A Sly Civility Col and Empire, JSNT

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DOI: 10.1177/0142064X05052509

2005 27: 323Journal for the Study of the New TestamentHarry O. Maier

A Sly Civility: Colossians and Empire

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[JSNT 27.3 (2005) 323-349] DOI: 10.1177/0142064X05052509

© 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi)

A Sly Civility: Colossians and Empire

Harry O. Maier

Vancouver School of Theology

6000 Iona Drive, Vancouver, BC V6T 1L4, Canada [email protected]

Abstract

This article relates Colossian vocabulary, motifs and theological themes to the cultural situation of the cult of the emperor. The author’s language and conceptualization of reconciliation as a cosmic and earthly peace (Col. 1.15-23) reflects an imperial backdrop and utilizes civic vocabulary typical of Greek and Roman treatments of concord. His representation of Jesus’ death as a Roman triumph (2.15), and the incorporation of all humankind—including barbarians and Scythians—in a trans-ethnic unity (3.11) similarly reflects the geopolitical notions of a worldwide Roman Empire. The imperial imprint on the Household Code (3.18–4.1) is recognizable through attention to numismatic representations of Nero and his consort enjoying a divinely appointed familial concord. Though used by court theologians like Eusebius of Caesarea to legitimate a Christian application of Empire, the letter may be read as a destabilization of Empire inasmuch as it derives imperial-sounding ideals from the crucifixion of Jesus.

One of the more exciting recent developments in Pauline studies has been the scholarly attention given to the relationship of Paul’s gospel and his preaching of the crucified Jesus to Roman imperial politics and the domin-ion centred in the divine claims of Caesar and his rule. This exegetical turn represents more of a renaissance in the study of Paul than a new initia-tive. A century ago, largely as a consequence of new archaeological and epigraphic discoveries, a host of studies appeared seeking to illumine the interface and conflict between Paul’s and Caesar’s gospel.1 So far, however,

1. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (trans. Lionel R.M.



324 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 27.3 (2005)

scholarly attention has with only a very few exceptions—and those most usually in only a most general and thematic way—passed over the relation-ship of the letter to the Colossians to the imperial context.2 Instead, the exegetical focus of Colossian studies has been centred on the sources and possible redactive history of the Colossian Hymn of 1.15-20, its relation to Old Testament and intertestamental themes, and a proper identification of the false teaching addressed in 2.8-23.3 What follows, then, seeks to fill Strachan; New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910) first published in German in 1908 is the best-known exemplar of this earlier period. For representative earlier studies in this vein, see Paul Wendland, ‘swth/r’, ZNW 5 (1904), pp. 335-53; Adolf Harnack, ‘Als die Zeit erfüllet war’, and ‘Der Heiland’, in Reden und Aufsätze (Giessen: Töpel-mann, 2nd edn, 1906), pp. 301-306, 307-11 (first published in 1899 and 1900, respectively); Hans Lietzmann, Der Weltheiland (Bonn: Marcus and Weber, 1909). For other literature with reference specifically to the relation of the imperial cult to Phil. 2.5-11 where the earlier scholarship focused most closely, see Peter Oakes, Philippians: From People to Letter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 129-32. 2. An important exception is the study of Wesley Carr, Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning and Development of the Pauline Phrase hai archai kai hai exousiai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 47-86, in his focused exegesis of Col. 2.15 by reference to Roman triumph ceremony. Klaus Wengst, ‘Ver-söhnung und Befreiung: Ein Aspekt des Themas “Schuld und Vergebung” im Lichte des Kolosserbriefes’, EvT 36 (1976), pp. 14-25, especially 16-17, relates Colossians to the context of imperial Rome by interpreting Colossians’ cosmic Christology as a liberating religious response to alienating societal forces of imperial domination. Joachim Gnilka, Der Kolosserbrief (Freiburg: Herder, 2nd edn, 1991), pp. 74-75, and P.T. O’Brien, ‘Col. 1.20 and the Reconciliation of all Things’, RTR 33 (1974), pp. 45-33 (51) offer passing comment on Colossians and imperial politics. Oscar Cullmann, ‘Königsherrschaft Christi und Kirche im Neuen Testament’, in Karl Barth (ed.), Theologische Studien (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1941), pp. 174-92, The State in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 50-70, The Christology of the New Testament (trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A.M. Hall; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2nd edn, 1963), pp. 195-99, Christ and Time (trans. Floyd F. Filson; London: SCM Press, 3rd edn, 1965), pp. 185-90 relates Colossians to imperial Rome by reading the universal affirmations of Col. 1.18, 20 with 1 Cor. 2.8, 6.1-3, 8.5 and Rom. 13.1-7, in order to reconstruct a Pauline theology of the state affirming the universal lordship of Christ over and against the dominion of Caesar and cosmic powers—an account that has earned him no little exegetical scorn: see Hans Jakob Gabathuler, Jesus Christus Haupt der Kirche—Haupt der Welt (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1965), pp. 122-24, 169-74 for scholarly critique and Cullmann’s lively rejoinders. 3. For surveys of the vast literature, see Larry R. Helyer, ‘Recent Research on Col. 1.15-20 (1980–1990)’, GTJ 12 (1992), pp. 51-67; Pierre Benoit, ‘L’hymne christo-logique de Col 1,15-20. Jugement critique sur l’état des recherches’, in Jacob Neusner (ed.), Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), I,



MAIER A Sly Civility 325

a lacuna in Pauline studies by offering a reading of Colossians against the backdrop of the Roman Empire and in particular in the light of the politi-cal culture surrounding, embracing and championing the cult of the divine emperor.4 Some have rejected such an orientation to New Testament evidence as an exegetical cul-de-sac, or as introducing to early Christian religious devo-tion to Jesus what one recent treatment calls the ‘repellent category’ of emperor worship.5 However, once read in the context of the cultural situ-ation of the imperial cult and the political ideals associated with it, dimen-sions of the letter passed over by more traditional exegetical accounts gain a striking relief.6 Colossians’ representation of a gospel embracing ‘the

pp. 226-63; Fred O. Francis and Wayne A. Meeks (eds.), Conflict at Colossae: A Problem in the Interpretation of Early Christianity Illustrated by Select Modern Studies (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979). 4. In what follows I assume pseudonymity, though questions of authorship are not definitive for the arguments presented here; for the account of pseudomymous co-authorship with Paul in the early 60s CE (the theory assumed here), see Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians (trans. Andrew Chester; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), pp. 15-24. 5. Thus, Martin Hengel, The Cross of the Son of God (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1976), p. 28, who concludes that the ‘official, secular state religion was at best a negative stimulus, not a model’ for early Christian developments. For emperor worship as repellent to early Christians and therefore discountable as a source for early Christian reflection, see Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Ann Arbor, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 92-99. Hengel’s reference to ‘secular state religion’ reflects a now discredited and anachronistic view of the imperial cult as purely formal and political and not religious: see S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 234-48. Hurtado sets up a straw man when he dismisses the relevance of the imperial cult for ‘explaining the Christ-devotion…of the Christian movement’ (p. 93). The imperial cult does not ‘explain’ early Christian devotion to Jesus. Rather, reference to the imperial cultural system in which Christianity took root and grew helps to recognize the appropriation of imperial themes and ideas by Christians to make sense of their religious devotion and to communicate their own ideals. 6. I borrow the phrase ‘cultural situation’, from Adela Yarbro Collins, ‘The Worship of Jesus and the Imperial Cult’, in Carey C. Newman, James H. Davila and Gladys S. Lewis (eds.), The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), pp. 243-57 (241-42), who uses it to describe the imperial context as an important source in shaping and giving expression to early Christian experience and theology. ‘Cultural situation’ helps to avoid a reductive direct cause–effect relationship between early Christianity and the imperial cult—a chief weakness of the accounts of a




