Paul in Prison

Colossians

Paulc. 62
BibleModerateEpistleAncient GreekQuick · 8 pages

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

Why It Matters

Colossians puts Christ at cosmic scale: the image of the invisible God, the agent of creation, the head of the church. That picture became foundational for later Christian doctrine about who Christ actually is.

Connections

Where to go next

What It Shapedwhat it set in motionColossiansThe Temple

  • 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
See the full map
Gallery

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

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick

King James Version

Cambridge 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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Deep Dive

What It's About

Spoiler warning

This summary gives away plot details.

Notable Quotes

“Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”

— Colossians 4:6 (KJV)

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

— Colossians 2:8 (KJV)

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