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
In this commentary, David A. deSilva approaches Ephesians as Paul’s
contribution to the ongoing work of forming his converts’ individual and
collective identity in Christ through the celebration of God’s activity (past,
ongoing, and future) on behalf of all who had responded in trust and
faithfulness toward Jesus throughout the eastern Roman empire. He
explores how Paul’s first-century audiences in Roman Asia would have
understood and responded to his message, particularly his promotion of
the attitudes, pursuits, and practices that would constitute an appropriate
response of gratitude for so costly a deliverance and so magnificent a destiny.
deSilva’s discussion is richly grounded in the Jewish and Greco-Roman
contexts that both informed Paul as he composed and his audiences as they
engaged his message. He is also attentive to points of relevance to the
modern contexts of today’s readers who continue to wrestle with Paul’s
vision for Christian discipleship and human community.
David A. deSilva is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament at

Ashland Theological Seminary and holds ordination in the United
Methodist Church. He is the author of thirty books, including An
Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry
Formation (2nd ed., 2018), which has been translated into four languages.
   
general editor: Ben Witherington III

hebrew bible/old testament editor: Bill T. Arnold
editorial board
Bill T. Arnold, Asbury Theological Seminary
James D. G. Dunn, University of Durham
Michael V. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert P. Gordon, University of Cambridge
Judith M. Gundry, Yale University
Ben Witherington III, Asbury Theological Seminary
The New Cambridge Bible Commentary (NCBC) aims to elucidate the Hebrew
and Christian Scriptures for a wide range of intellectually curious individuals.
While building on the work and reputation of the Cambridge Bible Commentary
popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the NCBC takes advantage of many of the rewards
provided by scholarly research over the last four decades. Volumes utilize recent
gains in rhetorical criticism, social scientific study of the Scriptures, narrative
criticism, and other developing disciplines to exploit the growing advances in
biblical studies. Accessible jargon-free commentary, an annotated “Suggested
Readings” list, and the entire New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) text under
discussion are the hallmarks of all volumes in the series.
published volumes in the series

Ephesians, David A. deSilva
Philippians, Michael F. Bird and Nijay K. Gupta
Acts, Craig S. Keener
The Gospel of Luke, Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III
Galatians, Craig S. Keener
Mark, Darrell Bock
Psalms, Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Jr.
Matthew, Craig A. Evans
Genesis, Bill T. Arnold
The Gospel of John, Jerome H. Neyrey
Exodus, Carol Meyers
1–2 Corinthians, Craig S. Keener
James and Jude, William F. Brosend II
Judges and Ruth, Victor H. Matthews
Revelation, Ben Witherington III
Ephesians
David A. deSilva
Ashland Theological Seminary, Ohio
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DOI: 10.1017/9781108643054
© Cambridge University Press 2022
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accurate or appropriate.
To Steven Foard Darsey,
in honor of a distinguished career
pursuing sublimity in worship
through “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19)
Contents
Abbreviations page xi
i. introduction to ephesians 1
Genre and Structure 2
Audience 7
A Closer Look: The Text of Ephesians 1:1 9
Authorship 11
Author’s Relationship with the Audience 13
The Picture of Paul and the other Apostles in Ephesians 15
Style and Vocabulary 17
Theological (In)compatibility with Undisputed Pauline Letters 22
Relationship to Colossians 27
Conclusion 31
Occasion and Purpose 33
ii. recommended resources 40

Commentaries 40
Special Studies on Ephesians 42
Studies on the Social World of Ephesians 43
iii. commentary on ephesians 46

1:1–2: Letter Opening 46
1:3–14: Celebration of God’s Favor 52
A Closer Look: The “good news” of Augustus 79
Bridging the Horizons 81
1:15–23: A Prayer Over the Addressees 84
A Closer Look: The ekklēsia/ekklēsiai in the Pauline Letters 101
2:1–10: “Then” and “Now,” Part 1 109
ix
x Contents
2:11–22: “Then” and “Now,” Part 2 130

A Closer Look: Anti-Judaism and Anti-Gentilism in the
Greco-Roman World 138
3:1–13: A “Digression” on Paul’s Apostolic Commission
and Message 156
A Closer Look: The Mysteries of God in Paul 162
3:14–21: Another Prayer Over the Addressees 176
4:1–6: Summons to Respond Worthily to God’s Favors 187
4:7–16: Christ’s Provisions for Christian Perfection 200
A Closer Look: “Son of God” in Paul’s Heritage, Environment,
and Thought 211
4:17–24: Off with the Old, On with the New 220
4:25–32: Contrasts between Practice Outside and Within the Body
of Christ 233
5:1–14: Further Contrasts between Practice Outside and Within
the Body of Christ 244
5:15–33: The Ethos of the Household of God, Part 1 264
A Closer Look: Household Management in the
Greco-Roman World 275
6:1–9: The Ethos of the Household of God, Part 2 293
A Closer Look: Slavery in the Greco-Roman World 298
6:10–20: God’s Equipment for the Spiritual Battle 312
A Closer Look: Military Imagery in Paul and
Philosophical Writers 317
6:21–24: Letter Closing 334
Bibliography 340
Scripture Index 351
Index of Ancient Texts 367
Subject Index 373
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
ABD D. N. Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary
Aelius Aristides, Or. Aelius Aristides, Orationes
Anaximenes, Rhet. Anaximenes of Lampsacus, Rhetorica ad
Alex. Alexandrum
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
Aristotle, Eth. nic. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, Pol. Aristotle, Politics
Aristotle, Rh. Aristotle, Rhetorica
Aristotle, Virt. Pseudo-Aristotle, De virtutibus et vitiis
Athanasius, Orat. Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos
contra Arian.
BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research
BDAG Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek–
English Lexicon of the New Testament
BDF Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, A Greek Grammar of
the New Testament
BECNT Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New
Testament
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
CD Damascus Document, Cairo Geniza
CEB Common English Bible
Cicero, Off. Cicero, De officiis
CWE Collected Works of Erasmus
Did. Didache
Dio Chrysostom, Or. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes
xi
xii List of Abbreviations
Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum

Vit. vitis
EKKNT Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen
Testament
Epictetus, Diss. Epictetus, Discourses
Epictetus, Ench. Epictetus, Enchiridion
ESV English Standard Version
EvQ Evangelical Quarterly
ExpT Expository Times
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten
und Neuen Testaments
Horace, Ars P. Horace, Ars poetica
ICC International Critical Commentary
Isocrates, Demon. Isocrates, To Demonicus
JB Jerusalem Bible
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
Josephus, Ag. Ap. Josephus, Against Apion
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
Jub. Jubilees
KJV King James Version
LCL Loeb Classical Library
Let. Aris. Letter of Aristeas
Livy, Urbe cond. Livy, Ab urbe condita libri
LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones, Greek–English Lexicon
LXX Septuagint
NEB New English Bible
NICNT New International Commentary on the New
Testament
NIV New International Version
NIVAC NIV Application Commentary
NJB New Jerusalem Bible
NLT New Living Translation
NovT Novum Testamentum
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NTL New Testament Library
NTS New Testament Studies
List of Abbreviations xiii
Num. Rab. Numbers Rabbah

PG J. Migne, Patrologia graeca
Philo, Abr. Philo of Alexandria, De Abrahamo
Philo, Conf. Ling. Philo of Alexandria, De confusione linguarum
Philo, De Praem. et Philo of Alexandria, De praemiis et poenis
Poen.
Philo, De Vita Cont. Philo of Alexandria, De vita contemplativa
Philo, Decal. Philo of Alexandria, De decalogo
Philo, Ios. Philo of Alexandria, De Iosepho
Philo, Leg. All. Philo of Alexandria, Legum allegoriae
Philo, Mos Philo of Alexandria, De vita Mosis
Philo, Post. Cain Philo of Alexandria, De posteritate Caini
Philo, Quaest. in Philo of Alexandria, Quaestiones et solutiones in
Exod. Exodum
Philo, Quod Omnis Philo of Alexandria, Quod omnis probus liber sit
Philo, Sacr. Philo of Alexandria, De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini
Philo, Somn. Philo of Alexandria, De somniis
Philo, Spec. Leg. Philo of Alexandria, De specialibus legibus
Philo, Virt. Philo of Alexandria, De virtutibus
Plato, Resp. Plato, Res publica
Plutarch, Arat. Plutarch, Aratus
Plutarch, Conj. praec. Plutarch, Conjugalia praecepta
Pss. Sol. Psalms of Solomon
1QH Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns) from Qumran
Cave 1
1QM Milhamah (War Scroll) from Qumran Cave 1
1QpHab Pesher to Habakkuk from Qumran Cave 1
1QS Rule of the Community (Serek Hayahad) from
Qumran Cave 1
Quintilian, Inst. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria
SBL Studies in Biblical Literature
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBLMS Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series
Seneca, Ben. Seneca, De beneficiis
Seneca, Clem. Seneca, De clementia
Seneca, Constant. Seneca, De constantia
Seneca, Ep. Seneca, Epistulae morales
SPCK Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
xiv List of Abbreviations
T. Benj. Testament of Benjamin (Testaments of the Twelve

Patriarchs)
T. Dan Testament of Dan (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Gad Testament of Gad (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Iss. Testament of Issachar (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Jos. Testament of Joseph (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Jud. Testament of Judah (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Levi Testament of Levi (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Naph. Testament of Naphtali (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Reub. Testament of Reuben (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Sim. Testament of Simeon (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
T. Zeb. Testament of Zebulun (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs)
Tacitus, Agr. Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae
Tacitus, Ann. Tacitus, Annales
Tacitus, Hist. Tacitus, Historiae
Tertullian, Adv. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem
Marc.
TrinJ Trinity Journal
USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
Xenophon, Mem. Xenophon, Memorabilia
Xenophon, Oec. Xenophon, Oeconomicus
ZECNT Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New
Testament
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
I. Introduction to Ephesians
Ephesians is unlike many of Paul’s letters in that it neither polemicizes nor

defends. It celebrates. Other letters may also start with a benediction of
God for God’s interventions or a thanksgiving and prayer over the address-
ees, but then the shoe drops on the hearers concerning all the things that
are going wrong among them and need remediation. Not so here. An
opening paragraph of praise to God celebrates God’s primordial choice of
the hearers, in company with all who are “in Christ,” for the marvelous
destiny of adoption into God’s household, of being made “holy and
blameless in love” in God’s estimation, of being redeemed from their
former sins through Christ’s offering of himself, of being sealed with
God’s Holy Spirit for their future and final redemption as God’s own
possession (1:3–14). The fact that the addressees have been incorporated
in this marvelous mission of God leads to thanksgiving and prayer on their
behalf, that their own minds and hearts would be opened even wider to
grasp the hope that God has set before them, the scope of God’s redemp-
tion among the peoples of the world, and the magnitude of the life-giving
power of God at work among them, a magnitude to be gauged by Christ’s
exaltation from the grave to the right hand of God above every competing
authority (1:15–23).
The celebration continues: first, of the resurrection that God has gra-
ciously granted the addressees along with all who trust in Christ in the
form of delivering them from the living death of their sinful way of life and
creating them afresh to walk in “good works” (2:1–10); second, of the
reconciliation that Christ has achieved among formerly hostile people
groups (Jews and Gentiles) and between all human beings and the God
whom they had alienated by their sins (2:11–22). This leads – after a brief
reminder of the particular grace God had shown Paul and the latter’s
1
2 Introduction to Ephesians
faithful exercise of his divine commission on the addressees’ behalf

(3:1–13) – a second time to prayer over the addressees, that Christ would
fully inhabit them and they would fully inhabit the broad space of Christ’s
love for them (3:14–21).
Celebration then gives way to instruction as the second half of the
discourse maps out the kinds of practices that cohere with living more
fully into “the new person” and new humanity that God’s indefatigable
power is bringing into being within and among them and, conversely,
identifies the kinds of practices that are no longer compatible with their
divinely appointed destiny (4:1–6:9). The vision of Ephesians from begin-
ning to end is one of Spirit-driven and Spirit-empowered transformation,
offered on the basis of God the Father’s gracious benevolence, secured by
the Son’s giving of himself on behalf of all who would trust in him and by
the Son’s taking into himself all who would trust in him. Yielding fully to
this process – and standing firm against every force that would undermine
it (6:10–20) – is essential if the addressees are to arrive at the good end that
God has appointed for them in his grace and set his abundant power to
work among them to achieve.
Ephesians has been described as “the quintessence of Paulinism”1 and,
indeed, no one doubts that it seeks to represent, in some fashion, the
essence of Paul’s calling, mission, message, and vision for the congrega-
tions he planted throughout the eastern Roman Empire. But there are
many questions: Is this discourse Paul’s own, or does it represent an early
interpretation of Paul? Whom does the discourse actually address? What
kind of text is it, and how should we think about the relationship of its
parts? What purpose does so general a discourse serve in the life of the
emerging Christian movement? We will give attention to each of these
questions as we attempt to discern the text’s setting in the life (or afterlife)
of Paul and of the congregations he and his team planted.
genre and structure