whole world’ (1.6; cf. 1.23) and its imagery of a Roman Triumph (2.15) represent the most recognizable parallel with imperial ideas. As we shall see, similarly echoing Roman political ideology is its affirmation of a universal reconciliation (a)pokatalla&cai) on earth and in heaven and its celebration of Christ’s ‘making peace’ (ei0rhnopoih&saj; 1.20) with erst-while enemies. The celebration of a moral and natural renewal (3.10) made possible by Christ’s enthronement (3.1) as well as the exhortation to ‘let the peace of Christ rule [brabeu&ein]’ in believers’ hearts (v. 15) plays in the contact zone of imperial politics. A cosmic and global renewal and peace brought about by the universal reign of Christ penetrating and over-coming every ethnic and social boundary, and representing a cosmic harmony (3.11; 1.15, 20, 23, 28), especially in ‘the kingdom [basilei/an] of [God’s] beloved son’ (1.13), has similarly imperial associations. The Colossian application is, of course, paradoxical in situating the site of Jesus’ triumphus and all the imperially sounding benefits derived from it in the cross (1.20; 2.15).7 It thus, as we shall see, offers an imperial vision on other terms and thereby implicitly challenges an imperial ideology centred in military domination and the honouring of ruling elites. Never-theless, a first-century Christian audience hearing the letter read aloud would immediately have recognized imperial-sounding themes, greeted as it was daily by ubiquitous imperial images—in market squares, theatres, baths, law courts, temples, households, on coins, on triumphal arches and public buildings, not to mention the many sacred precincts dedicated to the worship of the emperor and his family—celebrating the Roman order as a divinely ordained order representing a pacification of erstwhile hostile and ethnically dispersed peoples, brought by military might into a global pax by a divinely appointed emperor heading a moral, natural and spiritual renewal.8 Attention to imperial themes and imagery cannot give a complete century ago. And it also urges locating the imperial cult in a broader Graeco-Roman cultural system of values and ideals. See similarly Dieter Zeller, ‘Die Menschwerdung des Sohnes Gottes im Neuen Testament und die antike Religionsgeschichte’, in Dieter Zeller (ed.), Menschwerdung Gottes: Vergöttlichung von Menschen (NTOA, 7; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), pp. 141-76 (173), who refers to the imperial cult and pagan notions of incarnation and apotheosis as furnishing early Christians with ‘Denkmöglichkeiten’. 7. Interpreting e0n au)tw~| at 2.15 as the cross, in keeping with the metaphor intro-duced at v. 14. 8. For the ubiquity, social functions and meanings of imperial imagery, see Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 206-73. For strategic locations of images of




account of Colossians, nor does it supplant other exegetical treatments. Instead, it seeks to expand those accounts by attending to an imperial cultural situation to discover how prevailing ideas were possibly adapted and redeployed as a means of forging a unique religious and social identity. At its most general level, Colossians offers its audience exhortations to lead a well-ordered communal life (3.5–4.6) issuing forth from the incorporation of believers (1.18; 2.11-12, 15, 19) into the resurrection life of an enthroned Christ (3.1), whose death has brought about reconciliation of heavenly powers and of all humankind (1.20, 22; 2.15; 3.11) and inaugu-rated a reign of peace (3.15). Adopting ideas found in ancient Judaism generally and sapiential literature in particular, the author offers a unique vision of a pre-existing Son of God by whom and for whom all things were created and are sustained.9 The so-called Hymn of 1.15-20 presents a three-stage Christology celebrating the incarnate Son as God’s agent in creation (v. 16), ‘before all things [pro_ pa&ntwn]’, in whom ‘all things hold together [ta_ pa&nta e0n au)tw~| sune/sthken]’ (v. 17), through whom God ‘reconciled [a)pokatalla&cai] to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace [ei0rhnopoih&saj] by the blood of his cross’ (v. 20). These verses rightly occupy a central role in Colossian scholarship, not only for obvious theological reasons, but also because of their central epistolary role in furnishing their first-century listeners with a succinct rejoinder to those ‘insisting on self-abasement and the worship of angels’ and extra ceremonial and ascetical observances (2.16, 20-23). The Son through whom and for whom all things were created (1.16e), and whose death is the means toward a universal cosmic reconciliation of hostile powers (1.20; 2.15)—especially those cosmic powers some feel obliged to offer religious observance (2.16-18)—makes redundant any extra ritual or practice.

the emperor and his family and their meaning, see Thomas Pekáry, Das römische Kaiserbildnis in Staat, Kult und Gesellschaft (Das römische Herrscherbild 3.5; Berlin: Mann, 1985), pp. 42-65. For imperial imagery as a ‘visual language’ broadcasting moral, natural and religious renewal, see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. Alan Shapiro; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), pp. 172-83. 9. For a full discussion of the sapiential connection, see J.-N. Aletti, Colossiens 1,15-20. Genre et exégèse du texte: Fonction de la thématique sapientielle (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981); Helyer, ‘Research’; Benoit, ‘Hymne’, pp. 254-57. N.T. Wright, ‘Poetry and Theology in Colossians 1.15-20’, NTS 36 (1990), pp. 444-68 resists a too restrictive sapiential account and argues (pp. 451-52) for wider Jewish parallels.




Colossians 1.15-20 has been given voluminous attention from form-geschichtliche, religionsgeschichtliche and traditionsgeschichtliche per-spectives. Unnoticed, however, are the potent resonances of certain aspects of these verses with contemporary imperial political culture. Once those echoes are noticed, other similarly sounding imperial tones may be heard reverberating throughout the letter as whole. The Son whose crucifixion reconciled all and makes a cosmic peace expresses the triumph and divine favour of his rule in governing a kingdom (1.12) in which not only peace reigns (3.15), but all, including those at the furthest boundaries of the Roman Empire—barbarians and Scythians (3.11b)—have been embraced by the universal moral renewal of his reign (3.5-17), and govern themselves in ‘good order [ta&cij]’ (2.5), as harmonious members of the body of his realm (3.14-15) according to the civilizing political ideals of right house-hold management (3.18–4.1). In all this, whatever the biblical and extra-canonical Jewish sources of Colossians, our author reveals his location in ideals centring on imperial celebrations of political and civic concord, the hallmark of a Roman pax, stretching to the frontiers of the known world. In the Roman peace, what makes all this possible is an emperor—in the Neronian imperial ideology (contemporary with Colossians), the vice-regent of the gods, if not incarnate deity—who holds all things together in the body of his Empire of which he is head, and which he maintains in health and security. In the Colossian vision, it is the incarnate Son, in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily, who exercises a universal reign, manifested especially in the properly regulated body of his church united to its head from whom comes nourishment and growth (2.19). The following discussion will first identify the political backdrop of the language of reconciliation in Col. 1.15-23 and relate it to other recognizably political language in that section. This will prepare the way for identifying ways in which the rest of the letter develops the reconciliation theme, in the application of the metaphor of a Roman triumph in 2.15, in the ethical exhortations of 3.1–4.6, especially in the celebration of Christ overcoming ethnic divisions in 3.11, and in the household rules. Especially helpful in recognizing the imperial valences of these texts is attention to Neronian imperial iconography deployed to celebrate a global imperial rule by a divine emperor appointed to pacify the world and bring all into an over-arching political union. Where Colossians differs from imperial propaganda is in its paradoxical assertion that the origin of all the imperial-sounding ideals Colossians celebrates is to be found in the cross. Thus if Colossians rehearses imperial notions and bears the imprint of their political culture,




it also reverses them and represents a dramatic reorientation of prevailing ideals.

Colossians 1.15-23, Reconciliation and Imperial Politics Colossians 1.20 celebrates the reconciliation (a)pokatalla&cai; also, v. 22) of all things by a Son who makes peace (ei0rhnopoiei=n) through his death. While other parts of 1.15-20 have been persuasively linked with biblical and extra-testamental Jewish literature, scholars have had difficulty making the case for strong Jewish parallels with these affirmations.10 Instead, semantic investigation of Jewish and pagan uses of the verbs dialla&ssein/ katala&ssein and their cognates has revealed abundant evidence that these terms were especially at home in ancient diplomatic and political contexts to describe the cessation of hostility and the reconciliation of hostile parties. Cilliers Breytenbach’s encyclopaedic discussion of this termi-nology—the most far-reaching and painstaking analysis to date—has persuasively argued that Rom. 5.10 and 2 Cor. 5.18-20 offer a Pauline adaptation of diplomatic, political representations to celebrate God’s initiative in overcoming the enmity between God and pagan unrighteous-ness and bringing about a renewed harmony.11 Breytenbach confirms that diplomatic usage by recognizing that Paul’s representations of himself and his colleagues in 2 Cor. 5.17-20 as exercising ‘the ministry of reconcili-ation [th_n diakoni/an th=j katallagh=j]’, proclaiming ‘the message [or

10. For a thorough discussion of the LXX and intertestamental uses of katalla&ssein, see Cilliers Breytenbach, Versöhnung: Eine Studie zur paulinischen Soteriologie (Düsseldorf: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), pp. 68-80 with reference to Pauline usage in Rom. 5.10 and 2 Cor. 5.18-20. For attempts to account for Paul’s theology of reconcili-ation by reference primarily to Jewish tradition and texts, see pp. 34-36. I.H. Marshall, ‘The Meaning of “Reconciliation”’, in Robert A. Guelich (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (Festschrift George Eldon Ladd; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), pp. 117-32, is representative. Like other treatments it suffers from basing itself on the extremely infrequent use of katalla&ssein to describe divine–human reconciliation (in this case, 2 Macc. 5.11-20) and ignores the widespread political uses of the term in Hellenistic and Jewish literature. 11. Thus Breytenbach, Versöhnung, pp. 45-68, 82-84, 107-87; similarly, Stanley E. Porter, Katalla/sw in Ancient Greek Literature with Reference to the Pauline Writings (Cordoba: Almendro, 1994). Most recently, Anthony Bash, Ambassadors for Christ: An Exploration of Ambassadorial Language in the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), pp. 29-32 confirms Breytenbach’s political reading while remaining unpersuaded by his linking of the language of reconciliation with embassies.




