Chapter 2

THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENTILES IN

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

Matthew Thiessen

How did the author of the letter to the Ephesians both receive and re-narrate Paul’s
identity as a Jew? This question presupposes that Paul did not write Ephesians,
that it is, in fact, both a reception of Paul’s thinking and a reworking of it (e.g.,
Gese 1997). To be sure, the majority of critical scholarship on Paul comes to this
conclusion.1 It appears that Ephesians repeatedly borrows from and expands upon
Colossians, a fact that numerous scholars have interpreted to mean that someone
other than Paul has borrowed liberally from a letter that he believed Paul wrote
and did so in order to help pass off his own thinking as being the authentic thought
of Paul.2 But in his recent book, Remembering Paul, Benjamin White has noted
that the identification of a corpus of seven authentic letters is historically linked
to a decidedly Lutheran reading of Paul’s writings. After all, F. C. Baur argued that
Paul did not write Ephesians because it contains a catholicizing element within it
(1873, 2:106–7). This sort of criticism gets expanded in other writers: for instance,
some claim that Paul could not possibly have written the six disputed letters
attributed to him because they do not adequately stress the all-important Lutheran
maxim of justification by faith. As White concludes, “The ‘real’ Paul discourse of
the nineteenth century [and its commitment to seven letters] is part and parcel
with the Lutheran reading of Paul” (2014: 65). The seven-letter canon, then,
functions to undergird and protect a Lutheran construction of Paul. Yet many
scholars now have serious qualms about the so-called Lutheran reading of Paul.
Though I will not do so in this chapter, I wonder whether it is time for scholarship

1. Among recent interpreters who believe that Paul did not write Ephesians, see Sellin
(2008: 57–8) and MacDonald (2000: 16). For one recent interpreter who argues that
Paul did write Ephesians, see Hoehner (2002: 2–60). Hoehner (2002: 9–18) provides an
exhaustive chart of scholarly positions since Edward Evanson, who in 1792 was the first to
argue against Pauline authorship.
2. Baur (1873: 2:1). But see Best (1997b: 72–96).
14 The Early Reception of Paul the Second Temple Jew

more broadly to revisit the possibility that Paul penned more than just the seven
so-called undisputed letters. If Paul did not write Ephesians, surely it was written
by a relatively early disciple of Paul who did his best to sound as much like Paul as
possible and, frankly, did a pretty decent job of it.

Paul on the Gentiles

Paul displays his own Jewishness most fundamentally in his construction of the
world, dividing humanity into two groups: Jews and the nations/Gentiles. The
term “the nations/Gentiles,” of course, is nothing more than a catch-all term
meaning miscellaneous people who are not Jews. As Benjamin H. Dunning notes,
in the undisputed letters, “We see clearly the struggle of someone who customarily
divides the world up into Jews and Gentiles. As such, Paul is wrestling with what
the Christ-event means for this binary division” (2006: 9). In fact, Ishay Rosen-Zvi
and Adi Ophir argue, in contrast to the majority of Pauline interpreters, that “if
there is a consistent effort in [Paul’s] letters, it is to erect ‘the dividing wall’ between
Jews and non-Jews” (2015: 21).3 Thirty-eight times Paul uses the term ethnē to
refer to all non-Jewish peoples. Non-Jews did not lump themselves together with
a phrase that obliterated the numerous differences that existed between Parthians,
Arabs, Greeks, Romans, and so on.4 This was a distinctly Jewish category, one that
denied any significance to the manifold differences that existed among non-Jews.
Not only did Paul’s discourse on “the Gentiles” fail to distinguish between
various ethnic groups,5 it also portrayed them as categorically immoral. For
example, in writing to the Gentile Thessalonians, Paul says, “For this is the will of
God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you
know how to take his own vessel in holiness and honor, not in the passion of desire
like those Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:3-5).6 Similarly, in writing to
Corinth, Paul describes the former status of some of his Gentile recipients as, among
other things, immoral, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers,
and robbers (1 Cor. 6:9-10). And, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul relates these
words to Peter: “We are by nature Jews (φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι), and not sinners from the

