 the rule and habit of life; that it was something more than mere Judaism, even Judaistic 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 difficulty is in historically locating such a combination as is thus presented before us.
In the effort approximately to accomplish this locating it is to be remembered: (I) 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 tianity and philosophy, and that its philosophic element was a mystical rather than a logical one; so that we should be prepared 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 cle 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 s.c., yet, as a dynamic influence, must have been more or less present throughout the Diaspora and was not likely to have been absent even from the Jewish membership of the Christian Church. (5) That, as this Essenic tendency came in contact with Eastern speculation, it fermented. and this fermentation, going on within the Christian Church and in contact with Chris tianity, produced the germs of Gnosticism.
Inasmuch, therefore, as this Epistle was sent to a church of the East, in the region where and at the time when the thoughtful Jew and the philosophic Greek and the theosophic Ori ental were coming together—especially to this region of Phrygia, the Jews of which had been imported out of Babylon, and from which place they may have brought with them an Oriental habit of Jewish thought—it would seem as though we had in these Colossian errors a speci men of jut that process of fermentation which produced the beginnings of Gnosticism.
The attempt of Harnack and others to consider the Apostle as referring to parish difficulties of a purely practical nature, devoid of all specu lative elements, results from a superficial exege sis which does not take the Epistle seriously.