WHAT DO YOU do when you read your Bible? How do you read it?

Let’s say, for example, that you’re following a plan to go through the entire Bible in a year. Every day, you have a reading from the Old Testament, and one from the New. Step by step, you work your way from Genesis to Malachi, and from Matthew to the book of Revelation. The Psalms and Proverbs are spread throughout the year, so there’s a daily reading from each of these books as well.

But right from the beginning, on New Year’s Day, you notice how different the readings are. The creation story at the beginning of Genesis, for example, is quite a different animal from Psalm 1. The opening of the book of Proverbs is nothing like the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew. And the Bible as a whole is filled with such diversity from cover to cover. There are historical narratives and imaginative parables; prophecy and divine oracles; poetry and song; wisdom sayings, proclamation, and apocalyptic visions.

And of course, where the New Testament is concerned, letters. Twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are epistles, and thirteen of the twenty-one are traditionally attributed to Paul.

Do we read all these different kinds of writing the same way?

There can be great benefit in a Bible reading plan. Many Christians — even some who hold ministry positions in a local church! — have never read the entire Bible. If nothing else, following such a plan can surprise them in ways that increase their respect for and familiarity with God’s word overall. And never underestimate what God can and will do through even the briefest of readings when a person approaches Scripture with an open mind and a teachable spirit.

But often we read too passively. Our eyes scan the words, we get whatever we get from them, and we check the day’s Bible reading off our list of things to do. We forget what we read yesterday, and therefore lose the context of what we’re reading today. And any curiosity we have about the different kinds of texts in Scripture may be met with a shrug of the shoulders and the thought that maybe, one day, we’ll look into it, if we have the time.

So before we begin our study of the book of Colossians, let’s take a little time to consider what kind of a text we’re reading.

THE SO-CALLED “BOOK” of Colossians isn’t really a book but a letter, and needs to be read as such. Letters are communications written by one or more people to one or more recipients, for some specific purpose. The purpose can be simple and relatively informal, as when friends check in to catch up on each other’s lives. Or the purpose can be more formal, as when I write letters of recommendation for my students.

These are small details, obvious to the person writing the letter. But when we come to the New Testament epistles, we’re centuries removed from the time the letters were written — and we’re reading someone else’s mail. That’s not to say, of course, that just because the letters were written for someone else, there’s nothing in them for us. But we need to understand what the original sender was trying to say to the recipient, and why, before we can understand what the letter might mean for us.

So, let’s begin with the “5 Ws”: who, what, when, where, and why. If you ever took a journalism or English composition class, your teacher may have told you that clear writing must address all five. Some also argue that we can’t do a thorough job of solving a problem unless we ask all five questions of the problem situation. In this post, I’ll address the who; in the next, the when and where of the letter; then finally the what and why.

AS I MENTIONED earlier, thirteen of the twenty-one epistles in the New Testament are traditionally attributed to the apostle Paul. I say “traditionally” because New Testament scholars, as a group, don’t believe that Paul actually wrote all of them.

That’s not as scandalous as it might sound at first. We live in a world in which we’re accustomed to thinking of written works as intellectual property protected by copyright. But that’s neither Paul’s world nor the best way to think about letters. To argue that a particular letter didn’t come directly and exclusively from Paul’s hand is not necessarily to say that it’s a forgery.

For example, sometimes Paul used secretaries, or what are known as amanuenses, to help write his letters. Imagine, for example, a busy CEO instructing a secretary to write a letter that says this, and this, and this (nowadays, the executive would probably just have AI do it). If the job is done responsibly, that letter can still bear the CEO’s authority. Even if the executive dictates the letter directly, the secretary might still amend the wording somewhat, correcting for grammar, or possibly rewording a sentence or two to say what the secretary knows the CEO intended to say.

Of the thirteen letters, then, scholars almost universally agree that Paul directly wrote seven of them: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians (but not 2 Thessalonians) and Philemon. Collectively, these are known as the “undisputed” letters of Paul. Questions have been raised about the other six, including the letter written to the house churches in the city of Colossae, one of which met in Philemon’s home (see Philem 2).

While the similarities between the thirteen letters generally greatly outweigh the differences, some find the differences striking enough to question whether the same person could have written them. These can be differences of style and vocabulary, for example, or even of theology.

But many of these differences can be accounted for reasonably well by allowing, first, that Paul may not have written the letters completely by himself (Timothy may have had a hand in writing Colossians); second, that Paul has to vary his vocabulary and emphases depending on what he needs to address in each church; and third, that Paul’s theology developed somewhat over time, though never in a way that changed the fundamentals.

In short, there are more reasons than not to believe that Paul wrote Colossians, and that’s the assumption I’ll make here. That’s the answer to who wrote the letter. But when and where was it written? Let’s take a look at that next.