3. See also Rosen-Zvi and Ophir (2011) and Rosen-Zvi (2016). Ultimately, though,
I do not agree with their conclusion that pre-tannaitic Jews did not work with a binary
distinction of Jew/Gentile.
4. Although Gentiles soon began to do so in early Christianity (Donaldson 2013).
5. To be sure, Paul can also distinguish between different types of non-Jews, in
particular, Greeks and barbarians (Rom. 1:14), but he has distinctive reasons for doing
so in addressing his Roman audience (Harrison 2013). Likewise, the author of Colossians
distinguishes between Greek, Jew, Scythian, and barbarian (3:11).
6. On the interpretive issue surrounding σκεῦος, see, for example, Yarbrough (1985);
Bassler (1995); Konradt (2001); and Trozzo (2012).
 2. The Construction of Gentiles in the Letter to the Ephesians 15

Gentiles” (οὐκ ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἁμαρτωλοί, Gal. 2:15). This short statement tells us much
about Paul’s views on ethnicity. First, Paul’s conception of ethnicity comes to the
fore: those born Jews are ontologically so (φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι)—Jewishness is a status
rooted in the order of the world as God has created it.7 The same essentializing
understanding presumably applies to Gentile identity. Gentiles are Gentiles by
nature or by birth (φύσει). We see hints of this in Paul’s remarks that Gentiles are
by nature foreskinned (ἡ ἐκ φύσεως ἀκροβυστία, Rom. 2:27) and do not by nature
have the law (ἔθνη τὰ μὴ νόμον ἔχοντα φύσει, Rom. 2:14). Interpreters dispute
whether φύσει here modifies what precedes it, but Stanley K. Stowers rightly notes
that “adverbial modifiers normally follow the verbs or verbal nouns that they
modify.” Consequently, this verse attests that,

from Paul’s perspective, being uncircumcised belongs to the essential nature

of gentiles but not that of Jews. In Gal 2:14, he writes of “we who are Jews by
nature and not gentile sinners.” Cultures that place great emphasis on birth, as
did all those in antiquity, speak as if their cultural characteristics were acquired
by birth or were of their essential being. In Paul’s thought, just as a gentile
was uncircumcised by nature, so also was he without the law by nature (2:14).
(1994: 116)

Paul’s extended analogy in Romans 11 of the cultivated and wild olive trees, which
represent Jews and Gentiles, respectively, confirms his essentialist understanding
of ethnicity. In or out of the tree, Jews remain Jews—cultivated olive tree branches.
And even grafted into the cultivated tree, Gentiles remain Gentiles—wild
olive branches.8
Second, Paul believes that there is a connection between ethnicity and ethics:
non-Jews are, presumably by nature, sinners. And Jews are not. As Pamela
Eisenbaum claims, “Paul makes clear to us that the terminology of Jew and
Gentile does not merely refer to one’s ethnic or cultural heritage; the terms Jew
and Gentile also refer to one’s morality and one’s disposition vis-à-vis God” (2009:
6). Such ethnic stereotyping strikes most modern readers as rather distasteful, but
it was the norm in the Greco-Roman world, and even someone as saintly as Paul
participated in the practice.9
Many scholars read Rom. 1:18-32 as Paul’s fullest portrayal of the Gentile world.
In this depiction, Paul highlights the Gentiles’ universal rejection of the Creator

7. Cf. Matlock (2012). On essentialist conceptions of ethnicity, as opposed to socially

constructed conceptions of ethnicity, see Barth (1969) and Hutchinson and Smith (1996).
8. See Johnson Hodge (2004) and Thiessen (2016: 118–22). Romans 11 demonstrates,
though, that even as Paul’s understanding of Jewish and Gentile identity is essentializing,
it is also flexible: Israel’s God can adapt, through adoption and ingrafting, Gentile identity.
On the coexistence of fixity and fluidity in ancient ethnic discourses, see Buell (2005) and
Johnson Hodge (2007).
9. See Isaac (2004).
16 The Early Reception of Paul the Second Temple Jew

