What Does Colossians 1:18 Mean in the King James?
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The head is not merely above the body: this Greek word-family also describes gathering many parts into one.
THE MEANING
The risen one is the body’s living center, and what is scattered finds coherence in him. His emergence from death makes him the beginning of a life whose first place is his in everything.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Wholeness does not come from every part making itself the center; the body receives its coherence from one head.
THE ROOT
κεφαλή
kephalē
GROWS FROM
κεφαλή
kephalē
Head; by extension, a chief point or principal thing.
The word for “head” also gives rise to language for a principal point and for summing things up. Here, the head is more than the body’s rank above its members: he is the one in whom its many parts become a whole.
ALSO GROWS
kephalaion: A principal thing, main point, or sum.
κεφάλαιον
This branch shows how “head” can name the point that gathers the substance of many things.
anakephalaioō: To sum up or gather together under one head.
ἀνακεφαλαιόω
This branch reveals the unifying work carried by the image of Christ as the body’s head.
THE PATTERN
A whole is ordered around the one who becomes its living center.
The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:THE THREAD
That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:The verb rendered “gather together in one” is ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι (anakephalaiōsasthai, to sum up under one head), from the same word-family as “head” here. The head is where what is divided is gathered into coherence.
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