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In this comprehensive, sociorhetorical interpretation of Colossians, Roy R. Jeal explores the letter’s portrayal of the grand vision that extends from the realm of God before the creation of the cosmos to the new reality and new culture of the life of fullness in Christ. The commentary analyzes the pictures the text evokes in the human visual imagination, identifies the persuasive modes of discourse in the letter, and evaluates the range of textures that interweave to produce the dynamic rhetorical argument of Colossians. Demands to conform to “empty deceitful philosophy, human tradition, and the elements of the world” rather than to Christ are irrelevant for believers who have been transferred from darkness to the light of the Son of God’s kingdom. The rhetoric of the letter moves believers to ideologies of living in the body of Christ where orderly behavior guided by love contrasts with the chaotic, self-indulgent, divisive uncertainties of Mediterranean existence.

Roy R. Jeal is Professor Emeritus at Booth University College and a Research Associate at Vancouver School of Theology. He is the author of Exploring Philemon: Freedom, Brotherhood and Partnership in the New Society (2015), editor of Exploring Sublime Rhetoric in Biblical Literature (2024), and coeditor of The Art of Visual Exegesis: Rhetoric, Texts, Images (2017) and Welcoming the Nations: International Sociorhetorical Explorations (2020).