Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Colossians 1:24-2:5, Sufferings for the body, and a steward of the mystery
Paul rejoices to suffer for the church, fills up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions, calls himself the servant entrusted with God's long hidden mystery, and tells churches he has never met how hard he struggles for them.
Colossians 1:24-2:5, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul says he is glad to suffer for the church, and he links his sufferings, in a much discussed phrase, with Christ's own sufferings for his body. God gave him the job of making known a secret hidden for ages, that Christ lives among the Gentiles and gives them hope of glory. He works hard for believers in Colossae and Laodicea he has never met, so that no one talks them out of what they have, and though absent he is with them in spirit.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/present-age-and-age-to-come\/","n":"This age and the age to come","s":"Jews divided history into the present age, under the rule of evil nations, and the age to come, when God would rule unchallenged. The sufferings expected before the change were called birth pangs.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/slavery\/","n":"Slavery and slave managers","s":"Slaves were everywhere in the Roman world, from field hands to stewards who ran whole estates and handled their master's money. A master away and slaves left in charge was a familiar story.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/mystery-cults\/","n":"The mystery cults","s":"Cults that a person entered by a secret initiation, often held at night. Some promised freedom from Fate, some had a name for drunken or immoral rites, and Rome distrusted them as foreign.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/athletes-and-games\/","n":"The games and the victor's wreath","s":"Greek cities held great athletic festivals, and Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games every two years, second only to the Olympics. Athletes trained for months under oath for a wreath of leaves that soon withered.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-and-letter-carriers\/","n":"Letters, scribes and carriers","s":"Letters were usually dictated to scribes, carried by trusted travelers because there was no public post, and read aloud to the people they were sent to.","r":""}
What is lacking in Christ's afflictions is disputed. Many Jewish traditions held that a set measure of suffering, sometimes called the Messiah's birth pangs, had to come before the end, and many scholars read Paul as taking on a share of it, as Wright and Bird and Wright's commentary do; Keener and his notes add that Paul plainly thinks Christ's own suffering enough for redemption. The ESV Study Bible reads it as the future suffering of all who suffer for the gospel, and the CSB Study Bible as Paul's sufferings spreading the message. The Dead Sea Scrolls speak of mysteries only the enlightened understand, and a mystery openly announced would answer anyone claiming private revelation (Keener and his notes); the cultural backgrounds article on mystery cults adds that "Converts to Christianity were not sworn to keep its tenets or practices a secret", and Arnold reads 2:2-3 as saying no initiation is needed for further wisdom. Absent in body, present in spirit was letter language for affection (Keener and his notes), and Wright thinks the good order of 2:5 probably sounded like soldiers in formation.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Colossians 1:24-2:5, and on Colossians 1:24, 1:25, 1:26, 1:29 and 2:5
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Colossians 1:24, 1:25, 1:26 and 2:5
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Mystery Cults (Colossians 3)
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Colossians 1:24
- CSB Study Bible, note on Colossians 1:24
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 20, The Argument of Colossians
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, comment on Colossians 1:24-29 and 2:1-7
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 10, Christ Alone Is Sufficient
