04_Biblica_Collins_Layout 1 01/04/14 11:47 Pagina 67 67 COLOSSIANS 1,17 “HOLD TOGETHER”: A CO-OPTED TERM is the saying in 1.18, but with a synonym, “Upon three things the world stands [Heb. qayyam]: upon truth, and upon justice, and upon peace”. This is probably why the Syriac of Col 1,17 uses qā’em, and Delitzsch’s Hebrew New Testament uses qayyam 7. 2. Background in Second Temple Judaism The Second Temple Jews who addressed cultured Hellenistic society developed these ideas, incipiently present in the Hebrew Bible, and made them more “philosophical”. A good example is the Alexandrian Jewish author Aristobulus (2nd c. B.C.E.), who uses the verb sune,cw (frag. 4, §4) 8: Now since Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato investigated everything thoroughly, they seem to me to have followed him [Moses] in saying that they hear God’s voice by reflecting on the cosmic order as some- thing carefully made by God (avkribw/j u`po. qeou/ gegonui/an) and permanently held together by him (sunecome,nhn avdialei,ptwj). He goes on to say, “For, once God arranged all things [in the creation], he thus ‘holds them together’ [auvta. sune,cei] and pre- sides over their movements” (frag. 5, §12) 9. Some have supposed this use of sune,cw to be a feature of Stoicism 10. As we will see, the terms are not specifically Stoic. Aristobulus is valuable to us for at least two reasons. The first is that he is an example of a philosophically aware Second Temple Jew, who aimed to commend and defend the Hebrew traditions to a sophisticated Hellenistic culture. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel, 9.6 [410d]) calls Aristobulus a “peripatetic”, though it is 7 Thus A. L. WILLIAMS, Colossians and Philemon (CGTSC; Cambridge 1907) 48, suggests that the Aramaic equivalent for sune,sthken would be ’itqayyam. 8 Translation adapted from C. R. HOLLADAY, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors: Volume 3, Aristobulus (Chico, CA 1983) 162-163. The source is Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 13.12 (cf. 13.13, which is al- most identical, quoting Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 5.14). 9 HOLLADAY, Aristobulus, 184-185, 229 n. 139. 10 M. HEINZE, Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen Philosophie (Olden- burg 1872) 187; J. WEISS, Earliest Christianity. A History of the Period A.D. 30–150, (F.C. GRANT, trans.) (New York 1959 [1937]) II, 465, 481.