Ephesians presents itself straightforwardly as a letter, addressing its hearers
with the customary epistolary formula as adapted by Paul and other early
1
F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, NICNT
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), 229.
Christian authors (see commentary on 1:1) and closing with several familiar
epistolary conventions (see commentary on 6:19–24). Liturgical forms
dominate the opening – a berakah (1:3–14) celebrating the favors God
has shown those who are in Christ followed by a report of a prayer the
author offers on the addressees’ behalf (1:15–23) – which would be congen-
ial to the setting in which Ephesians would be read to the Christian
audiences assembled for worship.2 These are followed in turn by further
elaboration on the salutary interventions of God in Christ (2:1–22), God’s
intervention in Paul’s life, turning Paul into an agent of God’s favor
(3:1–13), and a further prayer (3:14–21). The second half of the letter exhibits
the author’s “paraenetic aim” as “the author gives his admonition on the
basis of the addressees’ new standing ‘in Christ’ – a standing which is
clearly enunciated in the introductory eulogy.”3 It elaborates the kind of
practices and goals that constitute a suitable, full-bodied response of
gratitude to the superabundant favor that God has shown, particularly in
light of the two primary changes God has effected among the hearers in
Christ (their deliverance from the death characterized by “trespasses and
sins” and from the mutual alienation brought about by longstanding ethnic
hostilities).4
On this basis, Ephesians can be considered a mix of two primary letter
types – the congratulatory (insofar as it celebrates the addressees’ new
identity, status, and destiny in Christ) and the advisory (insofar as it
outlines the path to living in a manner worthy of these favors).5 The
discourse as a whole recalls a pattern familiar from Deuteronomy, “the
‘covenant speech’ pattern in which a reminder of what God had done on
behalf of his people was followed by a call to keep his commandments.”6 It
is not precisely the case that Ephesians exhibits “an arrangement that
2
Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 73.
3
Peter T. O’Brien, “Ephesians 1: An Unusual Introduction to a Pauline Letter,” NTS 25
(1979): 504–16, 515.
4
Holland Hendrix (“On the Form and Ethos of Ephesians,” USQR 42 [1988]: 3–15, 9) has
captured the dynamics of Ephesians well when he describes it as a discourse “in which
the author recites the universal benefactions of God and Christ and proceeds to stipulate
the appropriate honors, understood as the moral obligations of the beneficiaries,” but
not when he specifies its form as “an epistolary decree” that is most similar to honorific
decrees in the Greco-Roman city.
5
See Pseudo-Demetrius, Epistolary Types 11, 19; Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), xli.
6
Lincoln, Ephesians, xl.
proceeds from theological argument (Eph 1–3) to ethical exhortation

(4–6),”7 since the first half of the text does not present an “argument” in
any real sense. As William Barclay rightly said of the opening chapters,
“this is the language of lyrical prayer, not the language of argument or
controversy or rebuke.”8 In its move from celebration of God’s mighty acts
of deliverance in Christ (and prayers that the addressees will fully grasp the
magnitude of this deliverance) to exhortations concerning how to live into
God’s purpose that they should all be “blameless and holy before him in
love” (Eph 1:4), Ephesians has the character of a “liturgical homily” with
the minimum epistolary requirements.9
Ephesians, like most if not all New Testament documents, would have
been performed orally in the midst of a gathered assembly and not read by
individuals from the printed page. This life-setting renders the promotion
of “epistolary analysis” versus “rhetorical analysis” moot. The letter is
oratory in its delivery.10 Ephesians, however, does not exhibit any typical
oratorical form – not that scholars have failed to parcel out its contents
into the components of the typical judicial oration. Such an oration would
begin with an introduction or exordium, which set out briefly the matter to
be demonstrated and rendered the hearers receptive and well-disposed
toward the speaker. A narratio followed, which was a strategic narration
of the events of the case, reconstructed in the manner most favorable to the
accused by the speaker for the defense and in the manner most prejudicial
against the accused by the speaker for the prosecution. This might be
7
James W. Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion: Rhetoric and Theology in the Letters of Paul
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 233.
8
William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, rev. ed. (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1976), 65.
9
Joachim Gnilka, Der Epheserbrief, EKKNT 10 (Freiburg: Herder, 1971), 33; Lincoln,
Ephesians, 28; Roy R. Jeal, Integrating Theology and Ethics in Ephesians: The Ethos of
Communication (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 28–29; Ben Witherington,
III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical
Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 217. The
homily was a typical form of oratory in Jewish culture (Jeal, Integrating Theology,
44–45), practiced within early Christian culture as well (witness the “Letter” to the
Hebrews).
10
Bruce C. Johanson, To All the Brethren: A Text-Linguistic and Rhetorical Approach to 1
Thessalonians (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987), 42–43; Lincoln, Ephesians, xli. For
a defense of rhetorical analysis and proposals for its judicious application to Paul, see
David A. deSilva, The Letter to the Galatians, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2018), 62–91.
followed by a propositio, summing up the points to be demonstrated to

make the case stick; a section devoted to “proofs” (probatio), marshaling all
the available evidence for one’s case, would certainly follow. The speech
would end with a conclusion or peroratio, which might consist of a brief
summation, appeals to pity (if a defense speech) or indignation (if an
accusatory speech), and parting reminders of the speaker’s own credibility
and shots at the opposing speaker’s lack of credibility. A deliberative
speech, which sought to give advice concerning a course of action to be
taken in the future to meet a present challenge, would follow essentially the
same pattern save for the lack of a narratio since, as Aristotle quipped, no
one can narrate the future (Rh. 3.16.11).
James Thompson suggests that Ephesians 1:3–23 represents the exordium
of the letter as oral discourse. This is unobjectionable since almost all texts
have an “introduction” of some kind, and these introductions typically
include “introducing the themes that follow and making the audience
favorably disposed.”11 Suggesting that 2:1–3:13 “functions as the narratio
of the argument” is more problematic.12 The passage is certainly a narrative
of God’s salutary interventions in the lives of those who have joined the
Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean (and, as such, it
continues and elaborates upon the celebration of the same in 1:3–14), but
that does not make it a narratio. It does not set up a “stasis” or thesis to be
proven; there is no issue that emerges as particularly in question. In short,
there seems to be no actual “argument” in Ephesians for a narratio to “set
up.” It is again unobjectionable when Thompson labels 4:1–6 the proposi-
tio, for indeed 4:1 (at least) functions as a kind of thesis statement for the
remainder of the discourse, as the author lays out what it looks like to walk
in a manner worthy (or unworthy) of God’s calling, as elaborated in the
first half of the discourse. However, to call 4:7–6:9 the probatio of the
discourse (further dividing it into two “proofs,” 4:7–16; 4:17–6:9) is highly
misleading for, again, nothing is demonstrated in these chapters.13 Rather, a
11
Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion, 234.
12
Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion, 239. Cf. also Frederick J. Long, “Ephesians: Paul’s
Political Theology in Greco-Roman Political Context,” in S. E. Porter and A. W. Pitts,
eds., Christian Origins and Classical Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New
Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 255–309, 284, who proposes 2:1–7 as the narratio.
13
Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion, 243–44. Following a similar procedure, Long (“Paul’s
Political Theology,” 285) takes 2:8–10 as the partitio (a subsection of the propositio,
lining out the points to be demonstrated), with 2:8–9 announcing the theme of
way of life is elaborated as the author lines out the contours, both positive
and negative, of such a life. This is not the stuff of a probatio. It is precisely
this kind of imposition of the labels of the parts of the standard outline of a
speech to portions of a Pauline letter without considering the distance
between the two that has tended to bring the discipline of rhetorical
criticism of the New Testament into disrepute. It follows as a matter of
course, then, to label 6:10–20 the peroratio of the discourse, which, like the
exordium, is appropriate insofar as most discourses also have conclusions
that tend to serve a basic set of functions.14
The essential mismatch between the typical parts of a classical oration
and Ephesians comes from the fact that Ephesians is neither judicial nor
deliberative rhetoric. If it must be likened to any of the three standard
modes of public oratory in the Greco-Roman world, it would fall within
the broad realm of epideictic rhetoric. While budding rhetoricians were
most exercised in the composition of the funeral oration as the public form
of epideictic oratory that they would most likely be called upon to perform,
it encompassed all manner of “discourse, oral or written, that does not aim
at a specific action or decision but seeks to enhance knowledge, under-
standing, or belief, often through praise or blame, whether of persons,
things, or values. It is thus an important feature of cultural or group
cohesion.”15 As a discourse that begins with a celebration of the benefits
bestowed by the Deity and ends with the commendation of the values and
“salvation . . . by God’s grace through faithfulness,” to be developed in 2:11–22; 3:1–21;

and 2:10 announcing the theme of “believers [as] God’s workmanship created as a body
politic upon Christ’s good works, in which they are then to walk,” to be developed in
4:1–6:19. The artificiality of this outline is evident from the fact that the “theme of
salvation . . . by God’s grace through faithfulness” is already being developed in 2:1–10.
Additionally, what distinguishes the prayer of 1:15–23 from the prayer of 3:14–21, such
that the former functions as part of an exordium and the latter as part of a probatio, all
the more as Paul is fulfilling the same function (“as supplicant”; Long, “Paul’s Political
Theology,” 292) in both? Thomas Winger’s division of the discourse into proofs (2:1–10,
11–22; 3:1–13; 3:14–21; 4:1–16) and refutations (4:17–5:2; 5:3–14, 15–21; 5:21–6:9) is even
more artificial, especially as he equates “contrasts” (which accurately reflects a good deal
of the later hortatory material) with the stuff of “refutations.” Thomas Winger,
Ephesians, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House,
2015), 160–61.
14
Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion, 245. See also Lincoln, Ephesians, 432–40; Long, “Paul’s
Political Theology,” 303; Winger, Ephesians, 161.
15
George A. Kennedy, “The Genres of Rhetoric,” in S. E. Porter, ed., Handbook of Classical
Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 BC–AD 400 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 43–50, 45.
Kennedy adds that “most religious preaching . . . can be viewed as epideictic.”
Audience 7
practices that would characterize a just and noble response to those

benefits (along with the censure of inappropriate practices), Ephesians
certainly fits both modern and classical definitions of this genre.16
The praise or celebration of the Deity’s salutary interventions and
benefits takes the form of a “compelling narrative” in which the author
“portrays the powerful, reality-altering, cosmos-transforming acts of God
in Christ to redeem God’s world and save God’s people for the glory of his
name.”17 The author invites his hearers and readers to inhabit this narra-
tive and live out their roles in it as people who have been brought from
darkness into light, from the death of alienation from God and one another
into the life of a new community that has experienced God’s forgiveness
and favor and lives into God’s consummation of God’s vision for the
world.18
audience
The manuscript tradition, along with the testimony of leading figures in
the church of the second through fifth centuries, overwhelmingly locates
the Christian communities addressed by this letter in the city of Ephesus.19
Ephesus was a major center for the activity of Paul and his team as
reflected not only in Acts 19:1–20:1 but also in Paul’s letters. He refers,
16
In addition to Kennedy (cited in previous note), see Quintilian, Inst. 3.7.6–9; Chaim
Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1982), 19–20. Lincoln (Ephesians, xli) correctly observes that Ephesians combines
epideictic and deliberative topics – for example, adding brief rationales from
consideration of the consequences (see 5:5–6) – as it moves from celebration of God’s
acts on behalf of the new people God has formed in Christ to the prescription of the
response befitting such favor, but also that “paraenesis is not necessarily deliberative”
(Lincoln, Ephesians, xlii). The recommendations of deliberative speeches are specific (as
in Gal 5:1–4: “don’t get circumcised!”) while the recommendations of epideictic speeches
remain more general (as in 4 Macc. 18:1–2: “Keep the Torah”).
17
Timothy G. Gombis, The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 9, 15.
18
Gombis, Drama of Ephesians, 23.
19
On Ephesus, see Strabo, Geography 14.1.4–38; Mark Fairchild, Christian Origins in
Ephesus and Asia Minor (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2017); Jerome
Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Ephesus: Texts and Archaeology (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2008); Peter Scherrer, Ephesus: The New Guide (Istanbul: Ege
Yayınları, 2000). For a briefer overview, see David A. deSilva, “The Social and
Geographical World of Ephesus,” in Barry Beitzel, ed., Lexham Geographic
Commentary on Acts through Revelation (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 537–53.
speaking figuratively, to having “fought with wild animals in Ephesus”

(1 Cor 15:32). As he forecasts his travel plans, he anticipates staying “in
Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to
me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor 16:8–9). He remembers “the
affliction . . . experienced in Asia,” where he and his team members “were
so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself”
(2 Cor 1:8–9). If the testimony of the Pastoral Epistles can be accepted as
preserving genuine historical reminiscences, Paul appointed Timothy to
oversee the Christian groups in Ephesus after his own departure to
Macedonia (1 Tim 1:3–4); sent Tychicus to Ephesus at some point (2 Tim
4:12), though whether or not this is the same trip on which he carried our
letter (Eph 6:21) cannot be ascertained; and experienced the support of an
Ephesian Christian named Onesiphorus while imprisoned in Rome (2 Tim
1:16–18). It is probably from Ephesus that members or converts of Paul’s
team took the gospel to other cities in the region. For example, Paul
commends Epaphras as the one through whom assemblies were planted
in Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea (Col 1:7; 4:12–13), a cluster of cities
about one hundred miles east of Ephesus.
A number of factors, however, make some scholars reluctant to accept
the traditional designation at face value. While the main text of the NRSV
presents the recipients as “the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful
in Christ Jesus,” a textual note in the NRSV alerts readers that “other
ancient authorities lack in Ephesus, reading saints who are also faithful.”
Indeed, the earliest three manuscripts – typically referred to as “Papyrus
46” (c.200 ce), Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century), and Codex Vaticanus
(fourth century) – lack “in Ephesus,” as did manuscripts of Ephesians
known to Origen of Alexandria (third century) and Basil of Caesarea
(fourth century).20 Even these manuscripts, however, give the letter the
title “To Ephesians” (whether at the start of the text or, more commonly, at
the end), and Origen and Basil both refer to the letter as such. It is possible
that the tradition was “invented” at an early stage, such that the testimony
of the text of these manuscripts must be considered apart from the titles.
20
Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2nd ed.
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 532.
Audience 9
A Closer Look: The Text of Ephesians 1:1

