Texts in Conversation
The Dead Sea Scroll 4Q405 uses liturgy that leads worshipers to join in the praise offered by angels around the heavenly throne. Colossians warns readers against this kind of angelic worship and visionary mysticism.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
4Q405 23 i 9
Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice
Dead Sea Scrolls, Prayers, Hymns, and Liturgy
7 purity rejoice in his glory. And there is a sound of blessing from all his divisions, telling of the firmaments of his glory, and his gates praise 8 with a voice of rejoicing. At the entrances of the gods of knowledge in the doorways of glory, and at all the goings out of the holy angels to their dominion, 9 the doorways of entrance and the gates of going out proclaim the glory of the King, blessing and praising all the spirits of 10 God when they go out and when they come in through the holy gates. And there is none among them who skips over a statute, and never against the words of 11 the King do they set themselves. They do not run from the way, and they do not linger outside his boundary. They are not too exalted for his missions,
Colossians 2:18
New Testament
17 these are only the shadow of the things to come, but the reality is Christ! 18 Let no one who delights in false humility and the worship of angels pass judgment on you. That person goes on at great lengths about what he has supposedly seen, but he is puffed up with empty notions by his fleshly mind. 19 He has not held fast to the head from whom the whole body, supported and knit together through its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.
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Notes and References
... a number of scholars have compared the pre-Christian (c. 100 BC) Qumran text Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (or the Angelic Liturgy) to the error which Paul addresses in Colossians 2. Whereas the majority of the texts from Qumran have either few or brief references to heaven, in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice there is a substantial amount of attention given to the heavenly Temple and the angelic praise in the heavenly Temple ... In her examination, Carol Newsom describes the function of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice "as the means for a communion with angels in the act of praise, in short, as a form of communal mysticism." Furthermore, it is possible that the thirteen Songs were utilized as liturgy during a time of festival whereby the members join in the angelic heavenly worship ...
Brannon, M. Jeff
The Heavenlies in Ephesians: A Lexical, Exegetical, and Conceptual Analysis
(pp. 149-150) T&T Clark, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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