gospel—eu)agge/lion, following P46] of reconciliation [to_n lo&gon th=j katallagh=j]’, and acting as ‘ambassadors for Christ [u(pe\r Xristou=… presbeu&omen]’ exactly echo imperial political language describing politi-cally appointed legates designated with the task of initiating or concluding civic reconciliation between hostile parties.12 Unfortunately, Breytenbach unnecessarily resists applying these insights to Col. 1.20. He argues that, since Colossians celebrates a metaphysical, as opposed to earthly political, reconciliation between cosmic powers (the qro&noi, kurio&thtej, a)rxai/ and e0cousi/ai of 1.16), the origins of the semantic domain of a)pokatalla&cai at 1.20 is not in politics but lies elsewhere.13 Here he follows Eduard Schweizer, who similarly contrasts the human and cosmic contexts of 2 Cor. 5.19 and Col. 1.20 and explains the reference to reconciliation in the latter instance by reference to ancient pre-Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic and especially [neo-] Pythagorean physical theories of contending natural elements.14 However, Schweizer and Breytenbach anachronistically introduce a false dichotomy in this contrasting of recon-ciliation in the human and the cosmic domains, and in the separation of diplomatic celebrations of katallagh& from ancient religion. Further, Schweizer casts his net too far to ancient sources and neglects important evidence celebrating the Roman imperial order as civil concord mirroring heavenly peace that would have made the Colossian representation of a universal cosmic and human reconciliation especially compelling and recognizable in its first-century political cultural context. Both scholars fail to recognize the sustained political deployment of reconciliation language in 1.20-23, how this is bound into a rhetorical unity with the theme of cosmic reconciliation of the preceding verses, and how vv. 20-23 unite with 1.15-16 to prepare the way for recognizably civic applications of reconciliation and concord in the remainder of the letter. Colossians 1.15-23 presents a potent vision offered in politically charged terms of reconciliation in the cosmic and earthly spheres. Mirroring contemporary political depictions of a civic harmony based in heavenly concord, the author to the Colossians celebrates a reconciliation of ‘all things, whether on earth or in heaven’ (v. 20c) and, deploying a term fully

12. Breytenbach, Versöhnung, pp. 65-68. 13. Breytenbach, Versöhnung, pp. 190-91. 14. Eduard Schweizer, ‘Versöhnung des Alls. Kolosser 1,20’, in Neues Testament und Christologie im Werden: Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), pp. 164-78 (171-76); Der Brief an die Kolosser (Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 2nd edn 1980), pp. 67-68.




a part of the diplomatic language of restored relations between hostile par-ties, celebrates Jesus’ death as ‘making peace [ei0rhnopoih&saj]’ (v. 20b).15 That the author wants his audience to hear 1.15-23 as a unity is evident stylistically and rhetorically. While the shift from third (vv. 15-20) to second person (vv. 21-23) divides the unit into two parts, the fourfold reference to the earthly and heavenly as the universal domain of reconcili-ation binds the two parts together, running as a red thread from v. 16 to v. 23 (1.16a [ta_ pa&nta (ta\) e0n toi=j kai\ (ta_) e0pi\ th=j gh=j], 16b [ta_ o(rata_ kai\ ta_ a)o&rata], 20c [ta_ e0pi\ th=j gh=j ta_ e0n toi=j ou)ranoi=j], 23c [e0n pa&sh| kti/sei th=| u(po_ ou)rano&n]). More particularly, vv. 20-23 form a rhetorical and literary unity building on the affirmations of vv.15-16. Verse 23 offers a concluding inclusio to v. 20 (ta_ e0pi\ th=j gh=j ei1te ta_ e0n toi=j ou)ranoi=j [v. 20c]; e0n pa&sh| kti/sei th=| u(po_ ou)rano&n [v. 23]). By way of staircase parallelism, vv. 21-23 continue the ideas of the preceding verses concerning the death of Jesus as reconciliation (a)pokatalla&cai…dia_ tou= ai3matoj tou= staurou= au)tou= [v. 20]; a)pokath&llacen e0n tw~| sw&mati th=j sarko_j au)tou= dia_ tou= qana&tou [v. 22]). These stylistic elements help reinforce the conceptual and semantic unity of vv. 20-23 in particular and vv. 15-16 more generally. Verses 21-23 pick up the diplomatic language of which ei0rhnopoih/saj in v. 20b is a part. It is significant that these verses deploy language not only belonging to the diplomatic representations of katallagh/, but also at home in the closely associated semantic domain of civil concord, or o(mo&noia. The Onomasticon of Pollux (second century CE) lists amongst the civic terms used to describe e0xqroi/ and pole/mioi precisely the vocabulary we discover in vv. 20-23.16 Christ has come to bring peace to those once ‘estranged [a)phllotriwme/noi] and ‘hostile in mind [e0xqrou_j th=| dianoi/a|]’. A little bit later, deploying another term especially associated with diplomatic ideals of reconciliation, he describes his listeners as ‘knit together [sumbibas-qe/ntej] in love’ (2.2), and at 2.19 weaves that image together with the similarly politically charged reference to the church as body—the image

15. For political discourse celebrating civic o(mo&noia mirroring cosmic harmony, see, for example, Dio Chrystostom, Or. 38.11; 40.35-41; Aristides, Or. 23.75-77; 24.42; 27.35; Lucan, Bell. civ. 1.45-69; 2.272-73; ps.-Aristotle, Mund. 5.396a.32- 396b.11; compare, 1 Clem. 20 for an early Christian adaptation of ei0rh&nh kai\ o(mo&noia (v. 11). See Philo, Jos. 145; Congr. 133; Spec. Leg. 2.141; Leg. Gai. 6-10 for Jewish adaptation. 16. Pollux, Onomastikon 1.150-54, fully cited in Breytenbach, Versöhnung, pp. 46-47.




introduced in 1.18.17 Also civic are the technical terms in vv. 21-23 associ-ated with o(mo&noia, a term of course at home in the diplomatic semantic domain of katallagh&. Colossians ‘once hostile in mind [e0xqrou_j th=| dianoi/a|]’—a wordplay on o(mo&noia—are now ‘blameless [a)mw&mouj]’ and are to continue ‘stable and steadfast and not shifting [teqemeliwme/noi kai\ e9drai=oi kai\ mh\ metakinou&menoi]’ from the message preached to them. This is architectural language especially common in civic representations of political concord.18 From vv. 20-23, then, we have a sustained application of diplomatic and civic language. Given that deployment, it is highly probable that as the passage concludes with the representation of Paul preaching and being a minister of the gospel (vv. 23b-c), we are squarely in the domain of the diplomatic presbei/a of 2 Cor. 5.18-20. Colossians 1.20 is a critical lynchpin, wedding the communal civic-sounding ideals of vv. 21-23 with the cosmic affirmations of vv. 15-19. The cosmic reconciliation that the so-called hymn of 1.15-20 celebrates presupposes the pacification (hence, ei0rhnopoih&saj, v. 20b) of erstwhile hostile powers—the qro&noi, kurio&thtej, a)rxai/ and e0cousi/ai of 1.16 (similarly 2.10, 15), including, as well, the ‘elemental spirits of the universe [ta_ stoixei=a tou= ko&smou]’ (2.8, 20)—a reconciliation as pacification that the author’s deployment of a Roman triumph makes explicit in 2.15.19 The 17. For a full discussion and citation of e1xqroj, ei0rhnopoiei=n, o(mo&noia and sum-biba&zein in diplomatic contexts, see Breytenbach, Versöhnung, pp. 100-104; for body imagery as a political topos, see E. Schweizer and F. Baumgärtel, ‘sw~ma ktl.’, TDNT, VII, pp. 1024-94 (1032-44); Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 3-37. 18. For thorough citation and discussion of the use of each of these terms in representations of civic concord, with secondary literature, see Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 99-111. 19. Reconciliation as pacification recurs repeatedly in political applications of katala&ssein/diala&ssein and cognates: Plutarch, Alex. fort. 329C; Aelius Aristides, Or. 26.22; 35.35-7; Dio Cassius 62.20.1; Dionysius Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 3.7.2, 9.2, 28.5; 5.30.3, 31.2, 32.2, 49.2, 60.1; 6.20.4. See also, O’Brien, ‘Reconciliation’, p. 51 contra Eduard Schweizer, Neotestamentica (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1963), p. 326, who neglects the cosmic and earthly dimension of the civic peace and so misses the political connection of the cosmic and the earthly so at home in imperial celebrations of civil concord. Carr, Angels, pp. 49-52, 58-66 and most recently R. Yates, ‘Col. 2.15: Christ Triumphant’, NTS 37 (1991), pp. 573-91 drive a wedge between 1.16 and 2.8 and interpret 2.15 not as a disarming of ‘principalities and powers’, but a display of them in festal procession of the triumph of the cross. The majority of exegetes have rejected