The absence of the phrase “in Ephesus” in our three earliest extant manuscripts
poses an important problem in reconstructing the likeliest form of the original text.
The rules of textual criticism give priority to the shorter reading, since scribes were
more prone to introduce additions than deletions, and to the more difficult reading,
since scribes were more prone to smooth over than create problems. According to
both principles, “in Ephesus” should be regarded as a later scribal addition, one
perhaps motivated by the desire to attach an available Pauline letter to a major
center of Pauline activity that otherwise lacked such a letter.21 Churches in Rome,
Achaia, and Macedonia could boast of having been addressed by the Apostle; would
he have failed to write to Ephesus, the center of his mission in Asia, as well? The
difficulty with this theory is the absence of alternative suggestions from anyone in
the second or third centuries (including the absence of witnesses not designating the
letter, whether in the text of 1:1 or by the title, as having been sent to Ephesus).22 An
alternative theory is that “in Ephesus” was in fact original, but that the copyist of an
early and influential manuscript omitted it in order to make a letter that was already
admittedly quite general and widely applicable more obviously and directly relevant
to its wider readership.23 A similar phenomenon can be observed in the manuscript
tradition of Romans, with “in Rome” omitted from Romans 1:7 in a few witnesses.24
A mediating theory posits that the author, intending the letter to circulate
to Christians in cities beyond Ephesus, had left a blank space in his original
for the name of each city to be supplied. If this were the case, however, one would
have expected for there to be some evidence in the textual tradition of these other
names at 1:1.25
The verse is comprehensible with or without the phrase “in Ephesus” (“to the
holy who are also faithful”), though Origen – a native Greek speaker – did have
difficulty with his text that lacked “in Ephesus.” He read this as “to the holy ones
who are, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus,” appealing in the end to God’s disclosure
21
Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1998), 100–101.
22
The sole dissenting voice was that of Marcion, who, according to Tertullian (Adv. Marc.
5.17.1), claimed Ephesians to have been written to the Christians in Laodicea (and thus
the letter mentioned in Col 4:16).
23
Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians, ZECNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 28.
24
Metzger, Textual Commentary, 447.
25
Mark Santer, “The Text of Ephesians I.1” NTS 15 (1969): 247–48, provides a hypothetical
reconstruction of the development of the variants from an original “to the holy and
faithful ones who are in Christ Jesus” to the messier “to the holy ones in Ephesus who
are also faithful in Christ Jesus,” but his theory, as he himself admits, rests entirely on
conjecture.
of his name as “the one who is” in Exodus 3:14 to explain the sense. In this instance,
however, the longer and less difficult version appears to me to be the more original.
The syntax of the clause including the place name aligns perfectly with Paul’s syntax
in five other letters in which he uses a participial form of the verb “to be” and a
prepositional phrase locating those he describes (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:1; Phil 1:1;
1 Thess 2:14). These parallels suggest that there should have been an original place
name, and that was most probably “Ephesus.”26
The addressees are primarily Gentile Christians, as they are consist-

ently and explicitly addressed as Gentiles: “remember that at one time you
Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the
circumcision’ . . . were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel” (Eph 2:11–12); “this I affirm and insist on in the
Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their
minds” (4:17, emphasis mine). This suggests that first Paul and his team,
then the converts they left behind, had their greatest and most lasting
missionary success among the non-Jewish residents of Ephesus.
According to the narrative in Acts, Paul brought his initial church-
planting work in Corinth to a close and traveled with Prisca and Aquila
to Ephesus. He left them there as a kind of advance guard to get settled and
begin the work of preaching while he himself made a trip to Jerusalem and
retraced his steps through Galatia and Phrygia to visit and encourage the
churches he had planted there years before (Acts 18:18–23). He would
return to Ephesus and stay there for two years (Acts 19:1–20:1), perhaps
the fall of 52 ce through the fall of 54 ce.27 This means that some of the
addressees of Ephesians may have been Christ-followers for as many as
nine years by the time they heard this address, while others will have been
very recent converts, assuming that members of Paul’s team continued to
be active in and around Ephesus and that the converts themselves were
26
See, further, Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 144–48 and Frank Thielman, Ephesians, BECNT (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 11–16. Thielman (Ephesians, 14) rightly notes that all
the MSS omitting the phrase come from the Alexandrian text tradition, limiting their
value as possibly representing a local, though early, variant.
27
Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Ephesus, 201–2.
Authorship 11
committed to their calling to be “light” to their family members, neighbors,

and associates.
As will be explored further below, it is quite possible that this letter was
intended for a broader readership than the Christ-followers in Ephesus
proper. It may have been circulated – by the author’s design – to Christian
assemblies outside Ephesus, perhaps in cities as far away as Laodicea and
Colossae. When writing to Christians in the latter city, Paul mentions a
letter that will come their way “from Laodicea” (Col 4:16). While this has
commonly been taken to mean that Paul wrote a letter to the Christians in
Laodicea that has subsequently been lost to posterity, the syntax does not
require this supposition, only that another Pauline letter will be making its
way to the Colossian Christians from Laodicea, which Paul wishes also,
then, to be read to the assembled Colossian believers just as he wishes the
Laodiceans to hear his letter to the Colossians. In the commentary, we will
read this letter, to the extent that it seems pertinent, in the context of
Ephesus and what can be known about the cultural, ideological, and
religious environment of the Roman province of Asia in general and that
city in particular.
authorship
The most disputed word in the letter is the first one: “Paul” (Eph 1:1).
Scholars are sharply divided as to whether, or to what extent, one hears the
authentic voice of Paul speaking in the letter to the Ephesians. Pauline
authorship was universally affirmed in the early church, whose leaders
were certainly alert to detecting forgeries in the name of the apostles
(though they were admittedly more prone to detect forgeries based on
objectionable content), and this position continues to be affirmed by many
scholars in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.28 The major-
ity opinion among scholars has swung, however, in the direction of
believing the letter to have been written in Paul’s name by an otherwise
28
See, e.g., Nils A. Dahl, “Adresse und Proömium des Epheserbriefes,” Theologische
Zeitschrift 7 (1951): 241–64; Markus Barth, Ephesians 1–3, Anchor Bible (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1974), 3–4; Klyne Snodgrass, Ephesians, NIVAC (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1996), 23–27; A. van Roon, The Authenticity of Ephesians (Leiden: Brill,
1974); O’Brien, Ephesians, 4–47; Hoehner, Ephesians, 2–61; Thielman, Ephesians, 1–5;
Arnold, Ephesians, 46–50.
unknown author, most likely a surviving member of Paul’s ministry team,

after the apostle’s death.29 According to this view, “Ephesians constitutes
the first interpretation of and guide to Pauline tradition in light of the
disappearance of Paul.”30 Some scholars formulate a mediating position,
for example that Ephesians was written with Paul’s knowledge and input,
but with the actual writer giving it his (or her) distinctive stamp.31 John
Muddiman advanced a more interesting mediating scenario, namely that
Ephesians represents a secondary expansion of a shorter, authentic Pauline
letter – what he believes to be the Letter to the Laodiceans (Col 4:16), given
the thematic connections between Paul’s statement of his goals for the
Laodiceans in Colossians 2:1–3 and the contents of Ephesians.32 Such a
position allows him to account for the “phrases and sentences in Ephesians
which, in the judgement of many commentators, Paul cannot have writ-
ten” as well as those “which he could easily have written . . . and even some
passages which . . . he could not but have written.”33
The “dilemma” of the authorship of Ephesians was already “not a new
problem” when H. J. Cadbury wrote in 1958, and he himself had “little hope
of shedding new light upon it.”34 Little if any new evidence has since
emerged to increase the hope of doing so now. However, it will also not
suffice simply to pick a side and claim the matter to have been essentially
29
C. Leslie Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians: Its Authorship, Origin, and Purpose
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951; repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002); Lincoln,
Ephesians, lxii–lxvii; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1991), 24–29; Best, Ephesians, 6–40; Pheme Perkins, “Ephesians,” New
Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 11 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), 20–32. Hoehner
(Ephesians, 9–20) surveys 279 scholars on Ephesians and finds that, through 1960,
more scholars favored authenticity, whereas from 1971 to 1990 the majority (58
percent) favor pseudonymity.
30
Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2000), 16.
31
Ralph P. Martin, Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press,
1991), 4. That such a scenario was not unknown in Paul’s world is demonstrated by
Cicero’s commissioning of his friend Atticus “to write in my name to Basilus and to
anyone else you would like, even to Servilius, and say whatever you think fit” (Letters to
Atticus 11.5.2, LCL).
32
John Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, BNTC (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2004), 20–34.
33
Muddiman, Ephesians, 3. The appeal of Muddiman’s theory is its far-reaching
explanatory power; its deficit is the lack of proof beyond the theory itself.
34
H. J. Cadbury, “The Dilemma of Ephesians,” NTS 5 (1958–59): 95–101, 91.
Authorship 13
settled.35 Indeed, the arguments both in favor of authenticity and pseudo-

nymity seem to me to present both significant explanatory power and
significant difficulties, even though this commentary will be written
from the perspective that it represents Paul’s authentic voice and message.
What follows is a brief summary of these arguments and an account of
the reasons that this commentary ultimately proceeds from the
position chosen.
Author’s Relationship with the Audience

Some scholars find the contents of Ephesians to be incompatible with the
idea that Paul himself wrote this letter to assemblies of Christians in a city
where he had spent significant time. Why, given Paul’s lengthy ministry in
Ephesus, does he speak only of having “heard of your faith in the Lord
Jesus and your love toward all the saints” (1:15) and of the addressees
having “heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given me for
you” (3:2)? Why the absence of personal greetings, when Paul would surely
know many Ephesians by name?36 In regard to the latter question, there
are also no personal greetings to speak of in 2 Corinthians, Galatians,
Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, though the tension between Paul and the
addressees in the first two letters would make personal greetings less
appropriate. Paul includes the largest number of personal greetings, how-
ever, when addressing the congregations he has never visited personally
(but with whom he wishes to establish a connection), namely the assem-
blies of Christians in Rome (see Rom 16:1–23).
In regard to the former question, satisfactory answers are even closer at
hand. First, if Paul is under detention in either Caesarea (58–60 ce) or, as is
more likely, Rome (60–62 ce) at the time of writing, at least four and as
many as eight years have elapsed since Paul’s departure from Ephesus.
35
As does Carolyn Osiek when she expresses the opinion that “that conversation was
finished some time ago” – a reflection more of her weariness of the debate (and perhaps
the space constraints on her essay) than the true complexity of the issues and state of the
evidence. Carolyn Osiek, “The Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22–33): A Problematic
Wedding,” BTB 32 (2002): 29–39, 29. At the other extreme stands Stephen E. Fowl,
Ephesians, NTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), written from a
position of self-avowed agnosticism with regard to the question of authenticity, and
perhaps exegetically the richer for it.
36
Lincoln, Ephesians, lx–lxi, 1.
If the house churches continued to evangelize and multiply at anything

approaching the rate of growth during the years of Paul’s active ministry in
their midst, there would have been a good number of newer converts (and
whole assemblies) in and around Ephesus that would not have known Paul
personally.37 A number of passages might suggest that Paul especially had
these more recent converts in mind. These new believers would be fore-
most among the “you all” to whom he emphatically refers at 1:13–14,
underscoring their present inclusion in the “we all” who have experienced
such breathtaking outpourings of God’s favor as Paul celebrates in 1:3–12;
or at 2:1–3, underscoring their particular experience of the deliverance from
being “dead through trespasses and sins” that the larger “we” have now all
come to experience together in Christ (2:4–6). Paul’s awareness of this fact
would also explain his general approach to the addressees in this letter, as
this communication would be Paul’s first direct word to many among these
audiences.38 If, as some believe, the letter was written to be circulated even
more widely (for example, to be shared with Colossae, Laodicea, and
Hierapolis), this would be all the more apropos.39
Further, the fact that Paul speaks of having “heard” about the recipients’
faith and love, such that these reports have given him cause for thanksgiv-
ing to God, does not imply that he has not had prior contact with them.40
Paul uses precisely the same language when addressing Philemon and his
household, with whom he appears to have a close, personal relationship:
“I always thank my God while making mention of you in my prayers,
hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and
toward all the saints” (Philem 4). It would seem rash, therefore, to con-
clude on the basis of the language of Ephesians 1:15–16 that Paul speaks as if
he does not have a personal relationship with the audience (or, at least,
with the Christians of longer standing among them). We “hear” reports of
how people whom we know well have been faring in the sometimes long
intervals between real-time interactions with them. To write to one of
37
See, for example, Dahl, “Adresse,” 241–64, though it seems unlikely that Paul wrote only
to recently formed house churches or recent converts rather than all, older and newer.
38
C. J. Ellicott, A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Ephesians (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1859), xi–xii; Lynn H. Cohick, The Letter
to the Ephesians, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 11.
39
E.g., Witherington, Captivity Epistles, 240.
40
Arnold, Ephesians, 103.
Authorship 15
them, “I’ve been encouraged to hear how well you’re doing,” does not
mean we never had face-to-face interaction with him or her in the past.
Tychicus, the co-worker to whom Paul entrusted the delivery of this letter
(both in the sense of carrying the letter and, in all likelihood, of reading it
aloud to each assembly), is also entrusted with providing the personal
connection with each assembly that some find lacking in the letter: “So
that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus will tell
you everything . . . I am sending him to you for this very purpose, to let you
know how we are, and to encourage your hearts” (6:21–22). The fifth-
century bishop John Chrysostom regarded this to be a sufficient sign of
“both the love which [Paul] entertained towards them, and their love
towards him.”41
The Picture of Paul and the other Apostles in Ephesians

