Colossians: An Introduction and Study Guide: Authorship, Rhetoric, and Code

Description

This guide introduces readers to key issues in the interpretation and reception of Colossians. Anderson first explores the issue of Pauline authorship. She challenges readers to reflect on why the question of authorship has dominated scholarship as well as why and how interpreters create "stories" about the letter. Second, Anderson examines rhetoric and context. She asks readers to consider how the letter constructs and seeks to persuade its addressees past and present. She surveys several pictures of the first audience and "opponents." Finally, Anderson delves into the functions of the Colossian household code, its reception, and the ethics of interpretation.

Janice Capel Anderson is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

This book is a graduate student's dream, a professor's treasure, and an inquiring lay person's priceless guide for study and reflection. By any measure this is the best up-to-date summary of Colossians scholarship available. It is comprehensive, clear, stylistically graceful, balanced, expansive, suggestive and provocative. The extensive bibliography that is appended is alone worth the price of the book. Five stars. * Calvin J. Roetzel, University of Minnesota, USA * Significant breakthroughs in research about Colossae and in the interpretation of the Letter to the Colossians have been made in the last three decades. Janice Capel Anderson has mastered the array of new materials to distill an insightful, clear and beguiling introduction to the New Testament letter. Students and pastors will find here the most up-to-date literary, rhetorical, feminist and historical foundations for an appreciation of this intriguing writing. * Alan Cadwallader, Charles Sturt University, Australia *