Section 99
41A. D. Nock, Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background (New York, 1964), p. 98, n. 4: “In the στοιχεῖα Jewish and planetary ideas meet.” He points out an analogy (but not an identity) between bondage to the στοιϰεῖα, against which the Galatian and Colossian churches are warned, and bondage to the planetary gods (i.e., to fate), from which, according to the first Poimandres tractate, human beings can escape by knowing the truth; in so escaping the soul leaves the body and passes upward through the celestial spheres (C.H. 1.15, 19-26). (This ascension, indeed, has probably more in common with the Colossian heresy than with the way of release presented by Paul.) Cf. also G. Bornkamm, “The Heresy of Colossians” (1948), E.T. in Conflict at Colossae, ed. Francis and Meeks, p. 139, n. 9 (among other things, he draws attention to the parallelism between the στοιχεῖα and the seven Avestan Amesha Spentas, a parallelism established by R. Reitzenstein and H. H. Schaeder and reflected in the Sogdian translation of στοιχεῖα in Gal. 4:3 by amahraspands, a term used in Manichaeism to denote the elements).
42Cf. the reference to angel worship in v. 18 below (p. 118-20 with nn. 116-27). Possibly the Colossian heresy contained features in common with the teaching of Cerinthus, according to whom, if we may believe Epiphanius (Pan. 28), not only the law but also the prophets were inspired by angelic beings, the angelic giver of the law being one of the angels who made the world (ϰóσμος).