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Introduction to Bible Month
Introduction to Colossians
Professor James D. G. Dunn
What is ‘Bible Month’?
Bible Month invites churches and groups
to engage deeply with Scripture through
focusing on a single biblical book over a
calendar month. Bible Month can involve
preachers, small group leaders, and children
and youth workers, who can all take part
in running Bible Month within the church.
The Bible Month resources are designed to
work within both group settings – such as
a church, a group of churches or a home
group – and to be useful for individual study.
Focusing on a single biblical book allows
participants to gain a greater sense of the
importance of context, both literary and
historical. It encourages readers to explore
how a book develops, and to identify links
between different passages. As well as
enjoying favourite passages within one
book, Bible Month encourages readers to
engage with the whole of it.
With roots in the Methodist Church, Bible
Month is now run as a partnership with the
Leaders of Worship and Preachers’ Trust
(LWPT). Further information and resources
on Bible Month are available at
www.preachweb.org/biblemonth.
Resourcing Bible Month
In 2019, Bible Month focuses on Colossians,
a letter that presents a powerful vision of
Jesus and his significance. The primary
resource for the Bible Month planning
group is this Bible Month magazine which
contains three key sections.
The first section is the Bible Notes, which
offer a basic commentary on Colossians
and are designed to help preachers engage
with the book and prepare sermons on
it. The biblical scholar Emeritus Profes-
sor James D. G. Dunn has written the
Bible Notes for 2019. Professor Dunn has
published prolifically on the apostle Paul
including writing the books ‘The Theology of
Paul the Apostle’ and ‘The Acts of the
Apostles’. He is also a Methodist local
preacher.
At the end of each week’s Bible Notes
is the second section, the Small Group
Studies. These showcase different ways to
engage with Colossians, and can be used
in a small group gathering that follows or
precedes the Sunday sermon. Rather than
providing a detailed outline, these provide
ideas that can be incorporated within a small
group.
The third section is a variety of ideas for
helping children and youth engage with
Colossians, including mixed-age gatherings.
These ideas can be adapted for use in
Sunday schools, youth groups and Sunday
services.
The final pages of the magazine also
include gospel readings for Bible Month,
further resources and suggested ways to
follow up Bible Month within your church.
Please note that you can adapt and use
the material in whatever way works best!
The aim of Bible Month is to encourage
and enable people to enjoy one biblical
book in much greater depth. This resource
is intended as a springboard for deeper
understanding of Scripture.
Training events for Bible Months are
regularly held across the country, and you
can see a list of events – as well as a guide
for running your own event –
at www.preachweb.org/biblemonth.
you as a church or group of churches;
for example Methodists will need to
make sure that they plan ahead sufficiently
so that Bible Month can appear in the
Circuit Preaching Plan)
• check the Bible Month website
(www.preachweb.org/biblemonth) for
further resources and ideas for running
Bible Month, and also to sign up for
training events in your region
• form a Bible Month Planning Group (to
liaise with the leadership of the church
to identify preachers, small group leaders,
and children and youth leaders who can
take the lead on Bible Month in their
areas of the church)
• run Bible Month!
• following Bible Month, meet together as
a planning group to discuss what went
well and what could be improved.
Explore ways you could follow up Bible
Month.
While we suggest engaging the whole
church in Bible Month, feel free to adapt
Bible Month in whatever way works best in
your context.
Groups and individuals wishing to engage
in Bible Month can register at
www.preachweb.org/biblemonth to
receive regular updates and information to
resource their Bible Month.
• ensure that the leadership of your church
and/or circuit is happy to run Bible Month
• decide on the date for Bible Month
(while many churches have run Bible
Month in June, you can choose any
month within the year that will work for
It is quite hard to get a clear picture of
Christianity’s beginnings in Colossae, not
least because Colossae is mentioned only
once in the NT – in Col. 1:2. So we do not
know if Paul himself ever visited Colossae,
though in his journeys through the southern
part of Asia (western Turkey) recorded in Acts
18:23 and 19:1 he must have been not very
far away – Colossae lying on or close to one
of the main east-west routes through the
region, through the Lycus valley.
Alternatively, it is easy to imagine that during
his two years in Ephesus (Acts 19:10) he
himself or mission teams from Ephesus
spread the gospel further inland. This is one
of the likely explanations of the growth of
the churches written to in Rev. 2-3, though
(somewhat surprisingly?) the church in
Colossae is not mentioned in Rev. 2-3.
The church in Colossae was founded
probably in the second half of the 50s CE
and probably by Epaphras (Col. 1:6-7), who
was himself a native of Colossae (4:12). He
could have been converted by Paul during
the latter’s time in Ephesus. The parallels
between Col. 4:9-14 and Philemon 23-24
strongly suggest that Philemon also lived
in Colossae, and that the two letters were
written about the same time.
