In Clothing the Body of Christ at Colossae, Rosemary Canavan approaches the Epistle to the Colossians through a diverse variety of hermeneutical perspectives including the usage of visual exegesis, social identity theory, art history, and socio-rhetorical interpretation. In her thesis statement for the project, Canavan writes, “I propose that the imagery of clothing and body in Colossians 3:1-17 parallels and critiques a systematic visual construction of identity in the cities of the Lycus Valley in the first century CE” (p. 5). The clothing metaphor employed by the author of Colossians, in her view, is primarily aimed at constructing the identity of the church at Colossae by means of referring their headship and communal way of life to the person of Christ (see p. 6). She refers to this phenomenon as a “visual construction of identity” (p. 54).

In her “visual exegesis,” she engages in the interpretation of Colossians through a comparison of the clothing metaphor in Col 3:1-17 with the usage and significance of clothing in ancient images from or connected to the Lycus Valley, such as statues, funerary monuments, stelae, and coins, in order to highlight a common pattern in which clothing in Greco-Roman works of art often convey virtue and vice.

While Canavan successfully demonstrates that the clothing metaphor in Col 3 should be situated within this cultural-artistic pattern, I am not convinced that she has shown that the text and author of Colossians were consciously informed by or consciously offering a “critique” of (p. 5) the virtue/vice themes in contemporaneous Greco-Roman works of art. She seems to suggest a conscious influence and usage of the pattern by the author when she states that the “images are the basis for the metaphor of clothing in the Letter to the Colossians” (p. 105, my emphasis). However, Canavan's own work later in this monograph, concerning the intertextuality of the letter with the LXX which is arrived at through a socio-rhetorical interpretative technique that builds off of Vernon Robbins's social theory (p. 58), actually makes a stronger case for the reception of the clothing metaphor from the OT than from works of art.

The socio-rhetorical method proves to be a powerful supplement to the interpretive task. This approach intentionally seeks to uncover the various levels of “texture” within a given piece of literature. I find the presentation/introduction, usage, and results of the socio-rhetorical approach itself to be to be one of the many strengths of this robust scholarly monograph (see pp. 57-64 for a concise and extremely helpful overview of the socio-rhetorical approach). The exegetical insights that surface from her application of the theory to Col 3:1-17 are illuminating. Her findings both add weight to the general perspectives of the existing Colossians commentaries and contribute a fresh interpretive perspective on the epistle.

For example, Canavan's socio-rhetorical approach, by drawing attention to the “inner texture” of the epistle, reveals the “repetitive pattern of Χριστός” which then serves to create “an auditory effect” that “cements the heart of their identity, ἐν Χριστῷ, for the hearer” (p. 142). Through the identification of a chiasm (in Col 3:10-12), she uncovers a literary and lexical inner-textual centeredness on Christ (pp. 143-46). Her careful and strong exegesis and her many charts make this section intellectually satisfying and pedagogically successful. Canavan's visual aids are consistently helpful throughout the monograph and especially in her fivefold appendix. These charts are of the sort that one will find themselves wanting to not only refer to them, but to actually read through them for edification and enjoyment.

In addition to a socio-rhetorical focus on the “inner texture” (i.e., elements within the text itself), Canavan engages in a multi-perspectival investigation of the “intertextures,” or the various elements outside the text (whether canonical, Jewish/Christian, or Greco-Roman) which are detected and which contribute to our understanding of the various “textures” of meaning in the text. She focuses on themes of identity, clothing, and body in the various potential streams of intertexture. Many of her findings here contribute not only to a generally edifying grammatical-historical exegesis, but to the identification and explication of fresh and genuinely orthodox theological themes within the text.

For example, through her intertextual investigation of clothing language in the OT, Canavan catalogues the usage of clothing terms in the LXX, particularly noting the usages that occur in a context in which someone is clothed in priestly garments, or clothed metaphorically with a virtue or a vice. She argues that these usages (especially the metaphorical ones) would likely be, “embedded in the memory of those familiar with the scriptures” and that “consciously or unconsciously” these images would be weaved into the way of thinking of both the author and his hearers (p. 150). I find this to be compelling and the most likely source for the clothing metaphor in Col 3.

