128 Gk. ἐμβατεύων.
125W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 (London, 51897), p. 477.
126The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 490. Khonai (χѽναɩ) is the Greek name of the place called Honaz by the Turks, three miles south of the site of Colossae. Such legends, involving a Christian saint or angel, often go back to pagan times, the saint or angel having displaced an earlier divinity or genius loci.
127It is noteworthy that Colossians concerns itself with the angels’ relation to Christ more than any other Pauline letter does. Cf. Heb. 1:4-14; 2:2, 5, 9, 16, and T. W. Manson’s suggestion that Hebrews deals with a rather later development of the same situation as is treated in Colossians (Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester, 1962), pp. 242-58. (Cf. p. 185, n. 73.)
128Gk. ἐμβατεύων.
129Cf. 2 Macc. 2:30, “It is the duty of the original historian to explore the ground (ἐμβατεύεɩν).”
130Cf. p. 117, n. 112. This reading and interpretation were defended by F. Field, Notes on Translation, pp. 197-98, and J. B. McClellan, “Colossians 11.18,” pp. 393-98. It is easier to explain the editorial insertion of the negative (where ἐμβατεύων was not properly understood) than its deletion. Several scholars have been attracted by the simple device (first propounded by Alexander More and Étienne de Courcelles) of detaching ϰεν from ἑώϱαϰεν and making it a prefix to ἐμβατεύων, so that the phrase reads ἃ ἑώϱα (imperfect instead of perfect) ϰε-νεμβατεύων (“talking emptily of what he saw”). J. B. Lightfoot carried the process of emendation a little farther, suggesting as the original text ἐώϱα (or αίώϱᾳ) ϰενεμβατεύων, “treading the void while suspended in air” (i.e., “indulging airily in vain speculations”). E. Percy (Die Probleme, pp. 173-74) is inclined to follow Lightfoot. A similar emendation to Lightfoot’s, ἀέϱα ϰενεμβατεύων, “emptily treading on air” (i.e., “treading on empty air”) was suggested by C. Taylor, “A Conjectural Emendation of Colossians II. 18,” Journal of Philology 7 (1877), 130-33. “Taylor’s brilliant conjecture,” as H. N. Bate calls it (Guide to Epistles of Paul, p. 142, n. 1), was approved by F. J. A. Hort (Notes on Select Readings [Cambridge and London, 1882], p. 127), but J. W. Burgon satirized it as something “which (if it means anything at all) may as well mean ‘proceeding on an airy foundation to offer an empty conjecture’” (The Revision Revised [London, 1883], p. 356). “That was witty, but not very wise,” said J. R. Harris, who found Taylor’s “charming simplification” a “very simple and convincing solution” (Sidelights on New Testament Research [London, 1908], p. 200). Harris later suggested that Paul had Aristophanes’ Clouds in his mind, more particularly line 225, where Socrates (pictured by the poet as an ascetic) says ἀεϱοβατѽ ϰαὶ πεϱɩφϱονѽ τòν ἣλɩον, “I tread on air and overlook the sun” (“St. Paul and Aristophanes,” ExT 34 [1922-23], 151-56). This led him on to imagine that πεϱɩύϱοσúνη might have been the original reading in this verse and v. 23 (see p. 118, n. 115), rather than ταπεɩνοφϱοσύνη of all our texts. All emendations based on the conjecture xενφμβατεύων have to surmount the obstacle that this word is unknown, although xενεμβατέω is quite classical in the sense “indulge in empty speculation” (it is for this word that Plutarch, Lucian, etc. should have been cited in BAG, s.v.ϰενεμβατεύω, not for ϰενεμβατεύω). While Lightfoot defends xενεμβατεύω as an “unobjectionable” formation, Field (loc. cit.) dismisses it as a ghost-word, a vox nulla,” the inviolable laws regulating this class of compound verbs stamping ϰενεμβατεῖν as the only legitimate, as it is the only existing, form.”