04_Biblica_Collins_Layout 1 01/04/14 11:47 Pagina 65 65 COLOSSIANS 1,17 “HOLD TOGETHER”: A CO-OPTED TERM tic image of a political population as a body. As Margaret Mitchell concluded, “in 1 Cor 12 Paul is extending a common political metaphor to the Corinthian situation, Christianizing it by transfer- ence to ‘the body of Christ’ and the same spirit” 2. In fact, we can probably identify the ultimate source of the specific form that Paul used in that passage: Paul’s use of the foot, hand, ear, and eye surely evokes Aristotle’s use of the eye, hand, and foot (same Greek terms) to show that each member of a political body has its own function (Nicomachean Ethics, 1.7.11) 3. We may call this pattern of usage “co-opting”: a concept or lin- guistic expression may originate in a “pagan” culture, but be well suited for a “cleansed” appropriation by a biblical writer. The ex- pression comes to acquire associations with the conceptual frame- work of the Bible, though perhaps some of its previous associations may remain (for good or ill). I proceed as follows. First, I explore the likely background for the Jewish usage of these terms, and show how the usage continues among the Greek-speaking Christians. Second, I offer a lexical por- trait of the verbs, with their semantic relationships. Third, I consider the context of this expression in Colossians in its immediate setting as part of a “liturgical composition” (Col 1,15-20). I. Background As already mentioned, there is no passage in the Hebrew Bible that speaks of “all things holding together” by God’s action in so many words — although the thought is surely at home there. 2 M.M. MITCHELL, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (Louisville, KY 1991) 157-164, with thorough documentation. 3 Further, in that passage Aristotle uses Greek pra/xij for the separate functions of the different parts, just as Paul does in Rom 12,4. Thus M. LEE, Paul, the Stoics, and the Body of Christ (Cambridge 2006) 200, is probably not correct in saying, “Paul is influenced by Stoicism in the way in which he conceives of the Corinthians as a unified body”. The process is not conceptual influence, but rather borrowing a useful image; and the image is not specifi- cally Stoic.