overall effect of 1.15-23 is to offer a vision of a universal reconciliation in which earthly civic o(mo&noia mirrors heavenly concord and peace assured and won by the creating and reconciling/pacifying work of the Son. As has been widely noted, the references in Colossians to qro&noi, kurio&thtej, a)rxai/ and e0cousi/ai (1.16; 2.15), as well as ta_ stoixei=a tou= ko&smou (2.8, 20) represent language characteristic of Jewish cosmic speculation.20 Not fully enough exegeted, however, is the degree to which the Colossian author unites this language with concepts and motifs at home in the political culture of imperial Rome, to celebrate the peace Christ has made by his death. Ei0rhnopoiei=n is not only a term that belongs to the diplomatic representation of katallagh&; it appears more specifically in Roman political discourse to celebrate the universal pax or military pacifi-cation arising from imperial rule.21 Indeed, so widely spread was its use that, by the time of Commodus, ei0rhnopoio_j th=j oi0koume/nhj had become one of the emperor’s official titles.22 Dio celebrates Julius Caesar as o( ei0rhnopoio&j (44.49.2), and Philo, recalling how Augustus restored civic harmony by pacifying ‘unsociable, hostile, and brutal’ nations, calls the emperor ei0rhnofu&lac (Leg. Gai. 145). An earlier inscription (c. 9 BCE) from Halicarnassus praises Augustus for improving the lot of humankind by bringing peace to the world: ‘Land and sea are at peace, the cities are flourishing in good order, concord, and prosperity…’23 The roughly con-temporary inscription from Priene celebrating the inauguration of the imperial cult in Roman Asia similarly heralds the emperor as one ‘who has made war to cease and ordered the world with peace’.24

this, correctly noting that the immediate context of 2.8-10 suggests a pacification of powers as a means towards the realization of an ecclesial peace (thus, for example, James D.G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon [NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996], p. 169). 20. Thus, Clinton E. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), pp. 158-94; Dunn, Colossians, pp. 92-93. 21. See especially Hans Windisch, ‘Friedensbringer—Gottessöhne. Eine religions-geschichtliche Interpretation der 7. Seligpreisung’, ZNW 24 (1925), pp. 240-60 (251-57) for primary references with discussion. 22. Thus, Dio Cassius 72.15.5. 23. V. Ehrenberg and A.H.M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1983), pp. 83-84, no. 98a, ll. 9-10: ei0rhneu&ousi me\n ga_r gh= kai\ qa&latta, po&leij de\ anqou=sin eu)nomi/ai o(mo&noia| te kai\ eu)ethri/a. 24. Ehrenberg and Jones, Documents, pp. 81-84, no. 98 ll. 36-7: to_n pau/santa me\n po&lemon, kosmh&sonta de\ ei0rh&nhn.




In the imperial programme, such peace celebrates military success in ending civil war, pacifying enemies and ending piracy.25 More important for the interpretation of cosmic and civic themes of reconciliation in Col. 1.15-23, imperial pax reflects a cosmic concord, a pax deum, guaranteeing Augustus’s and his successors’ achievements, preserved for human benefit by their piety, and made manifest in the security and tranquillity of the Roman order.26 Peace here is not only a civic phenomenon, it is cosmic.27 In the Priene inscription, Augustus’s birth is celebrated as ‘good tidings [eu)agge/lion]’ (l. 41) whence streams forth ‘the beginning of all things [th=i tw~n pa&ntwn a)rxh=i]’ (l. 6). Characteristic of the panegyric celebrating the aurea aetas of Augustus, and later Nero who was celebrated by court poets as bringing about a second Golden Age, is reference to the blessing of cosmic powers preserving imperial concord manifested in natural abun-dance and earthly fertility.28 A common theme in literary celebrations of imperial earthly rule is the way it mirrors a concord of diverse, sometimes opposing, elemental forces.29 Aelius Aristides in his Roman Oration (26.102-105), for example,

25. Thus, for example, Velleius Paterculis 2.89-91, 126; Res gestae 3–4, 25–34. 26. For piety, religion and the preservation of the pax romana, see Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 288-331; Richard Gordon, ‘The Veil of Power: Emperors, Sacrificers, and Benefactors’, in Mary Beard and John North (eds.), Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 199-232; Price, Rituals, pp. 207-48. 27. For the relationship of pax romana to pax deum, see Harald Fuchs, Augustin und der antike Friedengedanke: Untersuchungen zum neunzehnten Buch der Civitas Dei (Berlin: Weidmann, 2nd edn, 1965), pp. 186-205; Stefan Weinstock, ‘Pax and the “Ara Pacis”’, JRS 50 (1960), pp. 44-58. 28. For example, Virgil, Ecl. 4.20-52 and earthly fertility as a consequence of ‘the reign of Saturn’ (l. 6); Horace, Carmen saeculare ll. 25-36, linking Apollo and Diana, and the astral deities associated with them (Sol and Luna), with fertility; the Priene inscription flirting with celebrating Augustus’s birth with a new beginning in nature (ll. 6-7) heralds it as giving ‘to the whole world a different appearance’ (ll. 8-9). For Neronian versions in a second Golden Age, the reign of Saturn, Calpurnius Siculus, Ecl. 1.42, 64; 4.80-136; Einsiedeln Ec. 2.15-35; Seneca, Clem. 2.1.4-2.1. For discussion of this and other cosmological imagery, see Giuseppe Zechinni, ‘Néron et les traditions latines de l’âge d’or’, in Jean-Michel Croisille, René Martin and Yves Perrin (eds.), Neronia. V. Néron: histoire et légende (Collection Latomus, 247; Brussels: Latomus revue d’études latines, 1999), pp. 187-244. 29. For example, Plutarch, Fort. Rom. 2.316e-317c, likens Roman imperial pacifi-cation of contending powers with a cosmic ordering of opposing natural elements;




likens the worldwide concord arising from imperial rule to the cosmic harmony of Olympian deities as a result of Zeus’s victory over the Titans. Imperial o(mo&noia won from Caesar’s pacification of hostile powers and his bringing of political order to civic chaos mirrors Zeus’s ordering of primordial chaos and defeat of hostile powers.30 The cosmic dimensions of Roman order are invoked in inscriptions celebrating imperial rule. One acclaims Nero as o( tou= pa&ntoj ko&smou ku&rioj…ne/oj 9Hlioj e0pila&mpsaj, invoking Golden Age cosmic mythology associating political harmony with the reign of Helios.31 Thus, when in 1.15-23 the Colossian author

Princ. iner. 5.781f-82a likens the ruler governed by divine reason to the sun, the image of god, regulating the cosmos, free from chance and change; Ps.-Aristotle, Mund. 5.396a.32–6.401a.11 betrays the imprint of its author’s first-century imperial culture in its representation of the absolute ruler as bringing about civic harmony mirroring the divine governance of conflicting natural and cosmic forces; Philo similarly reflects his imperial backdrop in his depictions of civil order mirroring cosmic concord (Dec. 178; Spec. Leg. 2.188-92; Fug. 10—here the Augustan order is transparent in celebrating God as ‘the giver of peace [ei0rhnopoio&j], who has abolished all seditions in cities, and in all parts of the universe, and has produced plenty and prosperity’ [192]). (cf. Leg. Gai. 8.15-19 where the imperial application of cosmic harmony is explicit). Schweizer, ‘Versöhnung’, pp. 167-71 entirely misses the imperial political connection in his discus-sion of these passages and their relation to Col. 1.20. Erik Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (Leipzig: Jakob Hegner, 1935), pp. 21-31, correctly notes the Augustan analogies; Aelius Aristides, Or. 23.76-78 likens the harmony of emperors with cosmic concord. Seneca, Clem. 1.1.2, 1.3.4-3 conceives the Empire as a unity of diverse forces that would descend into chaos were it not for the emperor, the vicar of the gods, as its head, governed by divine reason and regulating the body of his empire. For the eclectic philosophical backdrop to these ideas, see Glenn F. Chesnut, ‘The Ruler and the Logos in Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Late Stoic Political Philo-sophy’, ANRW, II.16.1: 1310-32; E.R. Goodenough, ‘The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship’, Yale Classical Studies 1 (1928), pp. 55-102. For the image of the emperor as Jupiter’s viceroy ordering the political realm after the Jovian example of heavenly rule, see J. Rufus Fears, Princeps a diis electus: The Divine Election of the Emperor as a Political Concept at Rome (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1977), pp. 189-251. 30. Lucan, Bell. civ. 1.33-67 similarly—if perhaps ironically—likens Zeus’s victory over the Titans (l. 33) with a Neronian civil peace (ll. 61-62). 31. E.M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 35-37, no. 64 (SIG3, II, p. 813 ll. 30-31); see Wendland, ‘swth/r’ for a survey of similar cosmological epigraph-ical treatments and discussion. For Helios and the Golden Age in imperial ideology, see Rigobert Günther and Reimar Müller, Das goldene Zeitalter: Utopien der




