This suggestion might also help to account for the change in style from the earlier Epistles. The movement of thought is less abrupt, and the sentences are often longer and more involved. Particles, even those of which St. Paul is most fond, such as dpa, did, di&ri, are replaced to a great extent by participial constructions. This, however, may well be due to the lack of urgency. The danger was not so great as it had been in Galatia or in Corinth.
In the second chapter the difficulty of translating is very great, and it is possible that in some cases the text has suffered from corruption lying further back than all our existing MSS ; 2^^ and 2^ are the most notable examples (in 2'^ C. Taylor's dipa Keve/j^- ^areijuf has been favoured by Westcott and Hort and Zahn, and is commonly accepted). The trans- lation of 2}^ presents almost as many difficulties.
Literature. — Editions. — Col. has been edited by H. J. Holtz- mann (1872), A. Klopper (1882), H. von Soden (1801), and Haupt (in Meyer's C't/m.», 1899). J. B. Lightfoot's Colossians (1st ed., 1875) is the standard Enjj. work. Of recent Eng. Com- mentaries the most valuable are those by A. S. Peake (EOT, 1903), T. K. Abbott (ICC, 1897), and G. G. Findlay (Pulpit Commentary, 188G). Geserai,.— F. J. A. Hort, Jxuiaistic Christianity, 1S94 ; W. Sanday, art. in Smith's Diet, of the Bible'', 1893; T. Zahn, Einlcitung in das j.VT', 1897 (Eng. tr., Introd. to NT, 1909) ; H. von Soden, artt. in JI'Th, 1885-87 ; J. Moffatt, Lyr^, 1912. L. W. Grensted.
COLOURS.— Among the writers of the NT the sense of colour is strongest in the author of the Revelation, who partly reproduces the colour- symbolism of earlier authors, priestly, prophetic, and apocalyptic, and partly is original. Colour distinctions were perhaps not so fine in ancient as in modern times ; at any rate the colour vocabu- lary was more limited. The associations of colour vary greatly in different ages and peoples.
1. White (XeuKcis, connected with lux; Xa/iirpos, •bright' in RV, fr. Xafxiro 'to shine'), the colour of light, is the symbol of purity, innocence, holi- ness ; it is the primary liturgical colour. The head and hair of the Son of Man are white as wool or snow (Rev V^). Angels are arrayed in white (15« ; cf. Ac 1"). The elders (Rev 4-*), the martyrs (61'), the great multitude (7^) are clothed in white raiment : but their robes were not always Avhite ; they have washed them and made them white {iXeCKavav) in the blood of the Lamb (7'^). Such raiment one of the Seven Churches is counselled to buy_ (318). A hypocrite has not the white rube ; he is only like a whitewashed wall {roixe KeKovia- fijpe, Ac 233 ; cf. Mt 232T). White is the colour of victory ; the first rider on a white horse (Rev 6-) represents a conquering secular power, probably Parthia; the second is the Faithful and True (19'i), whose triumphant followers are clad in white
uniform (19'^). The Son of Man is seen enthroned on a white cloud (14'^) ; and the great throne of God — unlike the sapphire throne in Ezk 1-" — is white.
2. Red, the first of the three primary colours of science, is in Greek irvppot, from irvp, ' fire.' ' Light and fire, when regarded ethically in Holy Scripture, are contrasts : light, the image of beneficent love ; and fire, of destroying anger ' (Delitzsch, Iris, Eng. tr., 1889, p. 73). The swordsman upon the red horse (Rev 6^) represents war and bloodshed ; the great red dragon (12^) the same, probably with the added idea of fire.
3. Black ifiiXas) indicates the absence of light : a white object is one which reflects nearly all the light of all colours ; a black object absorbs nearly all. Ethically considered, the withdraAval of light is weird and appalling. The revelation at Sinai was made in ' blackness (yv6(pos, gloom) and mist and tempest' (He 12"*). Black is the colour of famine ; the third of the four riders in the Apoca- lypse, who brings dearth, goes forth on a black horse (Rev 6^). A great earthquake makes the sun black as sackcloth of hair (6'^ ; cf. Jl 2^"- ^^ ; Ass. Mos. X. 4f. ; Virg. Georg. i. 463 f.). For men whose lives belie their profession there is reserved the blackness of darkness (6 ^6(f>o% rod aK&rovs, 2 P 2" II Jude'3 ; cf. Homer, II. xxi. 56).
i. Purple (irop(j>vpa, purpura) now denotes a shade varying between crimson and violet, but to the ancients it was a red-purple dye, which might even be mistaken for scarlet (cf. Jn 19- with Mt 27-**). It was obtained from a shellfish (purpura, mnrex) found near Tyre and on the shores of Tar- entum and Laconia. The throat of each mollusc yielded one drop of the precious fluid. The manu- facture and sale of the dye was the monopoly of the Phoenicians. Pliny says of Tyre that, while she once ' thirsted so eagerly for the conquest of tlie whole earth ... all her fame is now con- fined to the production of the mure.x and the purple' [HN v. 17). Cloth of purple was the emblem of royalty and nobility — purpura regum (Virg. Georg. ii. 495). The soldiers arrayed Christ with it in derision (Mt 15"- ^*). It was among the costly merchandise of Imperial Rome (Rev 18''). The Maccabees noted that the sober-minded Romans of the Republic did not wear it (1 Mac S''*), but Pliny remarks on ' the frantic passion for purple' in his time [HN ix. 60). The prophet of the Revelation knows that the great city is arrayed in it (Rev 18'*). The apocalyptic harlot clothes herself with it (17^). The finest kind of purple was 'the Tyrian dibapha (double-dyed), which could not be bought for even 1000 denarii per pound ' (Pliny, ix. 63). Lydia (Ac 16'^- 's. «) ^^^^ ^ seller of purple {Trop4>vp6iro}Xis), but it is now generally believed that the Thyatiran dye, which she was engaged in selling, was the modern turkey red, which is extracted from the madder root {rubia).