Some find the portrayal of Paul and of other apostles to be incompatible
with Paul’s portrayal of himself and other leaders elsewhere. Ephesians
3:1–13 presents an extended reflection upon Paul’s ministry that some
suggest was written from a “point of view . . . later than that of the apostle
Paul.”42 Would the historical Paul call himself “the prisoner of Christ”
(Eph 3:1) rather than merely “a prisoner of Christ” (Philem 1, 9)? Would he
“recommend his own insights in 3:4 in an unqualified fashion and under
no provocation”?43 Would he speak in such an exaggerated fashion of his
humble status as “the very least of all the saints” (Eph 3:8), where elsewhere
he refers to himself merely as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9)?44 One
wonders, in the face of such objections, whether such scholars are prepared
to allow Paul to be fully human – and to take into consideration the toll of
the significant mental and emotional distress that he would have endured
during years of living in custody, facing the possibility of capital punish-
ment at that. Would he begin to think of his identity indeed as “the
prisoner” for Christ’s sake? Might his reflections on the significance of
41
John Chrysostom, Homily 24, on 6:21, Chrysostom: Homilies on Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, ed. Philip Schaff,
NPNF, ser. 1, vol. 13 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1886), 186.
42
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxii–lxiii.
43
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxiii.
44
his own work have magnified his sense of his unworthiness to have been so
used by God? Might the direness of his circumstances and the uncertainty
of his future make him more prone to exaggerations both of his unworthi-
ness and of the value of his having lived and worked as he had, all the more
given the barrenness of the immediate circumstances to which his work
had brought him? As far as his confidence in his own insights into the
mystery of God as concerns the bringing together of Jew and Gentile into
one holy people, however, that is already evident in one of Paul’s earliest
letters (see Gal 1:11–2:14).45
The author of Ephesians speaks of the believers as a dwelling for God
that is being “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets”
(2:20) – apparently replacing Christ as the foundation (cf. 1 Cor 3:9–17) –
and of God’s long-hidden mystery having been revealed “to his holy
apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (3:5). Such language once again strikes
some scholars as reflecting a post-apostolic perspective, one that venerates
the “holy apostles” as figures that now belong to the past.46 Even if the
referent for the “foundation” has shifted, however, Christ continues to
remain in the most prominent place, appearing now as the “cornerstone”
or “capstone” (see commentary), a shift that Paul himself might have made
as he looked back from a different vantage point. Since all of God’s people
are “holy ones” (hagioi, “saints”), moreover, calling apostles and prophets
“holy” need not be heard as unduly honorific, but rather as an acknow-
ledgement of God’s having set them apart from a particular purpose
among the larger people that God has set apart.47 Paul’s earlier disagree-
ments with certain of the apostles (see, e.g., Gal 2:11–14) need not preclude
his coming to a much more irenic and appreciative position concerning
their common labors in the Lord a full decade later.48
45
Despite favoring pseudonymous authorship, Best (Ephesians, 40–44) also considers the
portrait of Paul in Ephesians to be consistent with Paul’s self-portrait in other letters.
46
MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 16.
47
Snodgrass, Ephesians, 25–27.
48
Contra Thomas B. Slater, Ephesians (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2012), 9.
Witherington (Captivity Epistles, 262) suggests that “the perspective of this sermon is
that it presents God’s view, not Paul’s, of how the plan of salvation has worked out
creating the church. Thus, this is not so much a retrospective comment as it is a
comment on what is now true both in the sight of God and in the Christian
communities.”
Authorship 17
Style and Vocabulary

Compared to the Pauline letters whose authorship is not disputed,
Ephesians has a significantly different literary flavor, particularly in its first
three chapters.49 While this is often muted in English translation, it is quite
apparent when reading Paul in Greek.50 Ephesians is characterized by a
number of surprisingly long sentences. Ephesians 1:3–14 and 1:15–22, for
example, are each one sentence in the Greek (the first 202 words in length,
the second 169 words). Other long sentences appear in 2:1–7; 3:1–7, 14–19;
4:11–16; 5:7–13; and 6:14–20. The solitary independent clauses in each of
these blocks of text are bloated to their current length through the use of
strings of genitive nouns, the piling up of synonyms, participial and relative
clauses, prepositional phrases, and the like.51 One can find similarly long
and complex sentences here and there among Paul’s undisputed letters
(e.g., 1 Cor 1:4–8; Phil 1:3–7) and other disputed Paulines (e.g., 2 Thess
1:3–12), but not nearly so many in a single letter as one finds in Ephesians.
The style is also more redundant than typical for Paul’s writings (save for
Colossians, which shares this trait). It exhibits what H. J. Cadbury calls
“fullness of phrase,” manifested in the joining of a verb with its cognate
noun (“his grace with which he graced us,” Eph 1:6; “every name that is
named,” Eph 1:21), in synonymous doublets (“in all wisdom and know-
ledge,” Eph 1:8; “trespasses and sins,” Eph 2:1), and in near doublets
connected as genitive phrases (“the desire of his will,” Eph 1:11; “the praise
of his glory,” Eph 1:12, 14).52 The question emerges whether Paul’s compos-
itional skills were sufficiently versatile (or the compositional processes
sufficiently complex and varied) to accommodate these differences in style,
or whether these differences support the position that Ephesians was not
authored by Paul himself.53
49
Cf. Muddiman, Ephesians, 3: “in the second half of the letter, apart from odd patches
here and there, Ephesians sounds more like Paul.”
50
Cadbury, “Dilemma,” 93; Lincoln, Ephesians, lxv; Perkins, “Ephesians,” 355. This was
already apparent to Desiderius Erasmus: “Certainly, the style differs so much from the
other Epistles of Paul that it could seem to be the work of another person did not the
heart and soul of the Pauline mind assert clearly his claim to this letter.” Erasmus, CWE
43:300 n. 12, quoted in Thielman, Ephesians, 7.
51
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxvi; Muddiman, Ephesians, 5.
52
Cadbury, “Dilemma of Ephesians,” 98–99.
53
Slater (Ephesians, 9) believes the writing style to be determinative in regard to Deutero-
Pauline authorship.
A number of the stylistic features of Ephesians, however, are thoroughly

characteristic of Paul. Paul has a penchant for using strings of genitive
nouns as modifiers such as one finds in Ephesians.54 Compounding verbs
and nouns with the prepositional prefix syn- (“together with”) such as one
finds in Eph 2:5–6; 3:6 is a hallmark of Pauline style, especially where Christ
is concerned.55 Paul favors particular verbs and related nouns and adjec-
tives that express the “surpassing” quality, the “above-and-beyondness,” of
God’s favor in Christ, for example expressions involving the verb hyper-
ballein (“to surpass”; see 2 Cor 3:10; 9:14; cf. Eph 1:19; 2:7; 3:19), perisseuein
(“to abound”; see 2 Cor 4:15; 9:8; Eph 1:8), and the ungainly but effective
hyperekperisseuein (“to abound over and above”; cf. Rom 5:20; 1 Thess 3:10;
5:13; cf. Eph 3:20).
The vocabulary of Ephesians is not in itself so distinctive as to add any
genuine weight to the argument for non-Pauline authorship. Galatians and
Ephesians are letters of very similar word count (2,220 versus 2,429) and
each contains a similar number of different words (Galatians has a vocabu-
lary of 526 words, Ephesians 530), fairly similar numbers of words that
occur only in these respective texts among the whole New Testament
corpus (35 in Galatians, 41 in Ephesians) as well as comparable numbers
of words that occur only in these texts within the Pauline corpus (90 in
Galatians, 84 in Ephesians).56 The percentages of distinctive or unique
words in these epistles is lower than in some other letters of undisputed
Pauline authorship.57 More noteworthy is the fact that Ephesians employs
54
See, e.g., Rom 5:17 (“the abundance of the favor and of the gift of righteousness”); Rom
8:21 (“unto the freedom of the glory of the children of God”); 2 Cor 4:4, 6 (“the light of
the gospel of the glory of Christ”; “for the light of the knowledge of the glory of God”);
Phil 3:8 (“the surpassingness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus”); Col 1:5 (“in the word of
the truth of the gospel”).
55
See, e.g., Gal 2:19 (“I have been crucified-together-with”); Rom 6:4, 6 (“we were buried-
together-with . . . it was crucified-together-with); Rom 8:17 (“heirs-together of Christ,
since we suffered-together-with in order that we might also be glorified-together-with”);
Rom 8:29 (“having the shape [syn-morphous] of the image of his son”); Phil 3:10
(“conformed [syn-morphizomenos] to his death”); Phil 3:21 (having the shape [syn-
morphon] of the body of his glory”). See also Col 2:12, 13; 3:1.
56
These counts appear in Hoehner, Ephesians, 24. Benjamin L. Merkle, Ephesians,
Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament (Nashville, TN; B&H Academic, 2016),
49–56, documents the (by his count) forty words that are distinctive to Ephesians among
all New Testament writings. Some of the more distinctive vocabulary could be
attributable to Paul’s incorporation of pieces of existing Christian hymns and
confessions. Marcus Barth, “Traditions in Ephesians,” NTS 30 (1984): 3–25, 9.
57
Mitton, Ephesians, 29.
Authorship 19
synonyms for words that Paul uses more regularly. For example, Ephesians
speaks of what happens in or who inhabits “the heavenlies” rather than
“the heavens,” the latter being the customary Pauline term.58 Similarly,
some words common to Ephesians and undisputed Pauline letters have
different meanings in Ephesians (though some of these words have differ-
ent meanings across multiple Pauline letters – see “A Closer Look: The
ekklēsia/ekklēsiai in the Pauline letters”; and “A Closer Look: The
Mysteries of God in Paul,” below). Such variations in vocabulary, however,
could readily be attributed to Paul’s own creativity,59 to the natural practice
of using words in different senses or with different referents in different
contexts (and across a decade!), and to the unknown quantity in the
equation, namely the contribution of a scribe or secretary to the precise
diction of any given letter.60
A number of considerations mitigate the force of the argument that the
atypically ponderous style indicates non-Pauline authorship. The first is
that, as has already been noted above, Ephesians is a very different kind of
letter than most of the other surviving letters attributed to Paul. There is no
argumentation to speak of in Ephesians, no perceived need on its author’s
part for clearly and tersely formulated logical premises leading to logical
conclusions. Rather, the opening chapters take on the forms of liturgical
celebrations of God’s interventions on behalf of the addressees (1:3–14;
2:1–22) and on behalf of Paul (3:1–13) and of prayers for further, ongoing
interventions (1:15–22; 3:14–21). The style, appropriately, takes on a more
epideictic flavor, the effusiveness in syntactical structure mirroring the
effusiveness of the subject matter itself.61 Paul writes in a more self-
consciously liturgical style, adopting the idiom that he learned from
58
Muddiman, Ephesians, 4. “Heavens” occurs in Rom 1:18; 10:6; 1 Cor 8:5; 15:47; 2 Cor 5:1, 2;
12:2; Gal 1:8; Eph 1:10; 3:15; 4:10; 6:9; Phil 3:20; Col 1:5, 16, 20, 23; 4:1; 1 Thess 1:10; 4:16;
2 Thess 1:7; “heavenlies” only in Ephesians (1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12).
59
Witherington (Captivity Epistles, 11) points out that, were Paul trying to write in the
idiom of Asiatic oratory, varying the vocabulary would be in keeping with the style.
60
While acknowledging that the numerical percentages are arbitrary, Cadbury concludes:
“Which is more likely – that an imitator of Paul in the first century composed a writing
ninety or ninety-five per cent in accordance with Paul’s style or that Paul himself wrote
a letter diverging five or ten per cent from his usual style?” (“Dilemma,” 101).
61
I disagree with Lincoln (Ephesians, lxvi) that the presence of long sentences in the
second half of Ephesians mitigates the force of explaining their presence in the letter as a
result of “liturgical influence.” The hues of the opening chapters naturally color the
remainder of the discourse.
praying the prayers of Israel, whether the canonical Psalms or prayers

