04_Biblica_Collins_Layout 1 01/04/14 11:47 Pagina 69 69 COLOSSIANS 1,17 “HOLD TOGETHER”: A CO-OPTED TERM ta. su,mpanta].) Philo here uses sune,cw; in the same context (§132), he uses intransitive suni,sthmi for a similar idea 13: Above the turban is the golden plate on which the graven shapes of four letters, indicating, as we are told, the name of the Self-Ex- istent (tou/ o;ntoj), are impressed, meaning that it is impossible for anything to hold together (susth/nai) without invocation of him; for his goodness and gracious power are the principle of harmony (a`rmoni,a) of all things. Josephus (late 1st c. C.E.), in his Antiquities 12.2.2 [12, 22]), rep- resents the Gentile Aristeus, “friend” (fi,loj) of the Hellenistic king Ptolemy Philadelphus, as explaining to the king that both “we” (Hellenistic Egyptians) and “they” (Jews) worship “the God who put all things together” (to.n a[panta susthsa,menon qeo,n). 3. Background in Hellenistic philosophers A good representative of the way that Hellenistic philosophy had come to speak of God’s relation to the world comes from the work once attributed to Aristotle, De Mundo (Peri. Ko,smou, On the Cos- mos). This author (now called “Pseudo-Aristotle”, probably late 1st c. B.C.E.), presented a philosophy that was basically Peripatetic, but he was also “an eclectic, living in an age when eclecticism was the fashion and there was a great deal of common ground between dif- ferent schools” of Hellenistic philosophy 14. For example, he uses our verbs suni,sthmi and sune,cw to describe God’s work of creation and maintenance 15: 13 Colson takes susth/nai in the sense “subsist”; and while this is possible (see discussion of Athanasius below), and perhaps fits with the LXX inter- pretation of the divine name (Exod 3,14, o` w;n), the following use of a`rmoni,a in an explanatory clause (ga,r, “for”), together with the use of sune,cw in the next section (as above), suggests that unity is the main idea. 14 D.J. FURLEY, introduction to the Loeb edition (1955), 335. See further J. P. MAGUIRE, “The sources of Pseudo-Aristotle de Mundo”, Yale Classical Studies 6 (1939) 111-167. Hence for J. DUNN, The Theology of Paul the Apos- tle (Grand Rapid, MI 2006) 39, n. 52 to cite this work as an example of “typ- ically Stoic” terminology is too simplified. 15 Although Furley translates 397b, 14-15 (dia. qeou/ h`mi/n sune,sthken) as “are constituted for us by God”, the context is of God’s ongoing preserva- tion (cf. lines 9-10, “the cause that holds the world together [sunektikh/j]”).