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The Source of the Christology in Colossians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

J. C. O'Neill
Affiliation:
Cambridge, England

Extract

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the author of the Epistle to the Colossians took his great Christological statements in i. 9–23 and ii. 6–15 direct from Jewish sources. I am denying on the one hand the thesis that he was writing as a creative theologian who drew from time to time on a store of theological ideas which he made his own, and on the other hand the thesis that he was citing ‘hymns’ that were already complete entities. He neither created a Christology nor cited one or two commonly agreed pieces of liturgy; rather, he put together a great number of distinct but related statements which already existed in his sacred traditional sources.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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