The authorship of Colossians, on the other hand, is (with Second Thessalonians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles) disputed.15 It is proposed by many that Colossians is a pseudonymous letter (but not necessarily an ill-intended forgery) written in Paul’s name by a post-Pauline disciple. It was given the appearance of verisimilitude by fictitiously addressing the letter to an obscure community that Paul did not visit and one that probably ceased to exist after the earthquake of 61–62 CE. This would ensure the unlikelihood of any one being able to falsify its origins, whereas it was really intended as a general admonition for churches in Roman Asia sometime around the 70–80s.16
There are a number of legitimate reasons for disputing the letter’s authenticity: (1) The language of Colossians is somewhat different from the Hauptbriefe or “main letters” of Paul—Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, and Galatians—as well as the undisputed letters of First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. (2) The theology of Colossians is also said to be more developed than the main epistles, particularly in its high Christology, catholic ecclesiology, and realized eschatology. Nonetheless, most acknowledge that Colossians still has a very Pauline buzz about it in terms of cadence, ethos, tone, and content; it is as close to his mind as one might expect. For this reason, many commentators have followed Ernst Käsemann’s dictum: “if genuine, as late as possible, because of the content and style; if not genuine, as early as conceivable.”17
It is my contention, however, that despite some valid objections, Colossians is authentic and written during the apostle’s own lifetime in collaboration with his coworkers.18 First of all, a number of authors have argued that Colossians is pseudonymous based on statistical and linguistic comparisons with the undisputed letters.19 For instance, there are thirty-four hapax legomena in Colossians (i.e., words that occur nowhere else in the New Testament), twenty-eight words that appear elsewhere in the New Testament but nowhere else in Paul, several stylistic peculiarities such as synonymous expressions (e.g., “praying and asking,” 1:9) and dependent genitives (e.g., “the word of truth, of the gospel,” 1:5), and the absence of key Pauline words like “law,” “righteousness/justification,” “salvation” and “sin” that one might expect Paul to have used in tackling a philosophy with Jewish traits.20 Yet the linguistic data may not be fully decisive against Pauline authorship.
(1) We do not have a pure “control” sample of Paul’s own writings that we can be absolutely sure are exclusively his own wording/writing and thus make use of it as a template for comparison with Colossians. Apart from the fact of textual variations in the manuscript tradition itself, we have to admit that even the undisputed letters of Paul may be the result of an amanuensis or secretary and are not necessarily from Paul’s own hand. So comparing the style and language of Romans and Colossians may not in actual fact be comparing an authentic and pseudonymous piece of writing, but amount to comparing Tertius (Rom 16:22) and Timothy (Col 1:1) as Paul’s secretary and coauthor in two different letters. We would do well also to consider the observation of Matthew Brook O’Donnell about the limits of statistical analysis:
It seems unlikely that by simply counting words it is possible to differentiate between authors. While a particular author may have a core or base vocabulary, as well as an affinity for certain words (or combination/collocation of words), there are many factors, for instance, age, further education, social setting, rhetorical purpose and so on, that restrict or expand this core set of lexical items. In spite of this, New Testament attribution studies and many commentaries (sadly, some rather recent ones at that) have placed considerable weight on counting the number of words found in one letter but not found in a group of letters assumed to be authentic.21
(2) It should be noted that a significant number of hapax also occur in Galatians, Philippians, and even Philemon. As for absences of key terminology, the term “justify” does not appear at all in First Thessalonians or Philippians, while “law” is absent from Second Corinthians, and even “salvation” does not appear in Galatians or First Corinthians.22 In addition, there are some genuine stylistic and grammatical affinities with Paul’s other letters in Colossians which are evident in the opening greeting, thanksgiving section, epistle closing, plus the presence of typical Pauline expressions throughout Colossians (e.g., “in Messiah”). We also find conceptual similarities in terms of letter structure and theological content (e.g., freedom from Jewish practices).23
(3) There are cogent reasons why the language of Colossians is different to the other Pauline letters, such as the fact that Paul seems to be citing a lot of early traditional Christian material (Col 1:12–20; 3:5–14; 3:18–4:1; and perhaps 2:9–15)24 and mirroring some of the language of the philosophy that had become controversial in Colossae (e.g., Col 1:19; 2:9, 18). From a rhetorical vantage point, the letters to Ephesus and Colossae, cities in Roman Asia, may deliberately contain an Asiatic rhetoric that was often more flowery, ornamented, poetic, and slightly pompous compared to its Greek counterpart, thus accounting for the more descriptive and expansive nature of the language.25 Rhetorical training itself urged the necessity of adapting one’s style, language, and content to fit the occasion depending on the persona needed for the speaker or author.26
(4) Colossians does not properly fit the genre of a pseudepigraphal letter, which is ordinarily attributed to a famous figure of the past to one of his contemporaries and is intended to be of interest to its real readers only in a general sense. The problem in Colossae seems to be quite specific and there is no attempt to bridge the divide between fictive readers and real readers by means of a “testament” or other literary device.27 Ultimately, there is nothing about the language, style, and form that is wildly anachronistic or cannot be plausibly placed within the context of Paul’s own lifetime, and much of the structure and language sounds evidently genuine.
Second, regarding the theology of Colossians, Lohse claims that the thought of Colossians exhibits Pauline features but is an example of a Pauline theology that has undergone a profound change in many respects.28 To begin with, on ecclesiology, in the undisputed letters the “church” is always the church local (e.g., Gal 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:2) whereas in Colossians (and Ephesians) the ekklēsia is both the “church” local (Col 1:2; 4:15–16; cf. Eph 1:1) and the “Church” universal (Col 1:18, 24; cf. Eph 1:22; 3:10, 21; 5:23–25, 27, 29, 32).29 Still, Paul viewed the churches as a pan-Roman Empire movement who were in close association with one another; there is nothing inconceivable about him referring to “Church” in this more trans-local sense. Concerning baptism and eschatology, Colossians refers to the baptized as those not only buried with Christ but risen with him as well (2:11–12; 3:1; cf. Eph 2:5–6), whereas in Romans the resurrection of Christians is still future (Rom 6:4–5). Yet in Romans, Paul can also refer to believers having been “glorified” in the past tense (Rom 8:30) and glory also relates to a present experience of the new covenant (2 Cor 3:18), which is not too many steps away from Col 2:11–13; 3:1. What is more, Col 2:11–12 is not saying that the resurrection has already taken place (as attributed to Hymenaeus and Philetus in 2 Tim 2:17–18), but as Todd Still notes it merely employs resurrection language to speak of a “believer’s conversion to, union with, and transformation through Christ.” A future resurrection of believers
