Thursday, January 16, 2020

Bo Reicke on the Authorship of Colossians


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