We know that Colossae was almost
destroyed by an earthquake in 60 or 61. And
the lack of any reference to the earthquake
strongly suggests a letter written prior to
that. Since the letter was written from prison
or house arrest (4:10) the suggestion that
the letter was written early in the period of
Paul’s house arrest in Rome (60-62) makes
best sense.
Planning Bible Month
The following gives a series of suggested
steps for running Bible Month:
The Church at Colossae
For further information about the Bible
Month, visit www.preachweb.org/
biblemonth.
Paul and the Colossians
The letter introduces itself as written by
Paul (1:1). The style, however, seems to be
rather different from that of the undisputed
Pauline letters. That may not be a decisive
consideration since Paul may well have used
an amanuensis, that is, someone to write at
his dictation. Timothy appears as a co-author
(1:1), as in some of Paul’s other letters (e.g. 2
Corinthians, Philippians and Philemon), but
it is certainly possible to envisage Paul the
prisoner (4:10) passing more responsibility to
Timothy in this case. The parting greeting in
4:18 ‘in my own hand’ may well confirm the
suggestion.
This may well help to explain some of the
distinctive features of the letter – notably the
Christology (what Paul teaches about Christ)
(1:15-20), the ‘realized eschatology’ (the idea
the future hope expected at the end of history
is now a reality.) of 2:11-12 and 3:1, and the
‘household rules’ of 3:18-4:1 – though we
can hardly doubt that Paul continued to
develop his own understanding and
expression of the gospel throughout his
ministry.
Colossians gives one of the clearest indi-
cations of a church composed of Jews and
Gentiles. From various historical references
we know that there were substantial Jewish
communities in the Lycus valley. And several
passages in Colossians strongly suggest that
the recipients were predominantly Gentiles
who – through the gospel – had been given
to share in privileges previously only known
to Jews, the people of Israel – 1:12, 27; 2:13;
3:11; 4:11.
Why Colossians?
Why should Paul write or authorize a letter
to a fairly minor church which he had never
visited? The implication of 1.7-8 is that news
had come from Epaphras which occasioned
some anxiety. If Onesimus (4:9) was the
slave of Philemon (Phlm. 10-16), then he too
could have brought news from Colossae. The
references to Tychicus and Mark (Col. 4:7-10)
also suggest a concern to maintain communi-
cation with the Colossian believers. And the
warnings in 2:8-23 certainly signal an anxiety
for their spiritual wellbeing. So what was the
problem or danger envisaged? The implica-
tion of 2:8-23 is that the practitioners of an
older established ‘philosophy’ had contrasted
the ‘captivating’ power of their own beliefs
and practice with those of the Colossian
believers (2:8), and had ‘passed (negative)
judgment’ on the latter’s rituals and festivals
(2:16). They had acted as though they them-
selves were umpires with the authority (of
ancient tradition) to ‘disqualify’ the Christian
belief and practice (2:18) as ineffectual and
unfit for purpose.
What was this ‘philosophy’? The emphasis on
‘wisdom’ (1:9, 28; 2:3, 23), ‘insight’ (1:9; 2:2),
and ‘knowledge’ (1:9-10; 2:2-3) suggests
a form of Gnosticism which emphasized
the importance of gnosis (‘knowledge’). The
reference to ‘the elements of the universe’
and the cosmic powers (2:8, 15) likewise
suggest a belief that only by establishing a
right relationship with such powers could
one hope to participate in the divine ‘fullness’
(2:9-10) – language typical of later Gnostic
systems which were Christianity’s principal
challengers in the first few centuries.
There was probably a Jewish element in
the mix. Jewish thinkers did not hesitate to
commend Judaism as a ‘philosophy’. And talk
of ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ was widespread
in Second Temple Judaism as well. The some-
what puzzling ‘worship of angels’ (2:18) can
be readily understood as worship offered by
angels, rather than worship offered to angels,
which would fit well with one of the great
traditions of Jewish visionary apocalypses, as
also in the Revelation of John. The repeated
reference to circumcision (2:11, 13; 3:11;
4:11) and the reference to ‘matters of food
and drink’, ‘festivals, new moons and sab-
baths’ (2:16) also suggest that the challenge
to the recently established Christian church
in Colossae came more from local Jewish
synagogues.
So Colossians gives us a unique insight into
the religious mix of Asia Minor in the second
half of the first century. And also into some
of the challenges which the first Christian
churches experienced as they sought to
establish themselves in such contexts.
Particularly striking is the theological vision of
Christ and of his significance – active in
creation (1:15-20), the fullness of deity
indwelling him (2:9), the scope of his
accomplishments on the cross (2:11-15),
dying and living with Christ (3:1-10).
Whether the church in Colossae did survive
may be uncertain, but the letter they
presumably circulated to other churches is a
legacy from which we still benefit.