Colossians setting & dates

The setting

The letter is addressed to the church in Colossae, a small and declining city in the Lycus River valley in the interior of the Roman province of Asia (western Turkey), about a hundred miles east of Ephesus. Colossae lay close to two more prominent neighbors, Laodicea and Hierapolis, which Paul also mentions, and the three cities shared the same region and, apparently, the same threats of false teaching. Unlike Ephesus, Colossae was not a place Paul had personally evangelized; the church there had been founded by Epaphras, a native of the city and one of Paul’s coworkers, who had carried the gospel to his own people and later brought Paul word of both their faith and their danger.

Paul wrote the letter, however, from prison far to the west (most likely in Rome, the imperial capital) around AD 62. It was one of three letters sent together at that time: Colossians and Ephesians (a likely circular letter to the region) and the personal note to Philemon, all carried by Tychicus, who traveled in company with the runaway slave Onesimus, himself a Colossian being sent home. The geography of Colossians thus links a small, obscure city in the Asian hill country with the apostle in chains at the center of the empire, and it reminds us that the supremacy of Christ proclaimed here is not a merely local truth but the cosmic reality that “in him all things hold together,” from the smallest congregation to the farthest reaches of creation.

Where the letter went

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Timeline

• c. AD 52-55 - Paul ministers in Ephesus; the gospel spreads through the province of Asia, and Epaphras founds the church at Colossae.
• c. AD 60-62 - Paul is imprisoned in Rome; Epaphras brings news of the Colossians’ faith and of the false teaching.
• c. AD 62 - Paul writes Colossians (with Ephesians and Philemon), carried by Tychicus and Onesimus.
• c. AD 60s - The letter is also to be read in Laodicea, sharing its message across the Lycus valley churches.