God, despite the fact that creation itself pointed to him (1:19-21), their turn from
the immortal God to the worship of idols made in the images of mortal humans
and animals (vv. 22–25), and their subsequent descent into passion, desire, and
immoral living (vv. 26–32). Although numerous scholars argue that Paul here
indicts all of humanity, the parallels to the depiction of Gentiles in Wisdom of
Solomon 13–14 suggest otherwise.10
To this point, I have briefly documented one aspect of Paul’s Jewishness: his
worldview as it pertains to humanity. The world for Paul was divided into two
groups: Jews and Gentiles. These two groups derive their identity through physis,
nature, which for Paul meant that they were divinely ordained identities. For Paul
ethnicity determined both what one worshipped and how one lived: in other
words, what we would refer to with the terms ethnicity and religion, Paul would
think of as one interwoven reality.11 Jews were not sinners by nature, nor were they,
as a rule, idolaters. Conversely, Gentiles had abandoned the one true God and had,
as a result, become deeply immoral. But how does the author of Ephesians receive
and retransmit this particular aspect of Paul’s Jewishness?

Gentiles in Ephesians

We do not know the ethnicity of the actual first readers of the letter to the Ephesians,
but the implied readers are Gentile, since the author explicitly addresses them as
such:12 “you Gentiles in the flesh” (τὰ ἔθνη ἐν σαρκί, 2:11), whom Jews referred
to as “foreskin” (ἀκροβυστία). He claims that, as Paul, he has been a prisoner for
Christ Jesus on behalf of “you Gentiles” (ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν τῶν ἐθνῶν), and that God has
given him a commission to preach to “you [Gentiles],” in order that they might
become heirs through the preaching of the gospel (3:1-8). This construction and
restriction of Paul’s mission field to non-Jews fits well with what Paul says in his
undisputed letters: God entrusted him with the gospel of the foreskin and sent
him to the Gentiles (Gal. 2:7-8); he was given grace and apostleship to bring about
the obedience of faith among the Gentiles (Rom. 1:5; 15:18); he is indebted to
all Gentiles, both Greek and barbarian (Rom. 1:13-15); and he is the apostle and
minister of Christ to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13; 15:16). It also fits well with other

10. Examples of those who argue that Rom. 1:18–32 is a universal indictment include
Aletti (1988) and Bell (1998). For my full argument as to why this passage refers only to
Gentiles, see Thiessen (2016: 47–52).
11. As Harrill (2014: 396) notes of Ephesians, “‘Religion’ cannot justifiably be separated
from ‘ethnicity’ in the letter’s ancient context.”
12. Most believe it was a Gentile readership: e.g., Dahl (1951); Best (1998: 75); and
Lincoln (1990: lxxvi). In contrast, Darko (2008: 27) thinks it was a predominantly, but not
exclusively, Gentile community. Scholars who conclude that the letter addressed Jewish
Christ-followers include Goulder (1991) and Strelan (1996: 163–67).
 2. The Construction of Gentiles in the Letter to the Ephesians 17

early portraits of Paul (1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 4:17, as well as non-Pauline evidence
such as Acts 13:47; 1 Clem. 5.7; Acts of Paul 11.3). As White has documented,
“The most dominant and unifying aspect of the early layer of the Pauline tradition
appears to have been that Paul engaged in a wide and far-flung mission to the
Gentiles” (2014: 102–3). The letter to the Ephesians continues this tradition about
Paul, despite the growing desire to apply Paul’s message to the universal church.13
Like Paul, the author of Ephesians constructs Paul to be God’s appointed
missionary to Gentiles. But how does this author use Paul’s thinking to construct
Gentile identity? First, the author says to his readers, “You were dead in your
trespasses (ὑμᾶς ὄντας νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν) and the sins in which you
once walked (ἐν αἷς ποτε περιεπατήσατε),” following the pattern of this cosmos,
“according to the ruler of the power of the air” (2:1-2). This brief description of his
Gentile readers’ past appears to be literarily dependent upon Colossians, a letter
that the author, rightly or wrongly, thought Paul wrote. The first clause comes
from Col. 2:13, which states, “and you were dead in the trespasses” (καὶ ὑμᾶς
νεκροὺς ὄντας [ἐν] τοῖς παραπτώμασιν).14 The second clause comes from Col. 3:7:
“in which you also then walked” (ἐν οἷς καὶ ὑμεῖς περιεπατήσατέ ποτε). If the
change in Eph. 2:3 from second-person plural (“you”) to first-person plural (“we”)
indicates an expansion from Gentiles alone to both Gentiles and Jews, as most
scholars assume, then Ephesians includes Jews in the realm of trespasses and sin
in which it situates Gentiles.15 While this interpretation provides an explanation
for the change in pronouns, it creates its own difficulties. How does this negative
portrayal of Jews square with the letter’s implicit assumption that Jews are near to
God (2:12-14)? As a reception of Paul’s thinking, how does this inclusion of Jews
in the moral turpitude of Gentiles relate to Paul’s thinking, which says that Jews are
both zealous for God and seeking to establish righteousness (Rom. 10:2-3)?16 How
can the author claim that the apostle Paul himself fits this description?17 Does the

