A further complication comes when we try to place the Colossian letter within Paul’s career. While many would place the writing during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome^[15], to suggest that Onesimus would have travelled as far as Rome and be sent back by Paul over such a distance seems unlikely^[16]. While Paul’s imprisonment in Ephesus would seem to fit the geographical requirements of the letter the content of Colossians could be argued to be indicative of a later date in Paul’s theological development^[17] since the cosmic nature of the Christological themes seem to be more fully developed than in Paul’s undisputed letters. As noted earlier by Wright, this alone should not be reason to push Colossians to the end of Paul’s career since theological development is rarely unilinear^[18]. That said, Wright is in the minority in dating Colossians during this ephesian imprisonment period. Complicating things, as we learn from Tacitus, Laodicea was devastated by an earthquake in 60 CE that would certainly have impacted Colossea and from which the city never appeared to fully recover. It would therefore seem probably that the Colossian letter was indeed written during Paul’s lifetime^[19] despite its problematic placement within his career. Here Wilson presents a compelling alternative. While Philemon would seem to flow contextually from the writing of Colossians, we could consider the two letters in reversed order. “If some disciple of Paul knew of the (genuine) letter to Philemon, he might have used it as the basis for the compilation of Colossians when he sought to apply Paul’s teachings in a developed form to meet the problems of the new situation with which the church of his time was confronted^[20].” These two letters distributed together would provide a strong case the authority^[21] of the Colossian compilation.

We must note here that pseudoepigraphal writing was not understood in the negative light that forgery would be today and we must distinguish between what Wilson identifies as “honest forgery^[22]” and malicious intent. That acknowledged, the early church did eventually reject pseudoepigraphal content in the selection of the cannon and understood the Colossian letter as a genuine part of the Pauline library^[23]. Further the personal nature of some of the comments included as the letter concludes would seem to suggest that the writer, while perhaps honestly attempting to write in the ‘spirit of Paul’, did intend for the letter to be read as from the pen of the genuine Paul. This reality would push the authorial intent of Colossians towards the limits of Wilson’s “honest forgery” if we understood it to have been written after the Laocicean earthquake in the post 60 CE period. The personal naming of recently deceased individuals within a community for the purpose of bolstering authority is an unpleasant option^[24] and that one should be called into question such late dating of the letter especially given the early church’s acceptance of the letter.