Who Wrote Colossians? (The Answer May Surprise You!)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

The Epistle to the Colossians occupies an important yet contested place within the Pauline corpus. Traditionally attributed to the apostle Paul and addressed to a Christian community in Asia Minor, the letter has long been read as an authoritative expression of Pauline theology and church practice. Modern critical scholarship, however, has raised sustained and substantial questions about this attribution. So who wrote Colossians?

In this article I’ll investigate the authorship of Colossians by focusing on two major lines of evidence: literary style and theological content. By situating Colossians within these scholarly discussions, we can clarify why most contemporary scholars question Pauline authorship and explore what can be said about the letter’s origin and purpose. Rather than diminishing the importance of Colossians, these questions illuminate how later generations of believers  interpreted, adapted, and transformed Paul’s legacy.

By the way, if you’re interested in Paul and early Christianity, check out Bart Ehrman’s online course “Paul and Jesus.”

Audience and Dating for Colossians

The Epistle to the Colossians begins with an opening greeting typical of ancient letters. These prescripts or salutations normally identified the letter’s author and the intended recipient or audience. Thus, in Colossians 1:1-2, we read

The author of this letter explicitly claims to be the apostle Paul writing to the Colossae church in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). However, for reasons that we’ll examine here, Pauline authorship of this letter has been highly disputed.

In terms of dating the composition of the letter, opinions have differed, although since the 19th century, scholarly views have usually placed the date later. For example, writing in the 1977 version of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, eminent New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger argued that the letter to the Colossians was indeed written by Paul in the 60s CE. If this is the case, it would be one of Paul’s last writings, as he is traditionally believed to have died in Rome around 64 CE. Other modern scholars, such as N.T. Wright, for example, also believe that Paul wrote Colossians (see his commentary Colossians and Philemon)

However, the general scholarly consensus says that Paul did not write Colossians. Instead, a majority of biblical scholars argue that it was written in Paul’s name after his death by one of his followers, sometime between 70 and 100 CE.

The reasons for doubting Paul’s authorship fall into two major categories, focusing on differences between the style and content in Colossians and the undisputed letters of Paul (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon). However, while a majority of scholars claim that Colossians is a forgery, I must acknowledge that its authorship remains technically disputed.

One way to approach the question of authorship is to analyze the written style of Colossians.

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The Style of Colossians

At the most basic level, the sentence lengths of Colossians differ from that of Paul’s undisputed letters. Paul tended to write in short, concise sentences like this:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these sentences, in English or Greek, but they are characteristically short and to-the-point. Typical sentences in Colossians, however, look more like this:

As you can see, the sentences in Colossians are more complex, with multiple clauses. Of course, we’re looking at these sentences in translation. In A Brief Introduction to the New Testament, Bart Ehrman notes that in the original Greek, the sentences are even longer; the English translators broke them up into shorter sentences for easier comprehension. Ehrman points out, for instance, that Colossians 1:3-8 in Greek is just one long sentence, while in English, it's five sentences. Linguistically, Colossians was almost certainly written by someone with a very different style from Paul’s.

Moreover, there are several more stylistic differences, although some of them are very technical. Based on an important study of Colossians done by Walter Bujard in 1973, Ehrman also points out that Paul’s uses conjunctions (words used to connect parts of a sentence like “that”, “as”, “but”) is far less often in Colossians than in the undisputed letters. For example, three of the undisputed letters, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians, use conjunctions more than twice as often as Colossians does. It’s a major stylistic difference.

Furthermore, the undisputed letters use the infinitive (the verb form which in English uses “to”: to go, to run, to read) more than three times as often as Colossians. Stylistically, all of this evidence makes it highly unlikely that Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians. Stylistic features like this are unlikely to change so dramatically, even over the course of years.

The Content of Colossians

While sophisticated linguistic analysis of the differences between Colossians and the undisputed letters raise scholarly questions about Pauline authorship, no special training is needed to see that the subject matter of Colossians undermines some of the typical theological views of Pauline letters.

One of these doctrinal differences has to do with time and salvation. J. Paul Sampley writes in the HarperCollins Study Bible that in Paul’s undisputed letters, Paul “scrupulously affirms that believers have died with Christ but have not yet been raised with him.” The resurrection is a future event, which is why Paul always uses the future tense to talk about it:

By contrast, Sampley notes that Colossians “asserts that believers already share Christ’s resurrection”:

Bart Ehrman notes that, for the author of Colossians, Christians

Another major difference comes with Colossians’ view of family dynamics. For instance, in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Peter Zaas writes that “in his authentic letters, Paul’s description of marital relationships is remarkably nonhierarchical.” For example, take a look at what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:1-4:

In Paul’s 1st-century world, this is an unusually egalitarian view of marriage. However, Colossians views marriage and the general household order differently, more in line with Roman family values, as it turns out:

As Jennifer Berenson writes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha,

Finally, the person who wrote the Book of Colossians has a very high Christology. That is, he emphasizes Christ’s divine nature, his pre-existence, and his superhuman attributes over his human nature:

In Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, Bart Ehrman points out that

There are other differences between Colossians and the authentic Pauline letters, but this evidence should suffice to show why the vast majority of biblical scholars do not believe that Colossians was written by Paul. So who did write it?

The unfortunate truth is that we will never know who wrote Colossians for certain. Ehrman proposes that the author was a member of one of Paul’s churches “who saw the apostle as an ultimate authority figure.” The author may have had access to Paul’s letters, which he used for a model to address problems in his particular church.

On the other hand, if the authorship is false, it is also possible that the church problems written about are false as well. Sampley argues that it was likely written “at a post-Pauline time when women’s roles [in the church] were diminished and when relationships within the household were once again accommodated to the wider culture.”

Conclusion

The Epistle to the Colossians is a letter written by someone claiming to be the apostle Paul, apparently to a Christian community in the city of Colossae. If, as most scholars believe, it was pseudonymous, this might explain the differences between this letter and the undisputed letters of Paul.

In terms of style, the author of Colossians writes in long, complicated sentences, much longer in Greek, in fact, than in English translations. In addition, close technical study of the author’s use of language shows that the frequency with which he applies certain linguistic features makes it seem highly implausible that it was written by Paul. While one’s writing style can change, of course, the consistency with which these features are found in Paul’s undisputed letters makes it seem improbable that his style would have changed so dramatically by the time Colossians was written.

However, it is the theological content that really brings Colossians’ differences to the fore. Unlike Paul, the author of Colossians writes that, in some spiritual sense, Christians’ resurrection has already happened, something Paul never says in his authentic letters. In addition, while Paul seems to advocate an egalitarian model of marriage, Colossians instructs its readers to conform to Roman norms of family hierarchy, with the father, or paterfamilias, in charge of everyone. This results in the wife behaving submissively toward him, and slaves obeying unquestioningly. Finally, the high Christology of Colossians goes far beyond any of Paul’s writings, sounding more like the prologue of the Gospel of John — “in the beginning was the Word” — than any of Paul’s descriptions of Christ.

While the letter’s authorship is still disputed, meaning we will never know for certain who wrote Colossians, most scholars today feel comfortable saying that it was written by someone other than Paul.