COLOSSÆ, a once large and important city of Asia Minor, in Phrygia Major, on the Lycus, a branch of the Mæander. The notices of Colossæ in ancient history are few and brief. Xerxes passed through it on his way to Greece, 481 B.C., and at the close of the same century it was visited by Cyrus the younger. It is described by Xenophon in the Anabasis as being at that period a large and flourishing city. Like Laodicea, and other cities in that part of Phrygia, Colossse carried on an extensive trade in wool, and derived a large revenue from the skill of its inhabitants in dyeing that article. After the time of Cyrus the city seems to have gradually decayed, till in the Middle Ages it disappeared altogether. Near its ruins there sprang up another town called Chonæ, the birthplace of the Byzantine historian, Nicetas Choniates, now represented by the town of Khonas. Excavations made in the neighbourhood of this place have brought to light the ruins of a large city, which is believed, with good reason, to be Colossæ. The Epistle to the Colossians (see below) is addressed to the inhabitants of this city, in which one of the earliest of the Christian churches in Asia was planted.
COLOSSEUM. See Amphitheatre, vol. i. p. 774; Architecture, vol. ii. p. 419; and Rome.
COLOSSIANS, The Epistle to the, belongs to the third of the four groups under which the Pauline epistles may be chronologically arranged,—a group which occupies a midway position between the letters sent to Corinth, Galatia, and Rome, in the apostle's third missionary journey, and the letters known as the Pastoral Epistles. By similarity of language and matter the epistle to the Colossians is intimately connected with that to the Ephesians; and the notices of St Paul's companions, and of Onesimus and Archippus, which occur in the epistle to Philemon, show that this last epistle was also written and sent at the same time as the other two. The epistle to the Philippians belongs to the same group, and the most probable view is that it was from Rome that all four were written by Paul, “the prisoner of Jesus Christ” (comp. Philem. 1 ; Col. iv. 10, 18 ; Eph. iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20; Phil. i. 13, 14, iv. 22). Some critics—among whom may be mentioned Schulz, Böttger, Thiersch, Meyer, and Reuss, whose opinion is strongly advocated by De Pressensé in his Histoire des Trois Premiers Siècles—contend that at least three of the epistles were written from Cæsarea; but the traditional view that all four were written from Rome is supported by most modern writers, and is freest from difficulties. The date of the epistle to the Colossians may be placed about 62 or 63 A.D. Assuming for the present its genuineness, we may gather from the contents of the epistle itself its occasion and object. Epaphras, who is spoken of in high terms by the apostle, and may with some probability be considered the founder of the church at Colossæ (i. 7), has brought tidings to St Paul which make him anxious concerning the Christians in Colossæ and its neighbourhood (ii. 1, iv. 13). False teachers are there endeavouring to beguile them with plausible talk (ii. 4), and Paul, as a minister of the gospel earnestly labouring in the cause of proclaiming Christ to the nations (i. 24-29), feels his heart called out towards those whose faith is being insidiously assailed, although he is absent from them, and has never personally visited Colossæ or Laodicea (ii. 1).
He accordingly writes an epistle the polemical purport of which is patent. Paul's polemic, however, is no mere negative protest. He sets up, as against the “false philosophy” which he so strenuously repudiates (ii. 8), a “theological conception of the person of Christ,” which strikes at the root of all vain speculations concerning the unseen world, and shows that the work of reconciliation effected by Christ is complete, so that in Him Christians are to see the one Mediator through whom God is to be known, approached, served. The latter part of the epistle consists of various practical exhortations, both general and specific; and it closes with several notices of a personal character. Tychicus was the bearer of this letter (iv. 7), as he was also of that known as the epistle to the Ephesians, which by some critics is identified with “the letter from Laodicea” (iv. 16).
But are these letters genuine? There is no historical ground for doubting the Pauline authorship, or for the theory which has been advanced that the two epistles are inventions of a later age, or for the supposition that, whilst one of them is genuine, the other is made up of materials derived from that one which was really written by St Paul. The fact that opponents of the genuineness of the letters do not agree as to which was the original is significant. Mayerhoft thinks, indeed, both epistles to be spurious, but considers that the epistle to the Colossians was compiled from that to the Ephesians; while De Wette holds the epistle to the Ephesians to be a “verbose enlargement” of that to the Colossians, and advocates the genuineness of the latter. The opponents of the Pauline authorship rest mainly on three lines of argument, viz., the similarity of the two epistles, the peculiarity of their contents, and peculiarities of style.
The objection founded on the similarity of the language and matter of the two epistles is one that cannot be substantiated. For whilst there are striking resemblances, there are no less striking differences; and whilst the resemblances can be very naturally accounted for by the contemporaneousness of the letters, the differences are so markedly in accordance with the apparent designs of the separate letters,—that to the Colossians being primarily polemic, and that to the Ephesians being of a mystic and devotional character,—that we may fairly use of each epistle the words applied by Meyer to the epistle to the Colossians,—“The supposed forgery of such an epistle would be far more marvellous and inexplicable than its genuineness.”
epistles we have sentiments that savour of heresies later than the apostolic age. This objection seems to be based upon very superficial grounds, and to spring from prejudice rather than from research. What definite ground is there for asserting that “Gnostic and Montanist” sentiments are to be found in these epistles? While certain false teachings and tendencies are alluded to, which evidently go beyond the more naked Pharisaic Judaism controverted in the epistle to the Galatians, nothing can be produced to show that the heretical teaching animadverted upon in the epistle to the Colossians, or even in the later epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus, is Gnosticism in the sense in which that term is applied to later systematic theosophies and cosmologies, such as those of Basilides and Valentinus. And would it not be natural, as Neander points out, to
postulate, even if we had no records to testify to the fact,
