Does the Stoic Body Have a Head? On Stoicism as an Interpretive Background for Colossians 1:18a

The interpretation of the Christology of Colossians in modern scholarship has depended to a certain extent upon an analysis of Stoic philosophy as a potential conceptual background for the affirmation in Col 1:18a that Christ is “the head of the body.” If the “body” spoken of here is the body of the cosmos as the Stoics understood it, then Christ must be its “cosmic head.” This article examines whether this works on Stoicism’s own terms; that is, would a Stoic have advanced the notion that the cosmic body has a head?