emphasizes that Christ is pro_ pa&ntwn (1.17), or that o3j e0stin a)rxh&, so that ge/nhtai e0n pa~sin au)to_j prwteu&wn (v. 18)—notwithstanding the important function of such affirmations in furnishing the warrant for resisting worship of cosmic powers (2.18), and the important links with Old Testament themes centring in creation narratives—the universal language bears a recognizably imperial imprint. The literary and epigraphical theme of the harmony of the gods and cosmic powers embodied in Caesar’s reign was the topic of a widespread iconographical treatment designed to persuade the diverse peoples consti-tuting the Roman Empire of the divinely willed and embodied rule of the emperor, and the natural and civic abundance issuing forth from his reign. First-century imperial iconography regularly represented emperors as enthroned in heaven with depictions of conquered peoples or personified nations pacified by Roman victory below them, or as associated with natural fertility.32 Only 100 km from Colossae, the temple complex or Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, for example, dramatically displayed the divine appointment of the Julio-Claudian dynasty to pacify the peoples of the earth and bring them into a civil union mirroring divine harmony. Completed at precisely the time Colossians was composed, the sculptural programme included representations of emperors and their family members depicted in the company of Olympian deities and personified nature and cosmic powers, towering over some 50 statues representing peoples pacified, restored and/ or absorbed into the Roman order.33 The same notion was broadcast in

hellenistisch-römischen Antike (Leipzig: Kohlhammer, 1988), pp. 121-55. 32. See Ann L. Kuttner, Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the Boscoreale Cups (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 69-123 for discussion of depictions of enthroned emperors and subject peoples in imperial iconog-raphy; also, Zanker’s discussion of the Gemma Augustea in Power, pp. 230-38, where Augustus is represented in the guise of Jupiter, enthroned beside Roma, surrounded by divine personifications of the earth; additionally, Galinsky’s discussion in Culture, pp. 141-64, of the cosmic, natural and pacification imagery of the ara pacis and the cuirass of the Augustus statue from Prima Porta. For imagery of fertility in Julio-Claudian iconographical programmes, see Zanker, Power, pp. 172-83. For the temple complex at Aphrodisias, Charles Brian Rose, Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio-Claudian Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 163-69 excellently situates the iconography in the Julio-Claudian iconographical and ideo-logical programme, with bibliography of archaeological reports. 33. See R.R.R. Smith, ‘Myth and Allegory in the Sebasteion’, JRS Suppl. 1 (1990), pp. 89-100; idem., ‘The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 77




coinage—in the case of the emperor Nero, in numismatic issues associating him with the enthroned Jupiter and/or with head radiate, or depictions associating him with the Jovian aegis. Such symbols, representing a renais-sance of Jovian imagery in imperial media, urged imperial subjects to believe that Nero’s reign was ordained by Jupiter and represented the earthly copy of a cosmic model, if not the enfleshed embodiment of the divine.34

Caesar, whether you are Jupiter himself on earth in altered guise, or one other of the powers above concealed under an assumed moral semblance (for you are very god [es enim deus])—rule, I pray, this world, rule its peoples for ever! Let love of heaven count naught with thee; abandon not, O father [pater], the peace you have begun! (Calpurnius Siculus, Ecl. 4.142-46; LCL trans. slightly modified.)

(1987), pp. 88-138, for reproductions and discussion; Rose, Portraiture, pp. 167-68, recognizes more fully than Smith does the important cosmological affirmations of this portraiture. 34. For the radiate bust and aegis in the Neronian iconographical programme, see Fears, Princeps, pp. 235-37; for a renaissance of Jovian imagery, idem., ‘Nero as the Viceregent of the Gods in Seneca’s De clementia’, Hermes 103 (1975), pp. 486-96; idem., ‘The Cult of Jupiter and Roman Imperial Ideology’, ANRW, II.17.1, 3-141 (69-74). For Asia Minor numismatic issues associating Nero with radiate bust with Jupiter, see Andrew Barnett, Michael Amandry and Pere Paul Ripollés, Roman Provincial Coinage (London: British Museum Press, 1992), I, p. 479, nos. 2917, 2919 (Laodicea, c. 55 CE), Nero radiate and Zeus Laodiceus; I, pp. 485-86, nos. 2974-6 (Hierapolis, c. 55), Nero radiate and Apollo on horseback; no. 2978, radiate Nero with standing Zeus. In Greece Nero was heralded as Zeus Eleutherios upon exempting Achaea from taxation (SIG3, II, p. 814). For history, application and cosmic significance of Jovian motifs applied to emperors in coins and other media, see Andreas Alföldi, ‘Insignien und Tracht der römischen Kaiser’, in Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970), pp. 186-276. Pierre Grimal, ‘Le De clementia et la royauté de Néron’, Revue des études latines 49 (1971), pp. 205-17; H.P. L’Orange, Apotheosis in Ancient Portraiture (New York: Caratzas, 1982), pp. 57-63; and Pascal Arnaud, ‘L’apothéose de Néron-kosmokrator et la cosmographie de Lucain au premier de la Pharsale (1, 45-66)’, Revue des études latines 65 (1987), pp. 167-93 argue that the radiate bust should be placed within the broader context of Neronian attempts to identify himself as Sol and to promote a solar monarchy. H.P. L’Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 28-34 referring to Lucan’s representation of Nero as sun in Bell. civ. 1.45-69 (similarly, Seneca, Apol. 4) argues that Nero’s Domus Aurea (Suetonius, Nero 31) with its revolving rotunda was built to reflect the emperor’s cosmic/political power as incarnate Helios governing the heavens and the earth.




The imperial panegyrist offers a realized political eschatology couched in a divine incarnation; elsewhere, in a more traditional vein, Lucan (Bell. civ. 1.60-66) looks forward to Nero’s apotheosis when, having taken his place as a star (here as the sun) in the heavens, humankind will lay down its arms and peace will govern the earth, even as it already does under the emperor’s divine governance. What we may call a ‘realized apotheosis’ could not only be read about, it could also be seen. Nero took advantage of a monetary reform and the introduction of new coins to broadcast images of his divine rule. On coins issuing forth from the imperial mints Nero is portrayed with a radiate crown—an honour usually reserved to designate posthumous deification. Such media, as Pierre Bastien aptly comments, were the occasion for Nero to affirm his ‘nature supra-terrestre’.35 All this brings into striking relief the panegyric affirmations of Colossian Christology. An early Christian audience listening to Col. 1.15-23, with its charged diplomatic language, surrounded by imperial imagery celebra-ting the cosmic and earthly concord of Roman rule, could not have helped but recognize imperial overtones in the celebration of an incarnate Son in whom the fullness of God dwelt (1.19; 2.9) to bring about a universal reconciliation. Like Nero, whom imperial poets acclaimed as an embodied deity, and Seneca celebrated as the head of the body, the Roman Empire, on whom all rests and depends for its health and vigour, the incarnate Son, the enthroned Jesus, heads the cosmos by which all things hold together (1.17) and from whom, in the ‘empire [basilei/a] of his beloved Son’ (1.13) comes growth and renewal (2.9-10, 19; 1.6).36 Even as the

