1 - Phrygia in the New Testament

Summary

Paul’s inland travels in Galatia and Phrygia are hard to trace: the narrative in Acts, long subjected to detailed scrutiny, is incomplete at best. Complex modern arguments based on the text of Colossians have linked tensions in the church at Colossae, in the Lycus valley, to contacts with Cynic or Middle Platonist philosophers; however, Colossae was not high on the philosophical food chain. The quality of philosophical debate there was probably provincial at best. ‘Worship of angels’ was a feature of popular religiosity in Asia Minor, in multiple contexts, and it is probably right to understand the ‘Colossian philosophy’ as a concoction formed from folk belief. The church at Laodicea is addressed in Revelation and a ‘letter from Laodicea’ is mentioned in passing in Colossians: but this text may be the epistle known as Ephesians. The complex of early texts relating to the Lycus valley cities is informative about the interface of the Jewish-Phrygian and Gentile-Phrygian worlds. The Jews in Phrygia were a successful community, but it is difficult to understand the sources relating to how Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman polytheist communities interacted in the Lycus valley.