Clearly the first and second strophes mirror each other in the comparison of creation with new creation. It is however, the transitional link that provides us with a uniquely pauline influence that is also somehow distinct from the undisputed pauline letters. The idea of the church as the body appears both in the early^[97] and late^[98] of Paul’s undisputed letters. However, the distinct physiological analogy of Christ as head of that body, appears first in Ephesians and Colossians^[99].” As Bruce argues it is unlikely that such close development of Paul’s thought would happen disconnected from Paul himself suggesting that perhaps even the preexistent hymnic passage was created within the pauline community^[100]. This leads to a further implication. Since the transitional link serves little purpose apart from the second strophe perhaps the entire section from 1:17 on was composed by the author of the letter leaving only first strophe, celebrating Christ as Wisdom in circulation before the Colossian letter^[101]. This hypothesis, first put forward by Pierre Beniot, allows us to see Paul’s influence more strongly in the second strophe. While Paul’s theme of ‘justification’ is not explicitly used, again pointing us away from genuine pauline authorship, the second strophe, written on the model of the first, draws us back to strongly pauline themes, namely God’s reconciliation^[102] of all things to himself. That pauline influence acknowledged there is still a uniquely cosmic element to the Colossians passage. While it could be argued that Paul is more solidly rooted in a Jewish perspective of salvation, Paul’s mystical language often, indicates, “a quite profound participation with others in a great and cosmic movement of God centered on Christ^[103]”. The conclusion I draw from this is that while the passage represents a distinct imagination of Christ from Paul, it is nonetheless embedded in a community informed by the multiplicity of images and metaphors that Paul provides in his teaching.

It is important to note that while this high christological perspective represents one of the peaks in New Testament^[104] language regarding the Christ, it is not wholly alone in it’s standing. The Philippian hymn in the undisputed pauline letters similarly combines elements of Adamic and Wisdom christology in suggesting that as Christ took on the very likeness of humankind^[105] being born as Adam was and freely choosing to be obedient to death^[106] in contrast to Adam’s disobedience. The implication being that Christ as Wisdom made a decision in time to become a man^[107] and play the role of the second Adam. As Hengel points out, the maturity of these implications suggest that the, “most significant developments in christology had already taken place within the first twenty years of Christianity’s beginnings^[108]”, creating no need for the parallel Colossian hymn to be read as a later developed form.