Later, investigating the social/cultural textures, she argues that the vice list in Col 3:5 is evoking the category of “purity laws” (pp. 169-70). I completely agree with her assertion, yet I am disappointed that she does not develop this point further before quickly moving on. It strikes me that a deeper investigation of the Colossian vices and their relation to Jewish purity laws might have strongly contributed to her sections on identity in light of the Jewish antecedents and inherent Jewish elements that carry over to this new eschatological identity in Christ.

The section on “ideological” texture is thoroughly satisfying. Canavan detects and contrasts in Col 3:1-17 the ideology of Rome, which promotes unity through hierarchical structure, with the “ideology of the Christ communities,” which also promotes unity but through a more egalitarian vision for community. In other words, she perceives that the ideology of Rome is “counteracted in Christ” (p. 174).

I do have several very minor, mostly exegetical, disagreements with Canavan's conclusions. First, though she is certainly not alone in making the argument that σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ should be translated “body of Christ” rather than “the substance is Christ”, I, along with the majority of interpreters, find that translation to be highly unlikely. When she makes the assertion that “the auditory effect” would have been that what “the first century CE audience heard was 'body of Christ,'” while the “coupling of 'shadow' and 'substance' may have been a secondary understanding,” I find this proposition to be quite puzzling indeed (p. 156). Are we really to believe that a primarily Hellenistic, first-century audience would have been unaware of or unlikely to recognize a popular Platonic substance/reality metaphor, a literary construct used even in Hellenistic Jewish circles long earlier by Philo? I believe that her (helpful) focus on the concept of “body” has led her to a strained exegetical conclusion in this case.

Likewise, and secondly, in trying to establish the clothing metaphor as a symbol of “the coming of age in the identity of Christ” (p. 156), Canavan glosses the verbal form of τελειόω with the (lexically possible according to Liddell and Scott) meaning of “consecration to a sacred office” (p. 155). She then tries to argue that the meaning of the substantive τέλειος allows us to conclude that, in Colossians, this idea of “consecration” is in play. She writes, “The clothing imagery that places love upon all links that love as the bond of the coming age, confirming membership in the kingdom that is the body of Christ and consecrating them as ministers in Christ” (p. 155). I find this to be a problematic and improbable interpretation, for five reasons: (1) the form in Colossians is a noun, not a verb, and neither BDAG nor Liddell and Scott mention the noun form as carrying the meaning “consecration”; (2) the context argues for a more traditional rendering of the word as “mature” or “perfect”; (3) even if it did mean “consecrated,” the addition of “confirming membership” is nowhere to be found in the text; (4) the “kingdom” and “the body” are not equated in the text of Colossians, and this too is a concept which must be read in and one that I find to be incommensurable with the whole of Pauline theology; and (5) while it is theologically true that all members of Christ's body are ministers and priests in some sense, Col 3 does not frame the argument in this way. Ultimately, it seems that she has read in some right (and some wrong) doctrines which can perhaps be established elsewhere (or nowhere, as in the case of the “kingdom”/”body” equation) but not in or from the text of Colossians.

Thirdly, Canavan offers a theologically perplexing statement which asserts that the “community assembly” is also “the resurrected body of Christ” (p. 157). While such a concept is probably consonant with a Roman Catholic view of the Church as the Body of Christ, I would argue that it is not derivable from the text of Colossians, nor in fact, any biblical text.

Despite these critiques, I find Clothing the Body of Christ at Colossae to be a thoroughly rigorous, sociologically conscious, exegetically illuminating, and archaeologically rich world-class and well-argued monograph. It is not an overstatement to say that the work will indeed become a standard reference volume for all serious future scholarly work on Colossians, particularly studies that focus on the exegesis of Col 3:1-17. Canavan provides an engaging, multifold interpretation of the epistle through the use of “visual exegesis” and the socio-rhetorical method. The result is both a significant contribution to our understanding of the culture and background to Colossians and a wealth of exegetical insights which can serve the cause of orthodox theological discourse in broad and powerful ways.

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