The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon

This is a theological commentary on the Greek text; on the foundation of linguistic detail is based a doctrinal exposition. The first section of the Introduction is on the religious ideas of the epistles, and frequent allusion is made throughout the commentary to works on New Testament theology. There are special notes on many of the important theological terms such as 'knowledge', 'mystery', pleroma, as well as on linguistic points, such as the use of the reflexive pronoun. But attention is devoted also to critical and introductory matters, and this is, it is believed, the first commentary on Colossians and Philemon to discuss in some detail the theories of Professors E. J. Goodspeed and J. Knox. The commentary is documented with references to works in English, French and German, for those who wish to follow up the study in greater detail. But the aim has been to make the exposition as far as possible self-contained and intelligible to a reader with no other books before him than the New Testament in Greek and the Old Testament in English.