Col 3,1-4: “cercate le cose di lassù”. Un approccio filologico-esegetico

This research seeks to establish the delimitation of Col 3:1-4, its context, rhetorical function, literary structure, and to offer a more precise exegetical interpretation. Col 3:1-4 is a transitional pericope. That is why it exhibits a twofold context: that of the baptism of Col 2:8-23 and that of the eschatological behavior of Col 3:5-4:6. Both seek to involve the believers in the “mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ”. The pericope, in the epideictic discourse of Paul, is an ananéosis with the function of transitus and subpropositio which proposes again the idea of Col 1:9b and adapts to the new argumentatio and provides a partitio of the new probationes which he wanted to develop. Col 3:1-4 presents a tripartite division: A. Col 3:1: Christological and eschatological motivation - B. Col 3:2: Consistent knowledge and way of living - A’ Col 3:3-4: Christological and eschatological motivation. The pericope is an appeal to the believers to live their own Christian identity. For this reason he must have φρόνησις to “die and rise again with Christ”, “waiting for his manifestation in glory”, and thus will “appear with him who is our life”.