Loading...Here is an annotated list of books on Colossians, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles (that is, the letters that are assigned a “secondary” standing in the New Testament collection of Paul’s letters because scholars doubt they were actually composed by Paul himself) with a couple of commentaries specifically on Colossians. One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on.
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Hi Dr. Ehrman,
John Calvin supposedly wrote an essay justifying the murder of Michael Servetus. Do you know where I could find a copy?
I’m afraid I don’t.
Dear Dr Ehrman-If I may ask, from your academic perspective, what is the likelihood of Jesus referring to God as ‘Abba, Father’? And what indeed would such a statement mean?
I think it’s reasonably likely. Abba was the ARamaic term of affection for God, something like “Daddy,” and it denotes aparticularly intimate relationship. Given other things Jesus says about himself, it seems reasonable he may have used the term.
Do you personally find it plausible that Mark and Barnabas were actually cousins, as Colossians claims? I mean, what reason would there be to make that up? Even if Paul didn’t write Colossians, wouldn’t people at the time have known whether that relationship was true? And if it weren’t, wouldn’t it have been easy for early readers to dismiss the letter as a forgery based on that detail?
IT’s possible, but I don’t think there’s any compelling reeason to think so. And no, early readers would not have known either. Colossians, if forged, would have been written long after they were dead and read by people who knew neither one.