Read this if you…
- want Paul's high christology: 'in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily' — the verse that built Trinitarian theology
- like the early christological hymn in chapter 1, possibly older than the letter itself
- care about Paul fighting a 'philosophy' (some Gnostic-adjacent syncretism) before the Church even had a vocabulary for heresy
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
The lineage through Colossians
- The Temple by George Herbert. Colossians shaped it. - One verse of Paul's became a whole poem — Herbert built a piece in *The Temple* around Colossians 3:3, "your life is hid with Christ in God" - He titled it after the verse and threaded the line "My life is hid in Him, that is my treasure" diagonally across the lines, so the page enacts the hiddenness it names - A small, exact debt: see how a single Pauline sentence becomes architecture in a seventeenth-century English devotional poet
Depicted in Art
Paul sits in a darkened cell, pen and codex on his lap, a sword leaning beside him — caught mid-composition by a shaft of light from a small window.
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1627
Greek papyrus bifolio from Chester Beatty Ms BP II, fols. 15 & 90 — the closing lines of Philippians on one leaf and the opening of Colossians on the other.
Half-length Paul in red and white robes holds a sword and an open epistle, gazing upward in inspired thought against a stormy sky.
Pompeo Batoni, 1742
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Oxford University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Notable Quotes
Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
- John Calvin, Protestant Reformer & theologian, 1509–1564: "This Epistle distinguishes the true Christ from a fictitious one — than which nothing better or more excellent can be desired."
- N.T. Wright, New Testament scholar & former Bishop of Durham, b. 1948: "These six verses are generally, and rightly, reckoned among the most important Christological passages in the New Testament."
- Martin Luther, Protestant Reformer, 1483–1546: "He does not drive us with laws, but persuades by reminding us of the ineffable grace of God."
- William Sanday, Oxford biblical scholar, 1843–1920: "Nobody can view the Epistle as a whole without being impressed by its unbreakable unity and genuine Pauline character."
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