35. Here Nero was following the lead of Gaius, who introduced the iconographical innovation of representing himself on coins as radiate; for the history and meaning, see Pierre Bastien, Le buste monétaire des empereurs romains (Wetteren: Editions numismatique romaine, 1992), I, pp. 105-107. A similar innovation proclaiming ‘virtual apotheosis’ can be seen on coins with the inscription genio augusti, the dative replacing the customary nominative and thus drawing attention to Nero’s divinity: C.H.V. Sutherland and R.A.G. Carson, The Roman Imperial Coinage (London: Spink, 2nd edn, 1984), I (RIC), p. 158, nos. 83-87; p. 160, nos. 124-25; pp. 163-64, nos. 213-20; p. 174, nos. 382-83; p. 176, nos. 419-20; p. 178, nos. 462-63; p. 182, nos. 532-36. No. 214 is especially instructive: genius bears a cornucopia—a celebration of natural abundance bursting forth from Nero’s divine rule. 36. For Nero as embodied divine numen governing the earth, see Calpurnius Siculus, Ecl. 4.84; deus ipse (4.165); mea numina (7.80); for Nero as embodied Mars/Apollo, 7.84; Einsiedeln ecl. 1.37. For the semantic range of imperial ‘incarnation’ of the divine and its important differences from early Christian affirmations of the incarnation of the




imperial order was celebrated as civil order and concord mirroring the peace of the gods, replacing the faction and strife that had divided the cities and nations of the world, so our author praises Colossian ‘good order [ta&cij]’, and their being ‘rooted’ [e0rrizwme/noi], ‘built up [e0poikodomou&menoi]’ and ‘firmly established [bebaiou&menoi]’ in Christ (2.5, 7), all civic terms used in political commonplace treatments of o(mo&noia, and to celebrate the bene-fits and character of Roman rule.37 To be sure, Colossians is unique for what N.T. Wright has well described as the christological monotheism of early Christian affirmation.38 Whereas in the imperial programme the emperor is a god, or son of god, numbered amongst a series of deities in a natural/cosmic order that is cyclic, in the Colossian affirmation Jesus is the Son of the only God, who has brought creation into being and sustains it.39 These essential and important differ-ences should not make us deaf, however, to the resonances one discovers in celebrations and confessions of imperial rule—resonances amplified by the clear use of diplomatic language that Colossians deploys and the loca-tion of the political language in a politically oriented cosmology. Those resonances take on pointed socio-political meaning once they are situated in the context of Colossian ecclesiology. Colossian christological monotheism and the universal imperial-sounding claims associated with it are always affirmed with reference to the church understood as both the Son in Jesus, see S.R.F. Price, ‘Gods and Emperors: The Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult’, JHS 104 (1984), pp. 79-95. The important differences should not blind us, however, to the clear analogues (thus, Collins, ‘Worship’, pp. 244-51, who depends heavily on Zeller, ‘Menschwerdung’, pp. 157-72). For Nero as head of the body of his empire, through whom all are united, see Seneca, Clem. 1.3.4; 1.5.1; 1.13.4; 2.2.1-2; cf. ps.-Aristotle, De mundo 7.401a.29-401b.7 where the civic body and cosmic body of Zeus are likened. For the empire as body with the emperor at its head in imperial ideology, see Dietmar Kienast, ‘Corpus imperii. Überlegungen zum Reichsgedanken der Römer’, in Gerard Wirth (ed.), Romanita–Christianitas: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Literatur der römischen Kaiserzeit (Festschrift Johannes Staub; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982), pp. 1-17. 37. See, for example, Aelius Aristides, Or. 26.29, 101, 103-104 for civil chaos replaced by imperial rule and civic concord adorning the empire as a garden (99); Plutarch, Fort. Rom. 9.321D for Fortune permitting Rome r9izw~sai kai\ katasth=sai th_n po&lin au)canome/nhn e0n h(suxi/a| bebai/wj, anticipating an empire-wide concord to come; for the lengthy tradition of political applications of be/baioj, oi0kodomei=n and cognates, with representations of Roman political peace and reconciliation, see Mitchell, Paul, pp. 105-107. 38. Wright, ‘Poetry’, p. 459. 39. Similarly, Zeller, ‘Menschwerdung’, p. 173.




local assembly of the gathered house church (4.15, 16) and a more cosmic reality it makes manifest (1.18, 24; 2.19). The Christ who is head of the body, the church, parallels the emperor who is head of the body of his Empire, with the difference that Christ’s is not a rule centred in military dominion over pacified enemies. His rule is rather manifested in a recon-ciling death making friends out of enemies. His reign is marked not by domination, but by self-giving (1.20, 22). The citizens of this alternative Empire in the body of the church are urged to live according to its counter-imperial logic (3.13-15). The local house churches of Colossae, Hierapolis and Laodicea thus are to express in their ethics (3.1–4.6) and their worship of the enthroned Jesus (1.15-20) a pattern of life that, while not offering the critique of Roman dominion found elsewhere in the New Testament (especially the Apocalypse), nevertheless differs significantly from the imperial ideas Colossians draws upon and echoes. Indeed, in its affirmation of Jesus as the one in whom, through whom and for whom all things are made (1.16) and continue to hold together (v. 17), by logical implication even Caesar, together with the cosmic powers he serves, is ultimately subject (Col. 2.10). We have here the making of a Quiet Revolution.

‘Here there cannot be…barbarian, Scythian…’ As the letter unfolds it continues to sound imperial tones, especially in its declarations of the universal rule of Christ who is ‘all and in all [(ta_) pa&nta kai\ e0n pa&sin]’ (3.11). Colossians’ appropriation of imperial imagery has been most discussed with reference to 2.15 with its celebration of Jesus’ death as a Roman triumphus, and the relation of that imagery to the cosmic powers named in 1.16.40 But if the image points backwards, it also prepares the way for the ethical exhortations that follow in 3.1ff., especially in the celebration of the overcoming of all ethnic boundaries in 3.11. Wayne Meeks has correctly named the affirmations of 3.11, as well as the related ones of Gal. 3.28, 1 Cor. 12.13, and beyond in Eph. 2.11-22 and Ignatius, Smyrn. 1.2, as ‘“utopian” declarations’ exclaimed at Chris-

40. See Carr, Angels, pp. 61-63; Lamar Williamson, ‘Led in Triumph’, Int 22 (1968), pp. 317-32; F.F. Bruce, ‘Colossian Problems Part 4: Christ as Conqueror and Reconciler’, Bibiotheca Sacra 141 (1984), pp. 291-302 (298-99); and Roy Yates, ‘Colossians 2.15: Christ Triumphant’, NTS 37 (1991), pp. 573-91; R.G. Tanner, ‘St. Paul’s View of Militia and Contemporary Social Values’, in E.A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia Biblica: Sixth International Congress on Biblical Studies (JSNTSup, 3; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), III, pp. 377-82.




tian baptism, which helped believers gain a sense of belonging in a large and cosmopolitan world.41 Meeks’s analysis focuses on these affirmations as Pauline and pre-Pauline, a ‘baptismal reunification formula’ whose point was to proclaim that ‘the initiatory ritual of baptism was a drama of the re-creation of mankind, and that the hallmark of the “new human” was unity’.42 That analysis is too parochial, however, as long as it remains focused solely on ritual patterns and their associations with religious traditions. Meeks’s religionsgeschichtliche insights gain contextual relief once related to a more imperial reading of Col. 3.11 that places its utopian declaration in the social setting of imperial ideals. Early Christian proclamations of a unity transcending ethnic boundaries took place in an Empire that celebrated its dominion over subject peoples iconographically as incorporated or subjected through military might into a trans-ethnic order.43 Ethnic diversity in unity created by means of Roman military pacification of enemies—what Max Mühl aptly calls ‘cosmopoli-tanism with power’—was the imperial vision Rome held up to its subjects to convince them of Rome’s entitlement to govern the world.44 As Claude Nicolet has shown, Augustus’s Res gestae celebrates precisely such a cosmopolitanism as the Roman fulfilment of Alexander’s incomplete pro-ject of bringing the world into a trans-ethnic unity.45 The universal claims of a gospel bringing into one unity ethnically diverse often mobile peoples of varying socio-economic status was at home in an Empire that equated its realm with the world, integrated its subject peoples militarily and

41. Wayne A. Meeks, ‘In One Body: The Unity of Humankind in Colossians and Ephesians’, in Jacob Jervell and Wayne A. Meeks (eds.), God’s Christ and his People: Studies in Honor of Nils Alstrup Dahl (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977), pp. 209-21 (209). 42. Meeks, ‘Body’, p. 210; idem., ‘The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity’, HR 13 (1974), pp. 165-208 (180-97). 43. See especially Walter F. Taylor, ‘The Unity of Mankind in Antiquity and Paul’ (PhD dissertation, Claremont, 1981), pp. 420-567 for a survey of the backdrop of Roman imperial cosmopolitanism and its relation to Pauline ideals. 44. Max Mühl, Die antike Menschheitsidee in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1928; repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), p. 82. 45. Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (trans. Hélène Leclerc; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 21-22, commenting on the geographical organization of Res gestae, pp. 25-33; Plutarch repre-sents Alexander’s vision in recognizably Roman imperial terms in Alex fort. 6.329C.




