Robert M. Royalty, «Dwelling on Visions.On the Nature of the so-called ‘Colossians Heresy’», Vol. 83 (2002) 329-357
This paper argues that Revelation provides a social-historical, theological, and ideological context for the reconstruction of the Colossian opposition. The proposal is that the author of the Apocalypse arrived in Asia after the Jewish-Roman war; his "dwelling on visions" and prophetic activity challenged the emerging hierarchy within the churches, provoking a response in Paul’s name from the church leadership. Correspondences and parallels between the description of the opposition in Colossians and Revelation are developed exegetically, showing that eschatology and Christology were key issues in the dispute. This paper reexamines the heresiological rhetoric of Colossians, raising methodological questions about other scholarly reconstructions of the opposition as non-Christian.
careful re-evaluations of the existing outside evidence. First, a number of scholars have located the Colossian opponents in ascetic-mystical strands of ancient Judaism, drawing on apocalyptic and revelatory texts such as 1 Enoch and 2 Baruch for comparison 6. Second, several scholars have placed the opponents in the context of Anatolian syncretistic religious culture and constructed a "text" of evidence from cultic practices in Asia, practices that include both Greek and Jewish influences7. Third, scholars have used texts such as Diogenes Laertes’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers to attach the opponents in the letter to a specific Greco-Roman philosophical school8. These different approaches, with their attendant sets of comparative texts, represent the major areas of research on the Colossian errorists9. No one course has carried the field; all five of these approaches remain well-represented in current research10.