reflecting the kind of liturgical language also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The mere fact that the majority of Paul’s written discourses are of the
argumentative and instructional kind is no indication of the limits of Paul’s
stylistic flexibility.62
An equally important consideration concerns the complexity of the
manner in which Paul’s various letters were composed and the ways in
which this complexity problematizes our ability to know Paul’s style
sufficiently well to be able to say of a document, “Paul had no hand in
this.” A typical practice has been to take the four epistles identified by the
“Tübingen school” of New Testament scholarship as “cardinal epistles”
(Hauptbriefe), namely Romans through Galatians, as the measuring stick
for the range of Paul’s style and theological thought. The authenticity of
the other letters is determined on the basis of their approximation to the
style and thought of these four. This, however, is to determine a priori what
texts represent Paul’s style and then to determine, in a circular fashion,
what texts are Paul’s own on the basis of their similarly to these texts. This
approach also tends to overleap the step of exploring the degree to which
even these four letters vary in style, use of vocabulary, and thought one
from another.63
This approach has been challenged by the stylometric and statistical
analysis of Paul’s writings.64 In one such study, Anthony Kenny focused
not on vocabulary, which is highly variable on account of subject matter,
but on more mechanical aspects of style such as the frequency of certain
conjunctions, the use of subordinate clauses, and the like. On this basis, he
62
Bo Reicke, “The Historical Setting of Colossians,” Review and Expositor 70 (1973):
429–38, and Ben Witherington (Captivity Epistles, 2–6) have further suggested that
Ephesians and Colossians were written intentionally in the “Asiatic” style, such as
would have been particularly at home in Roman Asia (though Reicke does not
propose Pauline authorship). The Asiatic style was “a highly artificial, self-conscious
search for striking expression in diction, sentence structure and rhythm.” G. A.
Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 32. The style might thus point not to non-
Pauline authorship, but to the ability of Paul and his team to adapt the language to
the audience.
63
E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition
and Collection (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 141.
64
Anthony Kenny, A Stylometric Study of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986); Kenneth Neumann, The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of
Stylostatistical Analysis, SBLDS 120 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990).
Authorship 21
concluded that no group of letters (including the Hauptbriefe) “stand[s]

out as uniquely comfortable with one another” and that no group
(such as the Pastoral Epistles) stands out as more uniquely different and
distant from the rest of the letters.65 A follow-up study by Kenneth
Neumann confirmed Kenny’s view that one could not distinguish between
authenticity and pseudonymous authorship on the basis of style.66 Indeed,
according to Neumann’s results, Ephesians is more comfortably “Pauline”
in style than 1 Corinthians or Philemon. What these studies showed was
not that Paul’s letters exhibit so uniform a style as to have been authored
by the same person; rather, they exhibit a fairly even divergence of style
one from another such that it is artificial to declare some letters to be Paul’s
own, exhibiting his style, and others letters to have been written by another
author, exhibiting a style distinct from some “authentic” group.
Distillations of a “Pauline” style have also rarely taken into account the
nature of the contributions made by co-authors, on the one hand, and
secretaries or scribes on the other. The picture of Paul as a solitary author
who personally chose every word that appears in his letters is a product of
post-Reformation, Western imagination, not the evidence of the Pauline
letters themselves nor the evidence of standard letter-writing practices of the
first century.67 Paul names co-authors (or “co-senders”) in several of his
letters: Timothy (2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians,
and Philemon), Sosthenes (1 Corinthians), and Silas (1 and 2 Thessalonians).
He presents himself as sole author only of Romans, Ephesians, and the
Pastoral Letters (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus). Galatians is a strange case, as Paul
claims “all the brothers with me,” but none by name, as co-senders. Such
naming of co-senders is more than a courtesy. Other named members of
Paul’s team were often also present with Paul and send their greetings at the
letter’s close (Romans, 1 Corinthians, Colossians, Philemon, 2 Timothy).
What distinguishes them from the letter’s co-senders, if not the particular
role that the co-senders played in the formulation of the letter?68
65
Kenny, Stylometric Study, 99–100.
66
Neumann, Authenticity, 217.
67
Richards, Paul, 120.
68
Richards, Paul, 34, 105. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul the Letter-Writer: His World,
His Options, His Skills (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 16, also criticizes
scholars for not making distinctions between letters written in Paul’s name alone and
those written in Paul’s name along with co-senders.
Secretarial involvement is also evident in the composition of 1

Corinthians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians (as attested by the authenti-
cating signature, which is unambiguous in 1 Cor 16:21; Col 4:18; and 2 Thess
3:17) as well as Romans (the secretary in this case is even named – Tertius,
likely himself a part of the early Christian movement; Rom 16:22). A typical
letter of any substance could go through several stages of composition.
Paul and his co-senders, if any, might begin by consulting about the letter
they are about to write and how they might best address the needs of,
questions from, and challenges facing the congregation or congregations in
whose situation they feel the need to intervene. Members of the team might
take notes on wax tablets or parchment notebooks (cf. 2 Tim 4:13).69
A secretary could be brought in at the start or at some point in the
discussion, likely hired from the market for the task, and take down a
rough draft from Paul or the team on the basis of the notes. The secretary
might not take down everything verbatim on the spot (for this would
require either painful syllable-by-syllable dictation or hiring a secretary
especially well-skilled in shorthand, and therefore quite expensive) but
would work to flesh out a full first draft, introducing some of his own
vocabulary and style in the process, for Paul and any co-senders to read
and either correct or approve. When they were satisfied with the text, the
secretary would prepare the final copy for dissemination.70
The complexities of co-authorship and stylistic interference of secretar-
ies in the composition of “Paul’s” letters thus renders the isolation of a
signature Pauline style problematic – especially at the level that would
allow one to reliably distinguish between letters that Paul authored and
letters which he had no part authoring.
Theological (In)compatibility with Undisputed Pauline Letters

Representing a long tradition in German scholarship, W. G. Kümmel
confidently asserted that “the theology of Ephesians makes the Pauline
69
On the “parchments” as notebooks, see T. C. Skeat, “Especially the Parchments: A Note
on 2 Timothy IV.13,” JTS n.s. 30 (1979): 172–77.
70
Richards, Paul, 31, 66–67, 74, 91–93. Flavius Josephus used secretaries, particularly for
help in translating into Greek and composing grammatically and syntactically
competent Greek; scholars have recourse to secretarial interference to explain stylistic
differences within the corpus of Josephus’ writings (Richards, Paul, 143).
Authorship 23
composition of the Epistle completely impossible.”71 Others are more

modest in their claims. While allowing that some differences or develop-
ments in the theology represented in Ephesians vis-à-vis the undisputed
letters of Paul “could be accounted for by the historical Paul having to
address a different situation than the situations encountered in the undis-
puted letters . . . the number of differences that have to be accounted for
are too many for this to be a convincing explanation for the whole
phenomenon.”72 On the other side of this spectrum, scholars like Henry
Cadbury refused to “say dogmatically that certain thoughts in Ephesians
are unthinkable for Paul, or unthinkable for someone else” since “even in
ordinary life it is hard to be a mind-reader.”73 The question here concerns
whether Ephesians evidences different theological emphases than Paul’s
undisputed letters that are nevertheless compatible with those put forward
in the latter or whether the theology of Ephesians has moved beyond what
could plausibly have emerged from the same mind as Galatians, Romans,
or Philippians. Underlying such discussions is one’s view of how flexible
Paul could be in his theological expressions and foci versus how consistent
and systematic a thinker one believes Paul to have been.74 The differences
in theological emphasis are indisputable; the consequences for authorship
are far from clear.
It is striking to hear the words “you have been saved” (Eph 2:5, 8) in a
letter attributed to Paul when Paul’s own marked tendency elsewhere is to
speak of salvation as a future event (see, e.g., Rom 5:9–10; 10:9, 13; 11:26;
13:11; 1 Cor 3:15; 5:5; 2 Cor 7:10; Phil 1:28; 1 Thess 5:8–9) or as a work-in-
progress (1 Cor 1:18; 15:2; 2 Cor 2:15; Phil 2:12), but very rarely as something
accomplished in the past (Rom 8:24).75 Lincoln suggests on this basis that
Ephesians “does away with the typical distinction for Paul between present
71
W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press,
1964), 254.
72
73
Cadbury, “Dilemma,” 101.
74
As Cadbury (“Dilemma,” 92) rightly observed, “in this obscure area of psychological
probability in authorship the problem of the origin of Ephesians ultimately lies.”
75
Some Pauline uses lack a clear temporal frame vis-à-vis a particular believer or group of
believers (Rom 1:16; 10:1; 11:11; 1 Cor 1:21; 7:16; 9:22; 10:33; 2 Cor 1:6; 1 Thess 2:16). See
David A. deSilva, Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel (Bellingham, WA: Lexham
Press, 2014), 35–38.
justification and future salvation.”76 This distinction, however, is far from

“typical” for Paul. Indeed, it occurs only in Romans among the undisputed
letters, and there most clearly only in Romans 5:9–10. If one regards
Romans as the normative statement of Paul’s thought, a letter with differ-
ent theological expressions than one finds in Romans will likely be judged
to be pseudonymous. If one regards Paul to have been more a pastorally
driven and improvisational thinker than a systematic theologian, there will
be greater room to accommodate the thought of more of the disputed
letters. The potential for circularity from both directions, however,
is evident.
In other letters, Paul gives attention to the significance of the disciple’s
dying with Christ (see Rom 6:3–4, 6–7, 11; Phil 3:10). He speaks of rising
with Christ metaphorically in terms of living a new kind or quality of life
beyond the power of sin and the flesh – powers to which the disciple has
“died” along with Christ (e.g., Rom 6:3–5, 11). It is only as a result of giving
oneself fully to this process – of putting to death the deeds of the body by
means of the Spirit (Rom 8:13) – that one arrives at the resurrection of the
dead, the rising to eternal life, that Christ himself experienced (Rom
8:11–12; Phil 3:10–12). In Ephesians, “there is no mention of dying with
Christ but only of being raised and seated with Christ” (Eph 2:5–6).77
Similarly, there is a notable emphasis on the present exaltation of Christ
(1:20–22; 2:6; 4:8–10) that some scholars feel has eclipsed Paul’s emphasis
on Christ’s death – though the latter is present to such an extent that
the contrast must be judged to be greatly overdrawn (see Eph 1:7; 2:13–14,
16; 5:2, 25).
Ephesians does not refer to Christ’s coming again or speak of the future
resurrection of the dead. There seems to be a cooling of the eschatological
fervency of the early Paul (who, in 1 Thess 4:13–18, for example, seemed to
expect to be alive to greet the returning Lord) in favor of “a more long-
term perspective on life in this world in its instructions about the Christian
training of children and its use of LXX Exodus 20:12 to promise long life on
earth to those children who honor their parents (6:1–4).”78 The letter,
76
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxiv.
77
78
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxiv. Similar observations can be made in regard to the view of
marriage in Ephesians vis-à-vis 1 Corinthians (see “bridging the horizons” section
following the commentary on 5:15–32).
Authorship 25
however, does not fail to acknowledge the fact that the believers still live in
hope and that the consummation of the process that God has initiated
among them remains a future reality (1:10, 14; 4:30; 5:5; 6:8, 13). The
apocalyptic framework of a present age (or series of ages) and a “coming
age” or “ages” remains intact (1:21; 2:7). Despite the exaltation of their Lord
above all powers, hostile spirits still exercise domination over the vast
majority of people in the present age (2:1–3) and pose a threat to believers
that calls for their vigilance and disciplined use of all that God has put at
their disposal (6:10–20).
Here one’s decision will be influenced by the degree to which one thinks
the emphasis on Christ’s exaltation (and the believers’ sharing in this
exaltation in some sense in the present “in the heavenlies”) is due to a
shift in authorship or a shift in circumstances and concerns calling forth a
fresh conceptualization of God’s achievement in Christ on behalf of Christ-
followers from the same author.79 Attention will be given throughout the
commentary to the pastoral concerns that might plausibly account for the
particular emphases in this discourse. At the same time, one should bear in
mind that Paul is not merely an eschatological thinker, but an apocalyptic
one. If he expresses a greater interest in the temporal dimension of God’s
interventions in some letters and in the spatial dimension of God’s
ordering of the cosmos in others, he has not left a fundamentally apoca-
lyptic orientation. The focus that one finds in Ephesians on hostile spiritual
forces and Christ’s exaltation above those forces “in the heavenly places” is
just as much at home in apocalypticism as a focus on epoch-ending events
yet to come.
The conceptualization of “the church” in Ephesians vis-à-vis the undis-
puted Pauline letters is another factor in arguments favoring pseudonym-
ity. Ephesians uses the noun ekklēsia to refer to the church as a movement
that transcends any single location, whereas Paul typically uses the noun in
the singular to name a particular local congregation or cluster of congre-
gations in one locale and in the plural to any number of local
79
Arnold, for example, explains “the cosmic Christology and the realized eschatology . . .
in terms of the apostle Paul’s skillful and contextually appropriate remarks to people
who need to be reminded of Christ’s supremacy over the powers of darkness and the
believers’ participation in Christ’s power and authority over this realm” (Ephesians, 47);
cf. also Clinton E. Arnold, Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light
of Its Historical Setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 124–29, 145–58.
congregations. There are, of course, exceptions where Paul does use the
singular to name the church as a single, translocal entity (see 1 Cor 10:32;
12:28; 15:9; Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6; Col 1:18, 24), so that the usage in Ephesians
remains within the range of Pauline usage. What is strange is the concen-
tration of occurrences of what is a rarer use for Paul in a single letter (Eph
1:22; 3:10, 21; 5:23–25, 27, 29, 32), and this to the exclusion of the more
common use. As developed in greater detail below, however,80 the differ-
ence may well reflect the nature of Ephesians as a more general letter that
does not seek to intervene in perceived problems facing particular congre-
gations and Paul’s own interest in focusing local congregations on a
broader view of the movement – indeed, the cosmos-filling kingdom – of
which they are a part.
The absence of themes determined to be of central importance to Paul,
such as justification by faith, is occasionally raised as an objection to
Pauline authorship. However, Paul does not mention “justification by
faith” in 1 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, or Philemon among his
undisputed letters.81 The absence of themes that dominate some letters
(Galatians and Romans), however, does not make a strong contribution to
the argument for pseudepigraphy. It only signifies that a particular topic
did not need to be addressed in a particular situation.82 The absence of
Judaizing rivals in Ephesus and the surrounding churches would explain
the absence of the language of “justification by faith” adequately. It is
because rival preachers make the means of justification the issue in
Galatia that Paul counters forcefully and frequently with this language
there; in Romans, Paul dwells on the theme because he must defend his
understanding of justification against the misrepresentations of his proc-
lamation of a gospel without law. Attaining “righteousness” by the inter-
vening power of God, however, is a clear theme in Ephesians (Eph 4:24; 5:9;
6:14) as it is in both Galatians (2:21; 5:5–6) and Philippians (3:9). Some have
suggested that the absence of any hint of the debates over the basis of
Gentile inclusion that gave rise to Paul’s formulations of “justification on
the basis of faith and not on the basis of works of the law” dates Ephesians
80
See “A Closer Look: The ekklēsia/ekklēsiai in the Pauline letters,” 101–102.
81
The verb appears without the qualification “by faith” in 1 Cor 4:5; 6:11. Philippians
mentions “righteousness” coming “by faith” (Phil 3:9), though not the verb “justify.”
82
Richards, Paul, 142; Witherington, Captivity Epistles, 15.
Authorship 27
to a period following Paul’s death.83 There is also no hint of this debate in

