Defending
Pauline authorship of Colossians, Bo Reicke who was Professor of New Testament
at the University of Basel, wrote:
All attempts to make Colossians a
deutero-Pauline composition of the period A.D. 70-100 are rendered null and
void by documents that demonstrate that Colossae lost its cultural importance
through an earthquake in 61. Situated on the southern bank of the river Lycus
in Phrygia, Colossae was only seventeen kilometers distant from the big and
rich city of Laodicea to the west, also on the Lycus river. In fact, in
Colossians Paul mentions Laodicea as the recipient of another letter sent at
the same time (but ow lost) (Col. 4:16). According to Tacitus, Laodicea was
destroyed in A.D. 61 by an earthquake (Tacitus, Annals 14:27:1), and because the whole region was known as a center
of repeated catastrophes (Strabo, Geography
12:8:16), it can be inferred that Colossae was destroyed on the same occasion.
Tacitus does not refer to Colossae, for what interested him was only the fact
that Laodicea was soon rebuilt by its inhabitants. However, precisely because
he does not refer to Colossae, one can assume that it was not rebuilt in any
noteworthy way. The conclusion is confirmed by the total silence about Colossae
characteristic of documents after A.D. 61; earlier texts refer to it as an
important city, known for its wool industry. NO mention of Colossae is found in
passages about Laodicea formulated during the last half of the first Christian
century (Pliny, History 5:105; Rev.
1:11; 3:14; Sibylline Oracles 3:471;
4:106 e.p.). Particularly striking is the witness of Revelation from around
A.D. 95, where the seven churches of Asia include Laodicea but not Colossae
(see passages quoted above). This lacuna proves without doubt that for the
author no Colossian congregation of importance existed. Furthermore, a later
historian complements the information of Tacitus without depending upon it;
namely Eusebius, who states that Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossae were destroyed
by an earthquake in the year 62 (Eusebius, Chronicle
1.21.22, ed. R. Helm, p. 183). All of this literary evidence speaks against
scholarly inclinations to date Colossians between A.D. 70 and 100. No forger
would have been interested in producing a quasi-Pauline letter to Colossae in a
period when no city or at least no church of importance existed there. It is
true that Colossae has not yet been excavated, and the archaeological evidence
will perhaps change the picture. But provisionally, the literary witnesses are
plain enough to invalidate any degradation of Colossians to a deutero-Pauline
creation. (Bo Reicke, Re-examining Paul's
Letters: The History of the Pauline Correspondence [eds. David P. Moessner
and Ingalisa Reicke; Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2001], 76-77)
Notice also how
Reicke does not believe the letter mentioned in Col 4:16 is Ephesians and
instead, is a now missing letter. For more on this, see:
Refuting Christina Darlington on Colossians 4:16 and the Epistle from Laodicea and the Meaning of Isaiah 40:8
