Paul’s epistle to the Colossians is renowned for its high Christology, but how does this content fit into the broader discourse of the epistle? By paying attention to strategies of development and segmentation, Kristopher Lyle provides an explanation of how Paul’s audience would have understood his message as it unfolded. Similarly, at lower levels Lyle explains how Paul uses various cohesive devices and word order changes to build a shared mental representation and, ultimately, a coherent discourse.
The Lexham Discourse Commentary series guides readers through the Greek text, integrating insights from the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament and Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. Each volume in the series shows how various discourse devices contribute to the overall flow and structure of the New Testament books by providing a unifying analysis of each text.
Dr. Steve Runge’s approach complements traditional approaches by helping readers understand the exegetical implications of the writer’s choices. The Lexham Discourse Commentaries offer sustained analysis on the text, but do not engage issues like background, setting, and audience that preoccupy traditional commentaries. Instead, Runge applies his years of research in discourse grammar to editing this running exegesis of the Greek. If you have been disappointed by the lack of discussion about structure, discourse flow, and rhetorical strategies in modern commentaries, then the Lexham Discourse Commentaries are for you.
Learn more about the other titles in this series.
“Paul invokes the metaphor THE HEAD IS CONTROL. In accordance with our folk understanding of the head controlling the body, the correlation between the literal head with those who are in positions of control is established as a metaphor so deeply it can be difficult to detect. These types of metaphors are taken for granted and processed with little effort. Even so, Paul’s choice in wording over another expression represents his intention to characterize the control (or authority or leadership) of Christ in a particular light. In the immediate context, perhaps the reason Paul chose this metaphor was to nix any notion that there should (or even could) be multiple authoritative figures in their lives—be they elemental spirits or human traditions. After all, there is only one head per body.” (Colossians 2:10)
“A discourse has to start somewhere, and statements like these establish a context within which further information can be added. Subsequent participants or topics can then be readily anchored to this initial one as the discourse develops. Writers may also help us prioritize the significance of ideas by adding devices that attract our attention to them; generally, the more attention-getting devices that are clustered together, the more significance we should assign.” (source)
“As an adjective, ἁγίοις frames the Colossians in terms of a manner of activity they routinely perform” (Colossians 1:2)
“the importance of the prepositional phrase ἐν Χριστῷ (in Christ) cannot be overstated enough” (Colossians 1:2)
“we reserve the term ‘topic’ to refer to what a proposition is about.” (source)