the Thessalonian or Corinthian correspondence, however, and there are
plausible historical and pastoral factors that might account for the precise
tenor of the discussion of the union of Jews and Gentiles in the “one body”
as found in Ephesians – as for several other alleged incompatibilities
between the thought of Ephesians and the historical Paul, all of which will
be treated in detail as they arise in the course of the commentary.
Relationship to Colossians
Anyone reading both Ephesians and Colossians will quickly perceive that
the two letters share a great deal in common, likely more than any other
two Pauline letters. Andrew Lincoln provides the following statistics: “Of the
1,570 words in Colossians, 34 percent reappear in Ephesians, and conversely
26.5 percent of the 2,411 words in Ephesians are paralleled in Colossians.”84
This does not yield, however, verbatim parallels of any significant length
apart from the very mundane introduction of Tychicus and his mission.
There we find Ephesians 6:21–22 reproducing thirty-two words out of a
string of thirty-four present in Colossians 4:7–8. Beyond that, there are three
places where one can find verbatim correspondence in a string of seven
consecutive words (Eph 1:1–2 and Col 1:1–2; Eph 3:2 and Col 1:25; Eph 3:9 and
Col 1:26) and two places where one can find identical strings of five words
(Eph 1:7 and Col 1:14; Eph 4:16 and Col 2:19).85 While verbatim parallels are
thus rather few, there is a great deal more in the way of shared vocabulary
and phrases, ideas and ethical principles, and distinctive stylistic features
(e.g., long sentences, frequent relative clauses, genitive constructions, and
prepositional phrases with en).86
Table 1 lays out some of the more striking instances of parallel material.
Even within these parallels, however, there are some significant differences
in the details of each letter. For example, in Colossians 1:19 the “fullness”
dwells in Christ whereas in Ephesians 1:23 the church is in some sense the
“fullness.” Colossians 1:20–22 does not emphasize the horizontal dimen-
sions of reconciliation, whereas Ephesians 2:13–18 does so very explicitly.
83
Lincoln, Ephesians, xcii, xciii.
84
Lincoln, Ephesians, xlviii; cf. Mitton, Ephesians, 57.
85
Lincoln, Ephesians, xlviii; Witherington, Captivity Epistles, 13.
86
Witherington, Captivity Epistles, 13.
Table 1 Parallels in Ephesians and Colossians
Ephesians Colossians Shared emphases

1:1–2 1:1–2 Addressees as “holy and faithful”
1:22–23 1:18–19 Christ as the head of the body, the church; some reference
to “fullness”
2:13–18 1:20–22 From alienation to reconciliation with God through Jesus’
death on the cross
4:16 2:19 The connectedness of the body to, and its drawing of its
nourishment from, Christ
4:22–24 3:9–10 Putting off the old and putting on the new “person”
5:19–20 3:16 Singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and giving
thanks to God
5:22–6:9 3:18–4:1 Guidelines for fulfilling the various roles in the Christian
household
6:21–22 4:7–8 Tychicus’ commendation and commission
Table 2 Parallels scattered throughout verses in Ephesians and Colossians
Colossians Ephesians
“Put off” “to put off,” “putting off,” 4:22, 25
“anger, wrath, malice, “wrath, anger . . . slander . . . along with all malice,” 4:31
slander”
“and abusive language” “shameful and foolish talk” (aischrotēs . . . mōrologia,
(aischrologian) 5:4, my translation)?
“from your mouth” “from your mouth,” 4:29
“Do not lie to one another” “putting away falsehood” (i.e., “the lie,” 4:25)
Moreover, while the chart shows parallels appearing also in parallel

order, this hides the “messiness” of a great deal of the linguistic parallels in
these two letters. An exhortation from Colossians 3:8–9 provides an instruct-
ive example: “But now you must get rid of all such things – anger, wrath,
malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one
another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices.”
Almost every word has a parallel in Ephesians, but those parallels are
scattered throughout perhaps ten verses of Ephesians (Table 2).
The relationship of the language shared by the two letters is thus quite
complicated. Nevertheless, while Ephesians contains echoes of several
others of Paul’s letters (most notably Romans), the degree of overlap with
Colossians in particular calls for some explanation.
Authorship 29
The most common is that the author of one of these texts used the other
directly as a resource, and the default position is that the longer letter
(Ephesians) represents an expansive reworking of the shorter (Colossians).
Theoretically this makes good sense: the shorter letter is written in
response to particular challenges facing the congregation in Colossae
and, perhaps, the congregations in its neighboring cities; this material is
then stripped of its situational particularities and reworked into a more
general letter for the benefit of the congregations in (fairly) nearby Ephesus
and, perhaps, a broader Christian audience throughout the Roman pro-
vince of Asia.87 Literary dependence, however, then becomes a sign – for
some, a decisive sign – of non-Pauline authorship.88 For others, however,
the nature of the differences in style, the use of particular words, the shifts
in emphases and perspectives, makes pseudonymous authorship more
difficult to explain.89 Would not an imitator seek to reproduce facets of
the master’s work more precisely (as one sees, for example, in the late
forgery, the Letter to the Laodiceans)?
Nevertheless, it is impossible simply to affirm the dependence of
Ephesians upon Colossians and do justice to the data they bring forward.
A number of scholars have shown that the relationship between these two
letters is far more complex. As early as the nineteenth century, Heinrich
Holtzmann perceived the difficulty with supposing simple dependence in
either direction. His solution was to suggest that Paul wrote a shorter
version of Colossians while a second author developed this into
Ephesians and then further expanded Colossians on the basis of his own
work in Ephesians.90 More recently, John Coutts pursued a close study of a
number of parallel passages (Eph 2:20–22; 3:17; 4:15b–16; Col 1:23a; 2:7; 2:19;
2:2), suggesting that the author of Colossians drew upon Ephesians rather
than the reverse. If Colossians is dependent on Ephesians, the language of
87
Cf. Lincoln, Ephesians, l–li.
88
Lincoln, Ephesians, lxvi.
89
So Luke T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 2010), 361; O’Brien, Ephesians, 9; Witherington, Captivity Epistles, 13.
90
Heinrich J. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe: Auf Grund Einer Analyse
Ihres Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1872), summarized in
Ernest Best, “Who Used Whom? The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians,” NTS
43 (1997): 72–96, 72. A. van Roon has suggested a similar solution, namely that
Colossians and Ephesians both used an earlier, now lost document as a resource
(Authenticity, 413–37).
each of these passages in Colossians can be traced to a single passage in

