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OUTI LEPPÄ, The Making ofColossians: A Study on the Formation and Purpose of a Deutero-Pauline Letter (Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 86; Helsinki; Finnish Exegetical Society; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). Pp. 288. Paper N.P.
This revision of a University of Helsinki dissertation (written in 2000 under H. Räisä;nen) argues that the author of Colossians knew and drew on all of the undisputed Pauline letters. Furthermore, although Philemon serves as the most basic frame of Colossians, other letters dominate in other parts of Colossians, for example, Galatians in the more polemical parts.
Leppa begins by carefully setting out her methodology; she distinguishes among three types of parallels that point with varying degrees of certainty to familiarity with another text: texts that employ a similar style, those that indicate possible literary dependence, and those that evidence probable literary dependence. To claim probable literary dependence, L. requires that the dependent passage contain more than three similar (thus she includes cognates) words within the space of five lines. Additionally, the appearance of a rare word or of two words that normally do not appear together may indicate probable dependence. L. claims possible dependence if three similar words (or two rare words) appear within five lines.
Leppä first uses her method on...