The false teaching against which the Epistle is chiefly directed was of a Jewish type. This is clear alike from the characteristics mentioned and the nature of the polemic. It insisted on observance of regulations as to meats and drinks, festivals, new moons and Sabbaths. It drew on the tradition of men as its source. The reference to circumcision seems to show that the false teachers attached value to it; and the declaration that the Law has been abolished, which forms the basis for the definite attack, shows that they regarded it as still binding. Other characteristics are mentioned which are not so exclusively Jewish. It is spoken of as a philosophy and empty deceit, which was plausible and gave a reputation for
wisdom. It had the “elements of the world” and not Christ for its content; and was characterised by a humility which found expression in the worship of angels, but was not incompatible with fleshly conceit. It inculcated severity to the body, and imposed ordinances against certain foods. It is possible that the teachers asserted that they had visions of angels (ii. 18), but unfortunately the phrase from which this is inferred is exegetically uncertain and possibly corrupt. The false teachers were Christians, as is clear from the words, “ not holding fast the Head”; but probably they did not assign to Christ His true place. It is possible that they thought of Christ as Paul did, and did not see that their peculiar views were incompatible with their doctrine of Christ ; but this seems less likely.
It is not unnatural that many scholars should have seen in this teaching something which, while partially, was not wholly Jewish. And the most obvious solution, especially for those who dated the Epistle in the second century, was to regard the heresy as a form of Judaistic Gnosticism. In favour of this were alleged the use of the term “philosophy,” the stress laid on “ wisdom,” the counter- presentation of Christianity as “full knowledge of the mystery,” the asceticism which forbade drinks as well as meats, the angel worship which might rest on a doctrine of intermediaries between men and God, the emphasis on the universality of the Gospel in contrast to the exclusiveness of an intellectual aristocracy. It is certainly difficult to find full-blown Gnosticism mirrored in our Epistle. But it is also improbable that we have Gnosticism even in arudimentary form. We are certain of the Jewish nature of the teaching, and if it can be explained from Judaism alone, we have no warrant for calling in other sources. “ Philosophy” was a term used by Philo and Josephus for purely Jewish theology or sects; and in a Gentile community the common Greek term would naturally be employed, whatever the character of the system might be. Hort suggests that the term is used in a sense akin to the later use to denote the ascetic life, but this is uncertain. The stress on “wisdom” and “ knowledge” may be paralleled from the Corinthian Church, where there was certainly no Gnosticism. Intellectual exclusiveness was no monopoly of the Gnostics; the Pharisees, with their contempt for the people of the land, accursed through their ignorance of the Law, were conspicuous examples of it; and it is a failing common enough in certain types of character. The angelolatry, as we have seen already, is perfectly explicable from the Judaism of Paul’s time. The prohibition of drinks, while it goes beyond the Law, is an extension of it, for which we find a parallel