13. See Dahl (1962) and Mitchell (2010).

14. Ephesians omits Colossians’s καὶ τῇ ἀκροβυστίᾳ τῆς σαρκὸς ὑμῶν, replacing it with
ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις. Best (1997a: 74) suggests that the author of Ephesians “has deliberately
omitted it because in his mind there is a direct connection between ‘uncircumcision’ and
‘Gentiles’ as in 2.11, and he does not wish to limit 2.1 to Gentiles.” In other words, Ephesians
expands the negative depiction of Gentiles in Colossians to include Jews.
15. NA27 notes that ὑμεῖς is found in a number of mss A*, D*, 81, 326, 365; lacking in F,
G, L, and present in P46, A, B, D, Ψ, and so on.
16. On Paul’s portrayal of Jews who do not believe in Christ, see Novenson (2016).
17. For instance, Harrill (2014: 390 n. 31) claims that this passage “effectively constructs
‘Paul’ (‘we’) as having once shared the same sinfully ‘Gentile’ past ethnicity that the invited
readers also had discarded at baptism.” In contrast, Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Ephesians
2:3 (trans. Bray, 2009): “If anyone thinks that Paul means something else when he talks
about the lust of the flesh, let him realize that the apostle led a clean life, because he acted
according to the righteousness of the law without any problem.” Ambrosiaster’s solution to
18 The Early Reception of Paul the Second Temple Jew

author of Ephesians tear down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentile sinners
that Paul himself establishes in texts such as Gal. 2:15?
At first glance, it appears so. And yet, a few verses later the author rebuilds
this wall even as he claims it has come down, portraying the former existence
of Gentiles in Christ as being “without Christ, strangers with regard to the
commonwealth of Israel, and foreigners with regard to the covenants of the
promise, hopeless and godless in the world” (χωρὶς Χριστοῦ, ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι
τῆς πολιτείας τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ καὶ ξένοι τῶν διαθηκῶν τῆς ἐπαγγελίας, ἐλπίδα μὴ
ἔχοντες καὶ ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, 2:12-13).18 A number of parallels exist between
this description of Gentiles and the benefits Jews continue to enjoy according to
Paul in Rom. 9:1-4 (NRSV): “They are Israelites (Ἰσραηλῖται), and to them belong
the adoption, the glory, the covenants (αἱ διαθῆκαι), the giving of the law, the
worship, and the promises (αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι); to them belong the patriarchs, and
from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah (ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ
σάρκα).” The Gentile situation is essentially the opposite of what Israel experiences
according to Paul. In this regard, then, the author of Ephesians both portrays
the negative situation of the Gentiles and affirms Paul’s positive portrayal of the
“Jewish situation” in Eph. 2:12-13: the verses function implicitly as “a description
of Judaism as at least one Christian saw Judaism. It looks forward to the messiah,
it is the community of God’s people with whom God has entered into covenants
with their promise, it believes in the true God and has hope” (Best 1997a: 98).19
Eph. 2:11-12 provides evidence of the author’s reception of Paul’s positive
depiction of Jews, in the very act of reversing the terms and applying them to
Gentiles. Even as the author includes both Jews and Gentiles in the sphere of
passions and sin, he distinguishes between them on the basis of all the covenantal
benefits that God had extended to Israel alone.
And yet even this is not the end of the story. Whereas Eph. 2:1-3 appears to lump
both Jews and Gentiles together in profligate living, one final lengthy depiction of
Gentiles again appears to fit best with Paul’s distinction between Gentile sinners
and, relatively speaking, righteous Jews:

