that he could extract. Dr. Davidson denies the Pauline author- ship, and thinks it was written about 120 a.p. The assaults are, in part, on the same grounds as those against Ephesians—textual and grammatical departures from Paul’s style, unique forms of expression, and differences of idea. Against Colossians in par- ticular it is urged that the errors it attacks are later than Paul’s date.
The Pauline authorship cannot be overthrown by any of these considerations. As to the errors treated in the epistle, it has already been shown that they contained the germs of later Gnosticism. The variations in style are no greater than those which appear in different writings by the same author. They are easily explained by difference of subject, and by the mental changes in the writer himself. Many of the unique words are echoes of the vocabulary of the heretical teachers (see especially in ch. ii. and notes), and every epistle of Paul contains numerous words which are found nowhere else. Not counting those which occur in the Septuagint, there are over 2 hundred in both Romans and First Corinthians; over ninety in Second Corinthians; thirty-three or four in Gala- tians; forty-one in Philippians; over thirty in the two Thes- salonian letters, and above one hundred and fifty in the three Pastorals. The absence of peculiarly Pauline words and phrases it is only necessary flatly to deny. Any Greek student may satisfy himself on that point by means of a Concordance.
The Christology of the epistle is that of the earlier epis- tles, only more fully developed. Notably the preéxistence of Christ is emphasized. The doctrine of Christ’s person is more fully and precisely stated than in any other of Paul’s letters.
The style lacks the richness and rhythmical sonorousness of Ephesians. This arises in part from its more controversial character, which betrays itself in Paul’s style, here as elsewhere, by his employment of unusual words and long compounds. The earlier chapters especially are marked by a certain stiffness which is imparted by the rarity of the ordinary connecting particles, and the connection of the sentences by participial constructions and relative pronouns, or by “causal and inferen- tial conjunctions” (see ch. i.). Bishop Lightfoot observes that