diplomatically into a political union, and created new possibilities for social and economic mobility.46 The Empire’s inhabitants were especially urged to conceive of them-selves as part of a divinely appointed cosmopolitan order by imperial monuments portraying subject peoples pacified by Roman might and incorporated into the imperial order. Their importance as a medium in propagating Roman rule as a utopian cosmopolitan order can hardly be overestimated. This is especially true because these monuments were not necessarily imposed by Rome from above, but were also erected by local elites to indicate their allegiance to that order and the material, political and societal benefits streaming forth to them from it.47 These monuments drew on a long iconographical tradition of military and triumphal imagery originating in the Hellenistic period celebrating military pacification of enemies.48 Roman iconography characteristically depicted vanquished en-emies, or personified peoples or geographical areas in poses of submission before their victors and political overlords. The ‘Sebasteion’ at Aphrodisias is especially instructive, not only for its extensive representation of pacified peoples, but also for its portrayals of them in various stages of assimilation to the Roman imperial ‘moral’ order.49 The 50 statues of personified subject peoples and places, placed in the second story of the temple’s north portico, beneath cosmic and mytho-logical representations of emperors, were erected to communicate to viewers the geographical extent of Rome’s imperium and the imperial

46. For the expanse of the Roman geographical imagination together with its military function, see Nicolet, Space, pp. 29-94; Susan Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 26-40; Ando, Ideology, pp. 277-335. 47. See Ando, Ideology, pp. 303-13 for discussion of representative examples. 48. For the tradition and literature, and the iconographical uses in Roman triumphal ceremony, see Kuttner, Dynasty, pp. 73-86; still definitive are P. Bienkowski, De simulacris barbararum gentium apud Romanos (Krakow: Gebethner, 1900); M. Jatta, Le rappresentanze figurate delle Provincie Romane (Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 1908); J.M.C. Toynbee, The Hadrianic School: A Chapter in the History of Greek Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), pp. 7-23 (for the Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods). 49. For a full discussion of Roman imperial iconography as a guide in interpreting Colossians, see Harry O. Maier, ‘Barbarians, Scythians and Imperial Iconography in the Epistle to the Colossians’, in Annette Weissenrieder, Frederike Wendt and Petra von Gemünden (eds.), Picturing the New Testament: Studies in Iconography and the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).




household’s divinely appointed role in civilizing the world. Amongst the statues are personifications of subject barbarian peoples. One example powerfully communicates a barbarian ethnos in the process of ‘roman-ization’: she stands with bound arms, wearing an unkempt peplos that has slipped off her shoulder, with hair between the stereotypical dishevelled barbarian style and the regulated Greek coiffure. On the third story of the south portico, a similar depiction of a barbarian nation in media res is repre-sented with Nero standing victorious over a kneeling, despondent female personification of the recently conquered Armenia. Nero, grasping her from beneath her shoulders, is pulling her to her feet to symbolize not only pacification, but the romanization that will come to her as a consequence of the political/military reconciliation with the defeated Armenian king, Tiridates. These representations erected by local elites to celebrate imperial rule put in stone what was theorized by Roman moralists in print—that Rome’s dominion over subject nations was a consequence of its moral superiority and was the sign of a divine favour extending throughout the world, to bring order where chaos had once ruled, and peace where there had been war.50 In a flight of the utopian imagination, Horace asks his listeners to imagine those at the farthest reaches of the world, inhabiting a moral no-man’s land—‘Indians and Scythians, but recently disdainful’—now asking to be pacified as a consequence of the moral order expressing the Augustan Golden Age.51

50. See especially, Cicero, De republica 3.36; also, Virgil, Aen. 6.850-53; Aelius Aristides, Or. 26.102-107, Philo, Leg. Gai. 49-50; 143-47; for discussion with further texts, see P.A. Brunt, ‘Laus Imperii’, in Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 288-325 (293-300); Wilhelm Capelle, ‘Griechische Ethik und röm-ischer Imperialismus’, Klio 25 (1932), pp. 86-113; Ulrich Knoche, ‘Die geistige Vorbe-reitung der augusteiischen Epoche durch Cicero’, in Hans Oppermann (ed.), Römertum: Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1921 bis 1961 (Darmstadt: Wissenchaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970), pp. 203-23; Hermann Strasburger, ‘Poseidonios on Problems of the Roman Empire’, JRS 55 (1965), pp. 40-53 (46-53); J. Rufus Fears, ‘The Theology of Victory at Rome’, ANRW, II.17.2, 737-825 (749-52, 773-77, 804-24). For Rome as civilizing and bringing order to chaos, see A.A.T. Ehrhardt, ‘Imperium und Humanitas. Grundlagen des römischen Imperialismus’, Studium Generale 14 (1961), pp. 646-64; F. Klingner, ‘Humanität und Humanitas’, in Römische Geisteswelt. Aufsätze zur lateinischen Literatur (Stuttgart: Artemis, 6th edn, 1979), pp. 704-46. 51. Horace, Carmen saeculare 53-56; contemporary with Nero, Lucan, Bell. civ. 1.367-72, cites Roman triumph over Scythia as expression of a conquered world. For Graeco-Roman ethnology associating Scythians with extreme otherness, remoteness




Thus, when the author to the Colossians affirms ‘here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all’ (3.11), we have a text that resonates with imperial utopian associations. Those associations become all the more striking once placed within the context of the author’s celebration of a gospel that expresses the triumphus of Christ (2.15) proclaimed through all the world (1.6, 23) as the advent of a new moral order (3.5–4.6). As in the imperial context, where military pacification expresses the divinely appointed right of Rome to rule and the advent of good morals, so in Colossians, Christ’s triumphus brings with it good order and right behav-iour. Colossians’ language of ‘putting off the old nature’, with its vices (3.8-10) and ‘putting on the new nature’ (vv. 10, 12-15) has been much remarked upon with reference to Gen. 1.26-27, especially in relation to baptismal initiation and the recovery of a prelapsarian condition.52 But this language also reflects imperial political notions. The ritual of Roman triumph included a ceremonial taking off and putting on of clothing to celebrate victorious rule. This is the image introduced at 2.15 where the aorist middle a)pekdusa&menoj refers to Christ’s death as a disrobing in preparation for the victory parade to follow in which he publicly displays (deigmati/zein) the principalities and authorities in the triumphal procession of his resurrection.53 The political-moral dimensions of that triumph continue in 3.1, with the exhortation to seek the things above where Christ is enthroned, and in 3.15 with the call to let ‘the peace of Christ rule [h( ei0rh&nh tou= Xristou= brabeue/tw]’. Thus 3.10 with its obvious connection

and intractability, see the discussion of the Greek presentation in François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (trans. Janet Lloyd; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 61-111; Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 101-200, and Brent Shaw, ‘“Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk”: The Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the Pastoral Nomad’, Ancient Society 13 (1982), pp. 5-31; and of the application of this tradition in Roman imperial ethnology in Susan P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy and the Principate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 70-80, and David Braund, ‘The Caucasian Frontier: Myth, Exploration and the Dynamics of Imperialism’, in Philip Freeman and David Kennedy (eds.), The Defence of the Roman and Byzantine East (Oxford: BAR, 1986), I, pp. 31-49 (‘fantasy-space’, pp. 36-38). For literary depictions of Scythians more generally, see E. Bieder, ‘Sku&qhj’, TDNT, VII, pp. 447-49. 52. Meeks, ‘Androgyne’, pp. 187-89. 53. Thus Carr, Angels, p. 61; H.S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), pp. 56-93.




to the Old Testament is framed by imperial metaphors. In 3.11, where the ethical renewal of the Colossians is related to a trans-ethnic unity in which ‘Christ is all, and in all’, the imperial tone resonates more strongly. The triumph acclaimed at 2.15 now takes on a recognizably Roman imperial reach and universality. With even barbarians and Scythians caught up in the moral renewal of ‘the basilei/a of [God’s] beloved Son’ (1.13), the gospel has indeed reached ‘the world’ —the furthest limits of the imperial imagination.