Ephesians. If, however, Ephesians is supposed to depend on Colossians, as
is more typically affirmed, each of the passages in Ephesians appears to
have been derived from conflating three separate passages in Colossians – a
much more complex and quite unnatural way for one writer to use the
work of another.91 As Ernest Best points out in his own study of this
question, “authors do not search the documents of other writers to find
suitable words at diverse points in them which they can draw together to
express their own ideas.”92
Arguing the dependence of Colossians upon Ephesians, however, would
also fail to account for those other places where dependence might more
naturally be seen to go in the other direction. In many instances, Best finds
it more likely that the writer (or, for him, writers) of Ephesians and
Colossians drew upon traditional material rather than one drawing upon
the other directly.93 He suggests this particularly in the case of the instruc-
tions for members of a household (Eph 5:22–6:9; Col 3:18–4:1), the schema
of the “old” and “new” person (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:8–12), and the repertoire
of “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19–20; Col 3:16–17), which
he thinks may reflect the terminology in use in the writers’ worship
context.94 He suggests that the two authors “may have belonged to a school
of Pauline disciples and may with other members of the school have talked
over their master’s theology and developed it. This hypothesis makes it
possible to account for both the similarities and dissimilarities of the two
letters, apart from Col 4.7–8 and Eph. 6.21–22.”95 If there is any dependence
of one letter upon the other, it would not be literary dependence that posits
an author pasting together snatches from a copy of the other letter, but
rather that of an author drawing upon his memories of the other text.96
91
John Coutts, “The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians,” NTS 4 (1958): 201–7,
201–2.
92
Best, “Who Used Whom,” 76. He himself looks closely at the material in Eph 1:15–16
(drawn from Col 1:4, 9) and Eph 1:17 (drawn from on Col 1:14, 20) on the way to arriving
at this determination. See also the discussion in O’Brien, Ephesians, 8–21; Marcus Barth
and Helmut Blanke, Colossians, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1995),
72–80.
93
Best (“Who Used Whom,” 94) allows for the possibility, however, that one author
(whether Paul or not) might have written both letters.
94
Best, “Who Used Whom,” 81, 82, 84.
95
Best, “Who Used Whom,” 93.
96
Best, “Who Used Whom,” 77.
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towards the whole free colored population of the United States. I
understand that policy to comprehend: First, the complete
suppression of all anti-slavery discussion; second, the expulsion
of the entire free people of the United States; third, the
nationalization of slavery; fourth, guarantees for the endless
perpetuation of slavery and its extension over Mexico and
Central America. Sir, these objects are forcibly presented to us in
the stern logic of passing events, and in all the facts that have
been before us during the last three years. The country has
been and is dividing on these grand issues. Old party ties are
broken. Like is finding its like on both sides of these issues, and
the great battle is at hand. For the present the best
representative of the slavery party is the Democratic party. Its
great head for the present is President Pierce, whose boast it
was before his election, that his whole life had been consistent
with the interests of slavery—that he is above reproach on that
score. In his inaugural address he reassures the South on this
point, so there shall be no misapprehension. Well, the head of
the slave power being in power it is natural that the pro-slavery
elements should cluster around his administration, and that is
rapidly being done. The stringent protectionist and the free-
trader strike hands. The supporters of Fillmore are becoming the
supporters of Pierce. Silver Gray Whigs shake-hands with
Hunker Democrats, the former only differing from the latter in
name. They are in fact of one heart and one mind, and the union
is natural and perhaps inevitable. Pilate and Herod made
friends. The key-stone to the arch of this grand union of forces of
the slave party is the so-called Compromise of 1850. In that
measure we have all the objects of our slaveholding policy
specified. It is, sir, favorable to this view of the situation, that the
whig party and the democratic party bent lower, sunk deeper,
and strained harder in their conventions, preparatory to the late
presidential election to meet the demands of slavery. Never did
parties come before the northern people with propositions of
such undisguised contempt for the moral sentiment and religious
ideas of that people. They dared to ask them to unite with them
in a war upon free speech, upon conscience, and to drive the
Almighty presence from the councils of the nation. Resting their
platforms upon the fugitive slave bill they have boldly asked this
people for political power to execute its horrible and hell-black
provisions. The history of that election reveals with great
clearness, the extent to which slavery has “shot its leprous
distillment” through the lifeblood of the nation. The party most
thoroughly opposed to the cause of justice and humanity
triumphed, while the party only suspected of a leaning toward
those principles was overwhelmingly defeated, and some say
annihilated. But here is a still more important fact, and still better
discloses the designs of the slave power. It is a fact full of
meaning, that no sooner did the democratic party come into
power than a system of legislation was presented to all the
legislatures of the Northern States designed to put those States
in harmony with the fugitive slave law, and with the malignant
spirit evinced by the national government towards the free
colored inhabitants of the country. The whole movement on the
part of the States bears unmistakable evidence of having one
origin, of emanating from one head, and urged forward by one
power. It was simultaneous, uniform, and general, and looked
only to one end. It was intended to put thorns under feet already
bleeding; to crush a people already bowed down; to enslave a
people already but half free; in a word, it was intended and well
calculated to discourage, dishearten, and if possible to drive the
whole free colored people out of the country. In looking at the
black law then recently enacted in the State of Illinois one is
struck dumb by its enormity. It would seem that the men who
passed that law, had not only successfully banished from their
minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame as well; these
law codes propose to sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to
provide the means of intelligence and refinement for the whites;
to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to
increase their educational fund.
“While this kind of legislation is going on in the States, a pro-
slavery political board of health is being established at
Washington. Senators Hale, Chase, and Sumner are robbed of
their senatorial rights and dignity as representatives of sovereign
States, because they have refused to be inoculated with the pro-
slavery virus of the times. Among the services which a senator is
expected to perform, are many that can only be done efficiently
as members of important committees, and the slave power in the
Senate, in saying to these honorable senators, you shall not
serve on the committees of this body, took the responsibility of
insulting and robbing the States which has sent them there. It is
an attempt at Washington to decide for the States who the
States shall send to the Senate. Sir, it strikes me that this
aggression on the part of the slave power did not meet at the
hands of the proscribed and insulted senators the rebuke which
we had a right to expect from them. It seems to me that a great
opportunity was lost, that the great principle of senatorial
equality was left undefended at a time when its vindication was
sternly demanded. But it is not to the purpose of my present
statement to criticize the conduct of friends. Much should be left
to the discretion of anti-slavery men in Congress. Charges of
recreancy should never be made but on the most sufficient
grounds. For of all places in the world where an anti-slavery man
needs the confidence and encouragement of his friends, I take
Washington—the citadel of slavery—to be that place.
“Let attention now be called to the social influences
operating and coöperating with the slave power of the time,
designed to promote all its malign objects. We see here the
black man attacked in his most vital interests: prejudice and hate
are systematically excited against him. The wrath of other
laborers is stirred up against him. The Irish, who, at home,
readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly
taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the
negro. They are taught to believe that he eats the bread that
belongs to them. The cruel lie is told them, that we deprive them
of labor and receive the money which would otherwise make its
way into their pockets. Sir, the Irish-American will find out his
mistake one day. He will find that in assuming our avocation, he
has also assumed our degradation. But for the present we are
the sufferers. Our old employments by which we have been
accustomed to gain a livelihood are gradually slipping from our
hands: every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to
make room for some newly arrived emigrant from the Emerald
Isle, whose hunger and color entitle him to special favor. These
white men are becoming house-servants, cooks, stewards,
waiters, and flunkies. For aught I see they adjust themselves to
their stations with all proper humility. If they cannot rise to the
dignity of white men, they show that they can fall to the
degradation of black men. But now, sir, look once more! While
the colored people are thus elbowed out of employment; while a
ceaseless enmity in the Irish is excited against us; while State
after State enacts laws against us; while we are being hunted
down like wild beasts; while we are oppressed with a sense of
increasing insecurity, the American Colonization Society, with
hypocrisy written on its brow, comes to the front, awakens to
new life, and vigorously presses its scheme for our expatriation
upon the attention of the American people. Papers have been
started in the North and the South to promote this long cherished
object—to get rid of the negro, who is presumed to be a standing
menace to slavery. Each of these papers is adapted to the
latitude in which it is published, but each and all are united in
calling upon the government for appropriations to enable the
Colonization Society to send us out of the country by steam.
Evidently this society looks upon our extremity as their
opportunity, and whenever the elements are stirred against us,
they are stimulated to unusual activity. They do not deplore our
misfortunes, but rather rejoice in them, since they prove that the
two races cannot flourish on the same soil. But, sir, I must
hasten. I have thus briefly given my view of one aspect of the
present condition and future prospects of the colored people of
the United States. And what I have said is far from encouraging
to my afflicted people. I have seen the cloud gather upon the
sable brows of some who hear me. I confess the case looks bad
enough. Sir, I am not a hopeful man. I think I am apt to
undercalculate the benefits of the future. Yet, sir, in this
seemingly desperate case, I do not despair for my people. There
is a bright side to almost every picture, and ours is no exception
to the general rule. If the influences against us are strong, those
for us are also strong. To the inquiry, will our enemies prevail in
the execution of their designs—in my God, and in my soul, I
believe they will not. Let us look at the first object sought for by
the slavery party of the country, viz., the suppression of the anti-
slavery discussion. They desire to suppress discussion on this
subject, with a view to the peace of the slaveholder and the
security of slavery. Now, sir, neither the principle nor the
subordinate objects, here declared, can be at all gained by the
slave power, and for this reason: it involves the proposition to
padlock the lips of the whites, in order to secure the fetters on
the limbs of the blacks. The right of speech, precious and
priceless, cannot—will not—be surrendered to slavery. Its
suppression is asked for, as I have said, to give peace and
security to slaveholders. Sir, that thing cannot be done. God has
interposed an insuperable obstacle to any such result. “There
can be no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” Suppose it were
possible to put down this discussion, what would it avail the
guilty slaveholder, pillowed as he is upon the heaving bosoms of
ruined souls? He could not have a peaceful spirit. If every anti-
slavery tongue in the nation were silent—every anti-slavery
organization dissolved—every anti-slavery periodical, paper,
pamphlet, book, or what not, searched out, burned to ashes, and
their ashes given to the four winds of heaven, still, still the
slaveholder could have no peace. In every pulsation of his heart,
in every throb of his life, in every glance of his eye, in the breeze
that soothes, and in the thunder that startles, would be waked up
an accuser, whose cause is, ‘thou art verily guilty concerning thy
brother.’”
This is no fancy sketch of the times indicated. The situation

during all the administration of President Pierce was only less
threatening and stormy than that under the administration of James
Buchanan. One sowed, the other reaped. One was the wind, the
other was the whirlwind. Intoxicated by their success in repealing the
Missouri compromise—in divesting the native-born colored man of
American citizenship—in harnessing both the Whig and Democratic
parties to the car of slavery, and in holding continued possession of
the national government, the propagandists of slavery threw off all
disguises, abandoned all semblance of moderation, and very
naturally and inevitably proceeded under Mr. Buchanan, to avail
themselves of all the advantages of their victories. Having legislated
out of existence the great national wall, erected in the better days of
the republic, against the spread of slavery, and against the increase
of its power—having blotted out all distinction, as they thought,
between freedom and slavery in the law, theretofore, governing the
Territories of the United States, and having left the whole question of
the legislation or prohibition of slavery to be decided by the people of
a Territory, the next thing in order was to fill up the Territory of
Kansas—the one likely to be first organized—with a people friendly
to slavery, and to keep out all such as were opposed to making that
Territory a free State. Here was an open invitation to a fierce and
bitter strife; and the history of the times shows how promptly that
invitation was accepted by both classes to which it was given, and
the scenes of lawless violence and blood that followed.
All advantages were at first on the side of those who were for
making Kansas a slave State. The moral force of the repeal of the
Missouri compromise was with them; the strength of the triumphant
Democratic party was with them; the power and patronage of the
federal government was with them; the various governors, sent out
under the Territorial government, was with them; and, above all, the
proximity of the Territory to the slave State of Missouri favored them
and all their designs. Those who opposed the making Kansas a
slave State, for the most part were far away from the battleground,
residing chiefly in New England, more than a thousand miles from
the eastern border of the Territory, and their direct way of entering it
was through a country violently hostile to them. With such odds
against them, and only an idea—though a grand one—to support
them, it will ever be a wonder that they succeeded in making Kansas
a free State. It is not my purpose to write particularly of this or of any
other phase of the conflict with slavery, but simply to indicate the
nature of the struggle, and the successive steps, leading to the final
result. The important point to me, as one desiring to see the slave
power crippled, slavery limited and abolished, was the effect of this
Kansas battle upon the moral sentiment of the North: how it made
abolitionists before they themselves became aware of it, and how it
rekindled the zeal, stimulated the activity, and strengthened the faith
of our old anti-slavery forces. “Draw on me for $1,000 per month
while the conflict lasts,” said the great-hearted Gerrit Smith. George
L. Stearns poured out his thousands, and anti-slavery men of smaller
means were proportionally liberal. H. W. Beecher shouted the right
word at the head of a mighty column; Sumner in the Senate spoke
as no man had ever spoken there before. Lewis Tappan representing
one class of the old opponents of slavery, and William L. Garrison
the other, lost sight of their former differences, and bent all their
energies to the freedom of Kansas. But these and others were
merely generators of anti-slavery force. The men who went to
Kansas with the purpose of making it a free State, were the heroes
and martyrs. One of the leaders in this holy crusade for freedom,
with whom I was brought into near relations, was John Brown,
whose person, house, and purposes I have already described. This
brave old man and his sons were amongst the first to hear and heed
the trumpet of freedom calling them to battle. What they did and
suffered, what they sought and gained, and by what means, are
matters of history, and need not be repeated here.
When it became evident, as it soon did, that the war for and
against slavery in Kansas was not to be decided by the peaceful
means of words and ballots, but that swords and bullets were to be
employed on both sides, Captain John Brown felt that now, after long
years of waiting, his hour had come, and never did man meet the
perilous requirements of any occasion more cheerfully,
courageously, and disinterestedly than he. I met him often during this
struggle, and saw deeper into his soul than when I met him in
Springfield seven or eight years before, and all I saw of him gave me
a more favorable impression of the man, and inspired me with a
higher respect for his character. In his repeated visits to the East to
obtain necessary arms and supplies, he often did me the honor of
spending hours and days with me at Rochester. On more than one
occasion I got up meetings and solicited aid to be used by him for
the cause, and I may say without boasting that my efforts in this
respect were not entirely fruitless. Deeply interested as
“Ossawatamie Brown” was in Kansas he never lost sight of what he
called his greater work—the liberation of all the slaves in the United
States. But for the then present he saw his way to the great end
through Kansas. It would be a grateful task to tell of his exploits in
the border struggle, how he met persecution with persecution, war
with war, strategy with strategy, assassination and house-burning
with signal and terrible retaliation, till even the blood-thirsty
propagandists of slavery were compelled to cry for quarter. The
horrors wrought by his iron hand cannot be contemplated without a
shudder, but it is the shudder which one feels at the execution of a
murderer. The amputation of a limb is a severe trial to feeling, but
necessity is a full justification of it to reason. To call out a murderer at
midnight, and without note or warning, judge or jury, run him through
with a sword, was a terrible remedy for a terrible malady. The
question was not merely which class should prevail in Kansas, but
whether free-state men should live there at all. The border ruffians
from Missouri had openly declared their purpose not only to make
Kansas a slave state, but that they would make it impossible for free-
state men to live there. They burned their towns, burned their farm-
houses, and by assassination spread terror among them until many
of the free-state settlers were compelled to escape for their lives.
John Brown was therefore the logical result of slaveholding
persecutions. Until the lives of tyrants and murderers shall become
more precious in the sight of men than justice and liberty, John
Brown will need no defender. In dealing with the ferocious enemies
of the free-state cause in Kansas he not only showed boundless
courage but eminent military skill. With men so few and odds against
him so great, few captains ever surpassed him in achievements,
some of which seem too disproportionate for belief, and yet no voice
has yet called them in question. With only eight men he met, fought,
whipped, and captured Henry Clay Pate with twenty-five well-armed
and well-mounted men. In this battle he selected his ground so
wisely, handled his men so skillfully, and attacked his enemies so
vigorously, that they could neither run nor fight, and were therefore
compelled to surrender to a force less than one-third their own. With
just thirty men on another memorable occasion he met and
vanquished 400 Missourians under the command of General Read.
These men had come into the territory under an oath never to return
to their homes in Missouri till they had stamped out the last vestige
of the free-state spirit in Kansas. But a brush with old Brown instantly
took this high conceit out of them, and they were glad to get home
upon any terms, without stopping to stipulate. With less than 100
men to defend the town of Lawrence, he offered to lead them and
give battle to 1,400 men on the banks of the Waukerusia river, and
was much vexed when his offer was refused by General Jim Lane
and others, to whom the defense of the place was committed. Before
leaving Kansas he went into the border of Missouri and liberated a
dozen slaves in a single night, and despite of slave laws and
marshals, he brought these people through a half dozen States and
landed them safe in Canada. The successful efforts of the North in
making Kansas a free State, despite all the sophistical doctrines, and
the sanguinary measures of the South to make it a slave State,
exercised a potent influence upon subsequent political forces and
events in the then near future. It is interesting to note the facility with
which the statesmanship of a section of the country adapted its
convictions to changed conditions. When it was found that the
doctrine of popular sovereignty (first I think invented by General
Cass, and afterwards adopted by Stephen A. Douglas) failed to
make Kansas a slave State, and could not be safely trusted in other
emergencies, southern statesmen promptly abandoned and
reprobated that doctrine, and took what they considered firmer
ground. They lost faith in the rights, powers, and wisdom of the
people and took refuge in the Constitution. Henceforth the favorite
doctrine of the South was that the people of a territory had no voice
in the matter of slavery whatever; that the Constitution of the United
States, of its own force and effect, carried slavery safely into any
territory of the United States and protected the system there until it
ceased to be a territory and became a State. The practical operation
of this doctrine would be to make all the future new States
slaveholding States, for slavery once planted and nursed for years in
a territory would easily strengthen itself against the evil day and defy
eradication. This doctrine was in some sense supported by Chief
Justice Taney, in the infamous Dred Scott decision. This new ground,
however, was destined to bring misfortune to its inventors, for it
divided for a time the democratic party, one faction of it going with
John C. Breckenridge and the other espousing the cause of Stephen
A. Douglas; the one held firmly to the doctrine that the United States
Constitution, without any legislation, territorial, national, or otherwise,
by its own force and effect, carried slavery into all the territories of
the United States; the other held that the people of a territory had the
right to admit slavery or reject slavery, as in their judgment they
might deem best. Now, while this war of words—this conflict of
doctrines—was in progress, the portentous shadow of a stupendous
civil war became more and more visible. Bitter complaints were
raised by the slaveholders that they were about to be despoiled of
their proper share in territory won by a common valor, or bought by a
common treasure. The North, on the other hand, or rather a large
and growing party at the North, insisted that the complaint was
unreasonable and groundless; that nothing properly considered as
property was excluded or meant to be excluded from the territories;
that southern men could settle in any territory of the United States
with some kinds of property, and on the same footing and with the
same protection as citizens of the North; that men and women are
not property in the same sense as houses, lands, horses, sheep,
and swine are property, and that the fathers of the Republic neither
intended the extension nor the perpetuity of slavery; that liberty is
national, and slavery is sectional. From 1856 to 1860 the whole land
rocked with this great controversy. When the explosive force of this
controversy had already weakened the bolts of the American Union;
when the agitation of the public mind was at its topmost height; when
the two sections were at their extreme points of difference; when
comprehending the perilous situation, such statesmen of the North
as William H. Seward sought to allay the rising storm by soft,
persuasive speech, and when all hope of compromise had nearly
vanished, as if to banish even the last glimmer of hope for peace
between the sections, John Brown came upon the scene. On the
night of the 16th of October, 1859, there appeared near the
confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, a party of 19
men—14 white and 5 colored. They were not only armed
themselves, but they brought with them a large supply of arms for
such persons as might join them. These men invaded the town of
Harper’s Ferry, disarmed the watchman, took possession of the
arsenal, rifle factory, armory, and other government property at that
place, arrested and made prisoners of nearly all the prominent
citizens in the neighborhood, collected about 50 slaves, put bayonets
into the hands of such as were able and willing to fight for their
liberty, killed 3 men, proclaimed general emancipation, held the
ground more than thirty hours, were subsequently overpowered and
nearly all killed, wounded, or captured by a body of United States
troops under command of Col. Robert E. Lee, since famous as the
rebel General Lee. Three out of the nineteen invaders were captured
while fighting, and one of them was Capt. John Brown—the man
who originated, planned, and commanded the expedition. At the time
of his capture Capt. Brown was supposed to be mortally wounded,
as he had several ugly gashes and bayonet wounds on his head and
body, and apprehending that he might speedily die, or that he might
be rescued by his friends, and thus the opportunity to make him a
signal example of slaveholding vengeance, would be lost, his
captors hurried him to Charlestown, 10 miles further within the
border of Virginia, placed him in prison strongly guarded by troops,
and before his wounds were healed he was brought into court,
subjected to a nominal trial, convicted of high-treason and inciting
slaves to insurrection, and was executed.
His corpse was given up to his woe-stricken widow, and she,
assisted by anti-slavery friends, caused it to be borne to North Elba,
Essex county, N. Y., and there his dust now reposes amid the silent,
solemn, and snowy grandeurs of the Adirondacks. This raid upon
Harper’s Ferry was as the last straw to the camel’s back. What in the
tone of southern sentiment had been fierce before became furious
and uncontrollable now. A scream for vengeance came up from all
sections of the slave States and from great multitudes in the North.
All who were supposed to have been any way connected with John
Brown were to be hunted down and surrendered to the tender
mercies of slaveholding and panic-stricken Virginia, and there to be
tried after the fashion of John Brown’s trial, and of course to be
summarily executed.
On the evening when the news came that John Brown had taken
and was then holding the town of Harper’s Ferry, it so happened that
I was speaking to a large audience in National Hall, Philadelphia.
The announcement came upon us with the startling effect of an
earthquake. It was something to make the boldest hold his breath. I
saw at once that my old friend had attempted what he had long ago
resolved to do, and I felt certain that the result must be his capture
and destruction. As I expected, the next day brought the news that
with two or three men he had fortified and was holding a small
engine house, but that he was surrounded by a body of Virginia
militia, who thus far had not ventured to capture the insurgents, but
that escape was impossible. A few hours later and word came that
Colonel Robert E. Lee with a company of United States troops had
made a breach in Capt. Brown’s fort, and had captured him alive
though mortally wounded. His carpet bag had been secured by
Governor Wise, and that it was found to contain numerous letters
and documents which directly implicated Gerritt Smith, Joshua R.
Giddings, Samuel G. Howe, Frank P. Sanborn, and myself. This
intelligence was soon followed by a telegram saying that we were all
to be arrested. Knowing that I was then in Philadelphia, stopping with
my friend, Thomas J. Dorsey, Mr. John Hern, the telegraph operator,
came to me and with others urged me to leave the city by the first
train, as it was known through the newspapers that I was then in
Philadelphia, and officers might even then be on my track. To me
there was nothing improbable in all this. My friends for the most part
were appalled at the thought of my being arrested then or there, or
while on my way across the ferry from Walnut street wharf to
Camden, for there was where I felt sure the arrest would be made,
and asked some of them to go so far as this with me merely to see
what might occur, but upon one ground or another they all thought it
best not to be found in my company at such a time, except dear old
Franklin Turner—a true man. The truth is, that in the excitement
which prevailed my friends had reason to fear that the very fact that
they were with me would be a sufficient reason for their arrest with
me. The delay in the departure of the steamer seemed unusually
long to me, for I confess I was seized with a desire to reach a more
northern latitude. My friend Frank did not leave my side till “all
ashore” was ordered and the paddles began to move. I reached New
York at night, still under the apprehension of arrest at any moment,
but no signs of such event being made, I went at once to the Barclay
street ferry, took the boat across the river and went direct to
Washington street, Hoboken, the home of Mrs. Marks, where I spent
the night, and I may add without undue profession of timidity, an
anxious night. The morning papers brought no relief, for they
announced that the government would spare no pains in ferretting
out and bringing to punishment all who were connected with the
Harper’s Ferry outrage, and that papers as well as persons would be
searched for. I was now somewhat uneasy from the fact that sundry
letters and a constitution written by John Brown were locked up in
my desk in Rochester. In order to prevent these papers from falling
into the hands of the government of Virginia, I got my friend Miss
Ottilia Assing to write at my dictation the following telegram to B. F.
Blackall, the telegraph operator in Rochester, a friend and frequent
visitor at my house, who would readily understand the meaning of
the dispatch:
“B. F. Blackall, Esq.,

