Colossians, THE EPISTLE TO THE

Colossians, THE EPISTLE TO THE, an epistle sent from Rome by the Apostle Paul about the year 63, in charge of Tychicus, to the church founded at Colossæ apparently by Epaphras. Here Archippus exercised his 'ministry' (iv. 17), and Philemon, together with Apphia 'the sister,' was the entertainer of the brethren. To Philemon Paul persuaded the runaway slave Onesimus, whom he had converted to Christianity, to return. The Colossian church consisted chiefly of Gentile Christians, but was distracted by certain Judaising teachers, who laid stress on circumcision and ordinances respecting food and festivals (ii. 11 and 16), teaching a thorough-going asceticism, with angel-worship, based on theosophic speculations regarding the higher world of spirits, and may be regarded as the forerunners of the Judaising Gnostics (q.v.). To counteract these was the chief aim of the epistle (see BIBLE). Its genuineness has been contested by recent criticism. Hilgenfeld, following Baur, holds that 'the Colossian letter has to do with an already fully developed Gnosticism, and this carries it not merely beyond Paul's lifetime, but beyond the first century.' See the commentaries by Ellicott (3d ed. 1865), Bleek (edited by Nitzsch, 1865), and Klöpfer (1882); also Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser und Kolosserbriefe (1872); and especially Lightfoot, St Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon (8th ed. 1886).