Concordia Augusta and the Colossian Haustafel Imperial echoes continue in the Household Code of 3.18–4.1. It has long been recognized that the Haustafeln here and elsewhere in early Christian literature are to be interpreted as a topos at home in Hellenistic political literature.54 Recently Margaret MacDonald has urged a more precise imperial political connection in her study of the Ephesian household code (Eph. 5.22–6.9).55 Drawing on scholarship focusing on the political uses of family imagery by governing imperial households to promote their rule as a divinely appointed concord extending from the imperial family to the empire as whole, she argues that the Ephesian Haustafel bears the marks of its imperial context. Especially important in situating New Testament Haustafeln in their Roman setting is attention to imagery found on imperial coins depicting the concord and familial bonds of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Suzanne Dixon notes the importance of this imagery in presenting political ideals.56 In addition to exploiting pro-family ideals current in the populace at large, it affirmed that imperial concord flowed forth from the harmony of the ruling household, the mirror of divine concordia. Of relevance for recognizing the imperial connections with the Colossian Household Code are the contemporary Augustus Augusta and Concordia 54. For a succinct review of scholarship as well as application in pagan political ideals, see Mitchell, Paul, pp. 121-25. 55. Margaret Y. MacDonald, ‘The Politics of Identity in Ephesians’, JSNT 26.4 (2004), pp. 419-44; I am grateful to Professor MacDonald for making her paper available to me before it went to press; see also, David L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submis-sive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (SBLMS, 26; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 72-73 for imperial ideology celebrating Augustus as protector and promoter of family morals. 56. Suzanne Dixon, ‘The Sentimental Ideal of the Roman Family’, in Beryl Rawson (ed.), Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 99-113 (107).




Augusta issues celebrating Nero’s marriage to Poppaea in 62 CE.57 In the former, a radiate Nero with patera and sceptre—symbols of generosity and Jovian rule—stands beside the traditionally veiled Poppaea bearing a cornucopia; the latter depicts Concordia, again with the beneficent symbols of patera and cornucopia. The strong affirmations of divinity in these issues strikingly illustrate Dixon’s point concerning imperial familial represen-tations of concordia—no small irony in the case of the matri- and uxoricide Nero—to promote Roman rule, and the use of representations of the imperial household’s female members for propaganda purposes.58 In the Colossian Haustafel, where the author urges each family order to fulfil its characteristic obligations in obedience to the Lord/Master (3.18, 20, 22, 23, 24; 4.1), and husbands are urged to love their wives (v. 19), well-governed household relations are similarly made to reflect the divine governance of the rule and peace of Christ celebrated in 3.15. The Haustafel thus represents a further application of the diplomatic language and politi-cal metaphors found elsewhere in the letter. Further, the extended exhorta-tions outlining the obligations of slaves to masters (3.22-25) similarly reflect imperial political treatment of the well-regulated household. Dio Chrysostom, for example, reflects his Roman context when he likens civic o(mo&noia to a well-governed household in which husband and wife are like-minded and slaves obey their masters.59 Colossians’ idiosyncratic lengthening of slave instructions perhaps originated from the needs of a community constituted mostly by converted slaves, anxious to defend itself against pagan suspicions.60 It certainly reinforces the overall message of the letter, that Christ’s reconciling/pacifying rule—like Caesar’s—has penetrated beyond every ethnic, national, religious and social boundary to bring all into a divinely appointed global pax—a peace and concord nowhere more manifest than in the faithful execution of traditional house-hold duties. The local house churches under the rule of their divine master realize a domestic political ideal championed in the civic culture around

57. RIC, p. 153, nos. 44, 56, 48; see also the earlier (54-56 CE) Agrippina issues linking Nero with his mother as ‘mater augusti’: e.g., RIC, p. 150, no. 6; 185, nos. 607-11, as well as those representing Nero as son of the deified Claudius (RIC, p. 150, nos. 1-3; p. 185, nos. 607-12 [obverse legends]). 58. See M. Grant, Roman Imperial Money (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1972), pp. 133-48, for discussion of other examples. 59. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 38.14. 60. Thus, Balch, Wives, pp. 96-97; Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians Ephesians (Sacra Pagina, 17; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 160-69.




them. However, just as Colossian affirmation of reconciliation through the death of Jesus implicitly rejects Roman ideas of pacification through diplomacy backed by the sword, so the Household Code urges upon those inhabiting traditional positions of power (husbands and slave owners) love (a)gapa~n, 3.19), justice and equity (di/kaioj; i0soth&j, 4.1). It thereby unsettles the traditional absolute rule and exploitation of Graeco-Roman patresfamilias over their subordinates.61 A domestic peace in the house church marked by love, justice and equity insists that the Colossian church realize a civic identity that runs counter to the exploitative rule by domi-nation of its imperial overlords.

A Sly Civility The preceding discussion has shown that a full exegetical treatment of Colossians requires close attention to the way it adopts and adapts Roman imperial themes in its presentation of a global, universal reconciliation grounded in a cosmic vision of the creating and triumphal work of an incarnate Christ, extended to the farthest reaches of the Roman ethnic imagination, expressed in politically charged civic terms to describe the ethical renewal and communal ordering of believers. While these more politically oriented themes are usually passed over in contemporary exegetical accounts of Colossians, resulting in a too parochial reading of an imperially charged text, ancient commentators were quick to recognize Colossians’ imperial resonances. Colossians, with its three-stage Christol-ogy celebrating the enthronement of an exalted Christ and a global proclamation of the gospel celebrating the incorporation of all peoples ei0j th_n basilei/an tou~ ui9ou~ th=j aga&phj au)tou~ (1.13) was especially suited for expressing the imperial dominion of a Christian Empire under Con-stantine and his successors. Eusebius’s Oration in Praise of Constantine repeatedly draws on Colossians’ imperial tropes and political language to celebrate a pre-existing Son of God through whom and for whom all

61. For i0soth&j as (economic) equity (a critical alternative translation to the RSV ‘fairness’), see Dieter Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), pp. 154-57. For di/kaioj and i0soth=j as twin concepts in philosophical ethical tradition as legal notions, and Pauline reconfiguration through association with notions of incarnation and grace, see Petros Vassiliadis, ‘Equality and Justice in Classical Antiquity and in Paul: The Social Impli-cations of the Pauline Collection’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 36 (1992), pp. 51-59.




things visible and invisible have been created, enthroned in splendour, and triumphant over all the nations, his sovereign power extended over Greeks and barbarians alike through the power of his everywhere penetrating logos (Laud. Const. 1; 4; 7). His earthly representative, Constantine, is the earthly image of that cosmic rule; the emperor mirrors Christ’s victory over invisible powers by overthrowing pagan religion and extending the sweep of his Christian Empire to include Greeks and barbarians alike (9–10). Christ and Caesar conspire together in a cosmic and global rule, as saving religion guarantees imperial peace and concord and a global imperial reach brings the gospel to the furthest points of the compass (16). Pre-eminent amongst the biblical texts Eusebius draws upon to present the realized eschatology of his political messianism is Colossians. Here he finds the imperial metaphor of triumph, the overcoming of all ethnic distinctions, the cosmic penetration of divine rule mirrored by imperial order, the moral renewal of all peoples under the direction of an emperor. The case for an imperial reading of Colossians argued for in this essay is assumed as a matter of course in Eusebius’s oration. But if Colossians can be read as offering support for that imperial vision, it also proclaims a more destabilizing truth. For the paradox of Colossians is that an imperial-looking victory is signalled by a defeat. It is from the cross—a symbol of Roman pacification of enemies—in the body of Jesus’ death, that a new imperium issues forth (1.20; 2.15). Enemies are pacified and incorporated in the body of this basilei/a, but not by the Roman vision of a sword wielded to ‘rule the world, to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and crush the proud’ (Vergil, Aen. 6.851-52). Reconciliation comes through the death of the ruler, not the ruled, and in the ethical life of love for and care of others (3.12-14), who share the rule of Christ (3.1; 1.18; 2.10, 15) and his riches (1.27; 2.2-3), not through the dominion of one over the vanquished who owe him honour. This is an imperial pax by other means. That it is from Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection that a universal peace and renewal comes presumes that the old Augustan order is no real peace (its pax deum is an illusion), and that the violence on which it rests offers no genuine reconciliation. The blood of the cross is the full revelation of the true nature of such a pax and offers a sobering cross-examination of all those, then and now, who march forth in battle ‘to make a desert and call it peace’ (Tacitus, Agricola 30.5). Colossians offers an alternative vision of victory in the exhortation to ‘put on love’ (3.14), which picks up on the sartorial triumphus imagery of disrobing (a)pekdusa&menoj) in 2.15, and thereby renounces violence as the




means of achieving universal peace (3.15). It urges believers gathered in local house churches to realize by love what Rome seeks to achieve by the force of arms, and thereby to be the visible ecclesial manifestation of an alternative cosmic rule centred finally in an empire-renouncing logic. Colossians is, to borrow a phrase from Homi Bhabha, a ‘sly civility’.62 If it echoes imperial-sounding ideals, it does not replicate them. Colossians twists Empire and makes it slip. This hybrid vision from the cross disavows Empire even as it mimics it.

62. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 93-102.



A Sly Civility Col and Empire, JSNT

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