You must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their minds (ἐν
ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν). They are darkened in their understanding (ἐσκοτω
μένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄντες), estranged from the life of God because of the ignorance
which is in them on account of the hardness of their heart. Having become
unfeeling, they have given themselves over in licentiousness to the work of every
impurity in greed (ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας
πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ). (4:17-19)

this quandary is to conclude that Paul includes himself in this description because of his
persecution of the Christ assemblies.
18. On Eph. 2:1-11, see Rader (1978).
19. Rese (1975) also notes these connections between Rom. 9:4 and Eph. 2:12.
 2. The Construction of Gentiles in the Letter to the Ephesians 19

This dim portrayal of the Gentile condition prior to entering into Christ has
numerous points of contact with Paul’s portrayal of Gentiles in Rom. 1:18-32. Like
Paul, who claims in Rom. 1:21 that the people he portrays “became futile in their
thinking” (ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν), the author of Ephesians
depicts Gentiles as walking in the futility of their minds (ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς
αὐτῶν). Whereas Paul claims that “their senseless heart has been darkened”
(ἐσκοτίσθη ἡ ἀσύνετος αὐτῶν καρδία, Rom. 1:21), Ephesians describes Gentiles
as having darkened understanding (ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄντες). Finally,
Paul avers that God gave these people over, in the desires of their hearts, to
impurity (παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῶν καρδιῶν αὐτῶν εἰς
ἀκαθαρσίαν, Rom. 1:24), and that, as a result, they had been filled with all kinds
of vices, including greed or lust (πλεονεξία, Rom. 1:29). The author of Ephesians
similarly claims that Gentiles gave themselves over to every impurity, and did so
in greed or lust (ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης
ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ). The density of these verbal correspondences is remarkable, and
although scholars frequently note some or all of them, few actually argue that the
author of Ephesians is literarily dependent upon Romans here.20 The numerous
verbal similarities seem to be a textbook case of the author of Ephesians picking
up language from one of Paul’s letters in order to lend greater credence to his own
literary production. In fact, it looks just like the author’s use of Col. 2:13 in Eph.
2:1-3 and akin to how he takes the reverse of Rom. 9:4-5 as an account of the
Gentiles. Incidentally, the author’s use of Rom. 1:18-32 to describe the Gentile
world provides reception-historical support for the argument that Paul intended
to portray the Gentile world in Rom. 1:18-32.21
Repeatedly, the author of Ephesians turns to Paul’s letters, or to letters that he
thought Paul wrote, in order to construct Gentile identity.22 And he does so in
some of the starkest of terms. Some interpreters try to absolve Ephesians of this
ethnic stereotyping. For instance, indebted to James D. G. Dunn’s claims that Paul
opposes Jewish ethnocentrism,23 Tet-Lim N. Yee concludes that “the author of
Ephesians has set out to forge an ‘external definition’ of the identity of the Gentiles

20. For those who make note of the parallels, see Dahl (2000: 442): “The descriptions
of the consequences of idolatry in Eph 4:17–19 have many features in common with Rom
1:18–32.” Best (1997a: 150): “The language and content of the picture of the outside world
in 4.17–19 strongly recalls Romans 1.18–32. There is no reason to suppose that Ephesians
is directly dependent at this point on Romans.” In contrast, see Jervell (1960: 289–90) and
Lincoln (1990: lvii.)
21. For those scholars, such as Campbell (2014), who believe that Paul wrote Ephesians,
Eph. 4:17-19 provides even stronger evidence that Paul intends to portray only the Gentile
world in Rom. 1:18-32.
22. Dunning (2006: 13): “‘Ephesians’ act of interpellation has the effect of pulling the
implied audience into a discourse in which the name ‘Gentile’ functions meaningfully—in
this case, the discourse of Pauline theology.”
23. Most recently, Dunn (2008).
20 The Early Reception of Paul the Second Temple Jew

