Section 120
143Gk. ἀπὸ τѽν στοɩχείων τοῡ ϰόσμου, “out from under the elements of the world” (J. A. T. Robinson, The Body, p. 43).
144Gk. ταπεɩνοφϱοσύνη (as in v. 18). F G with some Old Latin witnesses add τού νοός (“of the mind”).
145ϰαί is omitted by P46 B 1739 and a few other witnesses.
146Gk. οὐϰ ἐν τɩμῇ τɩνɩ πϱὸς πλησμονὴν τῆς σαϱϰóς. The difficulty of translating this phrase has given rise to attempts at emendation. The text of v. 23 has been described as “hopelessly corrupt” (W. Carr, Angels and Principalities, p. 81); indeed, J. Moffatt speaks of “the corrupt state of the text” of vv. 17-23 (ILNT, p. 156). The difficulty may in part be due to the quotation of technical terms: according to G. Bornkamm, “in Col. 2:23 five key words of the Colossian heresy occur”; he adds that in the last phrase of the verse Paul’s irony has changed a concept of the heretics into its opposite (“The Heresy of Colossians,” p. 134). See pp. 128-29, n. 167.
147The style of argument in v. 20 is similar to that of Paul’s remonstrance with Peter in Gal. 2:14.
148It is amazing that some commentators, both in antiquity and more recently, have taken the prohibitions of v. 21 to be imposed by Paul himself. So Hilary, Ambrose, and Pelagius; Jerome and Augustine, on the other hand, grasped the true sense. These prohibitions are not the negative commandments of the Decalogue, nor yet their amplification in the oral law of rabbinical tradition, but the special restrictions laid down in the ascetic philosophy which is here opposed.