For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things have been created through him and for him.
World English Bible
Colossians 1:16
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓ - Modern English
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- ULB Unlocked Literal Bible An open-licensed literal translation produced for translators · CC BY-SA 4.0
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- MSB Majority Standard Bible A modern translation of the Majority/Byzantine text — the Berean counterpart to the critical-text BSB · Public Domain
- TCENT Text-Critical English New Testament A modern reasoned-eclectic New Testament (2022) · CC BY 4.0
- F35 Family 35 New Testament Wilbur Pickering's Byzantine-priority New Testament, with text-critical commentary notes · CC BY-SA 4.0
- OJB Orthodox Jewish Bible A Messianic-Jewish English Bible using transliterated Hebrew names and terms · CC BY 4.0
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- KJV King James Version Public Domain
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- DRA Douay-Rheims (1899) An English Catholic translation from the Latin Vulgate · Public Domain
- YLT Young's Literal Translation An extremely literal 19th-century rendering · Public Domain
- DBY Darby Bible A literal 19th-century translation by J. N. Darby · Public Domain
- WBT Webster's Bible Noah Webster's 1833 modernization of the King James Version · Public Domain
- TYNDALE Tyndale New Testament (1534) The pioneering early-modern English New Testament (New Testament only) · Public Domain
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- LEESER Isaac Leeser Tanakh (1853) The first Jewish English translation of the Hebrew Bible (1853, Old Testament only) · Public Domain
- KJVCP KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible David Norton's critical Cambridge edition of the King James Version, set in paragraphs · Public Domain
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Science (1)
Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
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Every organism on Earth, including parasites and pathogens, was intentionally designed by a benevolent creator.
Biology · Colossians 1:16-17
The scientific record: Natural selection produces parasites and pathogens through undirected adaptation. (CDC)
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Who created heaven and earth?
Genesis 1:1 and Isaiah 44:24 state that God the Father created everything alone, explicitly stretching out the heavens 'by myself.' John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16 instead attribute creation to Jesus, through whom 'all things were created.'
Critical scholarship: Genuinely disputed among scholars.
More on this question
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Other verses examined for the same kind of question or claim
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
Cite this page
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Colossians 1:16 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/colossians/1/16?version=WEB (retrieved 26 August 2026).