from the perspective of typical Jews” (2005: 76).24 In other words, the author does
not himself hold this view of Gentiles; rather, he merely puts forward a typical
Jewish perspective of Gentiles in order to destroy it. But surely the whole point
of the letter is to set up the dramatic change of circumstances that Gentiles enjoy
when they enter into Christ. If the author does not hold this view of Gentiles
himself, then he deprives himself of the all-important before picture that shows
the dramatic benefits that come to Gentiles after they enter into Christ. The author
of Ephesians is most indebted to Paul, then, precisely at the point where Paul’s
Jewishness would be most insulting to non-Jews.25 Perhaps the author is a Jewish
Christ-follower who intends to support his own view of the Gentile world through
the authoritative words of the apostle Paul.26

The Gentile Present

The author of Ephesians presents the past of his Gentile readers in dire terms: far
from God and his numerous blessings, mired in sin. As Margaret Y. MacDonald
concludes, the letter presents “an extremely negative view of the Gentile world”
(2004: 421).27 In this regard, the author’s thinking fits within a stream of Jewish
thinking that distinguished between three sets of human beings:28

24. Similarly, Yee (2005: 83): “For us the relevant question is: has the author of Ephesians
distanced himself from the perspective of other Jews, looking in from outside Israel?”
and (2005: 124): “vv. 11–12 contain elements which are thoroughly Jewish in character.
[The author of Ephesians] has put himself in the position of the Jews, and re-presents the
exclusivistic attitudes of other Jews in the hope that he may also echo what the latter had
thought about the Gentile ‘other’ (vv. 11b–13a).” He also claims (2005: 127) that Eph. 2:14-
18 “lay bare . . . the ‘little-mindedness’ of the Jew” and that “the author has used the Jewish
scripture as a tool so that he may turn the tables on the practice of Jewish ethnocentrism”
(2005: 132). For Yee, then, neither Jewish Scriptures nor the author of Ephesians is guilty of
ethnocentrism, only “non-canonical” Jews.
25. Likewise, Lincoln (1990: 136): the author “ascribes to Gentiles deficiencies they
would not themselves have recognized.”
26. For instance, Best (1997a: 91) argues that Eph. 2:11-22 is “a discussion of the
disadvantages under which Gentiles suffered as seen from the position of a Jewish Christian,
assuming that Ephesians was written by such a person. The Jewishness of the author is not
certain, yet even if Paul is not the author, it is still very probable.”
27. Similarly, Dahl (2000: 442): “Both the explicit statements and the absence of
modifying factors contribute to the impression that Ephesians represents an excessively
negative attitude toward non-Christian Gentiles.”
28. Best (1997a: 93) avers, “They had come from a sinful past described in the way
many a Jewish moralist would have viewed Gentile life.”
 2. The Construction of Gentiles in the Letter to the Ephesians 21

Israelite priests
Israelite laypeople
Gentiles

Although the author does not talk explicitly about priests, it is clear that he
works with a sharp distinction between Israel and the Gentiles. This distinction
corresponds to the construction of space in Jewish thinking, something the author
does mention:

Temple
Courtyard of the Israelites
Courtyard of the Gentiles

The author alludes to this divinely constructed geography in his reference to the
dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles in Eph. 2:14, a wall that the Jewish law
buttressed.29 In this worldview, the Gentiles have no access to the realm of the sacred.
There is, as the author states, a dividing wall set up to keep Gentiles at the appropriate
distance from the realm of holy space.30 Although this exclusion may sound narrow-
minded to modern readers, Jews believed that God had created these barriers with
the explicit intention of keeping Gentiles safe: according to Numbers, any person
who approaches God in the wrong way, be that a priest, lay Israelite, or Gentile, must
die.31 Formerly, for Gentiles, cultic proximity to God was never a good thing: as
highly immoral and idolatrous people, they simply could not approach God safely.
Consequently, according to the author, God must remedy the Gentile problem
before bringing those who were far off into his presence. In Christ, the formerly
impure Gentiles become holy (1:4, 18). According to Eph. 2:19, Gentiles in
Christ have now become co-citizens with the holy ones.32 Being holy themselves,
Gentiles not only have greater access to the sacred, but they even become sacred
space: those in Christ join and grow together “into a holy temple in the Lord”

29. The evidence of the letter also undermines Yee’s claim (2005: 123) that the author
of Ephesians thinks that “the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles are socially innovated
rather than inherent in the original plan of God.” Similarly, Yee (2005: 151): “The purposeful
and exclusive attitudes of the Jews have separated the Jews from the Gentiles and created a
barrier that stood between the two ethnic groups.” For the author, God, not the supposedly
exclusivist attitudes of the Jews, has constructed these boundaries.
30. Cf. the inscriptional evidence for such a dividing wall in the temple precincts in
Clermont-Ganneau (1872); Bickerman (1947); and Segal (1989).
31. Cf. Milgrom (1970).
32. While it does not affect the current discussion, there is considerable debate over the
identity of “the holy ones” here. Those who think “holy ones” refers to Israel include Barth
(1974: 1:269–70). Those who think the phrase refers to Jewish Christ-followers include
Faust (1993: 184–88); and Sellin (2008: 233). For those who take “holy ones” to refer to
angelic beings, see Schlier (1957: 140–41); Mussner (1982: 89–91); and Gnilka (1971: 154).
22 The Early Reception of Paul the Second Temple Jew

(εἰς ναὸν ἅγιον ἐν κυρίῳ, 2:21). They have been marked by the sacred pneuma
(1:13; 4:30; cf. 5:18). Instead of being on the far side of the dividing wall, far
off from the presence of God, this community of Gentiles has become the very
dwelling place of the holy God, receptacles of the sacred pneuma. Such a dramatic
transformation of the Gentile condition once again comports well with the
authentic Paul’s thought (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:1-4; 3:10-17; 6:19-20).
The very concern that led to the restriction of Gentile access to the realm of
the sacred, the concern to protect humans from God’s volatile presence, is dealt
with in Christ, enabling Gentiles to approach where formerly their presence would
have meant certain death. The author’s construction of the Gentile past provides
the necessary contrast to the manifold benefits the author believes Gentiles gain
upon entrance into Christ. In the words of Dunning, “Ephesians first constitutes
its audience as Gentiles, and then gives that designation meaningful significance
using the language of alien status, in order to proclaim triumphantly that this
status is no longer the case” (2006: 13). Entrance into the body of Christ entails
redemption and the forgiveness of moral impurities associated with being Gentiles
(1:7). In Christ, Gentiles receive the sacred pneuma. The author calls his Gentile
readers formerly “dead in trespasses,” stressing the impure condition of their past
existence. Now they are made alive and therefore purified, able to enter even into
the heavenly places in Christ (1:5–6). The blood of Christ, a ritual detergent with
immense purifying power, has enabled Gentiles to draw near (2:13).

Conclusion

If Paul did not write Ephesians, then it provides one of our earliest pieces of
evidence for the ways in which others received and appropriated Paul’s thought. At
least this author found Paul’s ethnic reasoning to be helpful for explicating for his
readers the benefits that come to them, as Gentiles, in Christ. In order to convey
to his implied Gentile readers what these benefits are, the author must stress how
dire is the Gentile problem.
Some modern Christian scholars deplore what they take as a stereotypical
Jewish depiction of non-Jews, one that they characterize by using words such
as derogatory, particularistic, and ethnocentric. Further, they claim that Paul
and other like-minded Christ-followers were able to transcend these traditional
viewpoints. Yet Paul’s mission and proclamation to Gentiles is predicated upon and
requires this ethnic stereotyping of non-Jews. And, claims about the breaking down
of the dividing wall notwithstanding, the same goes for the author to the Ephesians.

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