“Tell Lewis (my oldest son) to secure all the important papers
in my high desk.”
I did not sign my name, and the result showed that I had rightly
judged that Mr. Blackall would understand and promptly attend to the
request. The mark of the chisel with which the desk was opened is
still on the drawer, and is one of the traces of the John Brown raid.
Having taken measures to secure my papers the trouble was to
know just what to do with myself. To stay in Hoboken was out of the
question, and to go to Rochester was to all appearance to go into the
hands of the hunters, for they would naturally seek me at my home if
they sought me at all. I, however, resolved to go home and risk my
safety there. I felt sure that once in the city I could not be easily
taken from there without a preliminary hearing upon the requisition,
and not then if the people could be made aware of what was in
progress. But how to get to Rochester became a serious question. It
would not do to go to New York city and take the train, for that city
was not less incensed against the John Brown conspirators than
many parts of the South. The course hit upon by my friends, Mr.
Johnston and Miss Assing, was to take me at night in a private
conveyance from Hoboken to Paterson, where I could take the Erie
railroad for home. This plan was carried out and I reached home in
safety, but had been there but a few moments when I was called
upon by Samuel D. Porter, Esq., and my neighbor, Lieutenant-
Governor Selden, who informed me that the governor of the State
would certainly surrender me on a proper requisition from the
governor of Virginia, and that while the people of Rochester would
not permit me to be taken South, yet in order to avoid collision with
the government and consequent bloodshed, they advised me to quit
the country, which I did—going to Canada. Governor Wise in the
meantime, being advised that I had left Rochester for the State of
Michigan, made requisition on the governor of that State for my
surrender to Virginia.
The following letter from Governor Wise to President James
Buchanan (which since the war was sent me by B. J. Lossing, the
historian,) will show by what means the governor of Virginia meant to
get me in his power, and that my apprehensions of arrest were not
altogether groundless:
[Confidential.]
Richmond, Va., Nov. 13, 1859.
To His Excellency, James Buchanan, President of the United States, and to the
Honorable Postmaster-General of the United States:
Gentlemen—I have information such as has caused me,

upon proper affidavits, to make requisition upon the Executive of
Michigan for the delivery up of the person of Frederick Douglass,
a negro man, supposed now to be in Michigan, charged with
murder, robbery, and inciting servile insurrection in the State of
Virginia. My agents for the arrest and reclamation of the person
so charged are Benjamin M. Morris and William N. Kelly. The
latter has the requisition, and will wait on you to the end of
obtaining nominal authority as post-office agents. They need be
very secretive in this matter, and some pretext for traveling
through the dangerous section for the execution of the laws in
this behalf, and some protection against obtrusive, unruly, or
lawless violence. If it be proper so to do, will the postmaster-
general be pleased to give to Mr. Kelly, for each of these men, a
permit and authority to act as detectives for the post-office
department, without pay, but to pass and repass without
question, delay or hindrance?
Respectfully submitted by your obedient servant,
Henry A. Wise.
There is no reason to doubt that James Buchanan afforded

Governor Wise all the aid and coöperation for which he was asked. I
have been informed that several United States marshals were in
Rochester in search of me within six hours after my departure. I do
not know that I can do better at this stage of my story than to insert
the following letter, written by me to the Rochester Democrat and
American:
Canada West, Oct 31st, 1859.

Mr. Editor:
I notice that the telegraph makes Mr. Cook (one of the
unfortunate insurgents at Harper’s Ferry, and now a prisoner in
the hands of the thing calling itself the Government of Virginia,
but which in fact is but an organized conspiracy by one part of
the people against another and weaker) denounce me as a
coward, and assert that I promised to be present in person at the
Harper’s Ferry insurrection. This is certainly a very grave
impeachment whether viewed in its bearings upon friends or
upon foes, and you will not think it strange that I should take a
somewhat serious notice of it. Having no acquaintance whatever
with Mr. Cook, and never having exchanged a word with him
about Harper’s Ferry insurrection, I am disposed to doubt if he
could have used the language concerning me, which the wires
attribute to him. The lightning when speaking for itself, is among
the most direct, reliable, and truthful of things; but when
speaking of the terror-stricken slaveholders at Harper’s Ferry, it
has been made the swiftest of liars. Under its nimble and
trembling fingers it magnifies 17 men into 700 and has since
filled the columns of the New York Herald for days with its
interminable contradictions. But assuming that it has told only
the simple truth as to the sayings of Mr. Cook in this instance, I
have this answer to make to my accuser: Mr. Cook may be
perfectly right in denouncing me as a coward; I have not one
word to say in defense or vindication of my character for
courage; I have always been more distinguished for running than
fighting, and tried by the Harper’s-Ferry-insurrection-test, I am
most miserably deficient in courage, even more so than Cook
when he deserted his brave old captain and fled to the
mountains. To this extent Mr. Cook is entirely right, and will meet
no contradiction from me, or from anybody else. But wholly,
grievously and most unaccountably wrong is Mr. Cook when he
asserts that I promised to be present in person at the Harper’s
Ferry insurrection. Of whatever other imprudence and
indiscretion I may have been guilty, I have never made a
promise so rash and wild as this. The taking of Harper’s Ferry
was a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote. At
any time or place, my wisdom or my cowardice, has not only
kept me from Harper’s Ferry, but has equally kept me from
making any promise to go there. I desire to be quite emphatic
here, for of all guilty men, he is the guiltiest who lures his
fellowmen to an undertaking of this sort, under promise of
assistance which he afterwards fails to render. I therefore
declare that there is no man living, and no man dead, who if
living, could truthfully say that I ever promised him, or anybody
else, either conditionally, or otherwise, that I would be present in
person at the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. My field of labor for the
abolition of slavery has not extended to an attack upon the
United States arsenal. In the teeth of the documents already
published and of those which may hereafter be published, I
affirm that no man connected with that insurrection, from its
noble and heroic leader down, can connect my name with a
single broken promise of any sort whatever. So much I deem it
proper to say negatively. The time for a full statement of what I
know and of all I know of this desperate but sublimely
disinterested effort to emancipate the slaves of Maryland and
Virginia from their cruel taskmasters, has not yet come, and may
never come. In the denial which I have now made, my motive is
more a respectful consideration for the opinions of the slave’s
friends than from my fear of being made an accomplice in the
general conspiracy against slavery, when there is a reasonable
hope for success. Men who live by robbing their fellowmen of
their labor and liberty have forfeited their right to know anything
of the thoughts, feelings, or purposes of those whom they rob
and plunder. They have by the single act of slaveholding,
voluntarily placed themselves beyond the laws of justice and
honor, and have become only fitted for companionship with
thieves and pirates—the common enemies of God and of all
mankind. While it shall be considered right to protect oneself
against thieves, burglars, robbery, and assassins, and to slay a
wild beast in the act of devouring his human prey, it can never
be wrong for the imbruted and whip-scarred slaves, or their
friends, to hunt, harass, and even strike down the traffickers in
human flesh. If any body is disposed to think less of me on
account of this sentiment, or because I may have had a
knowledge of what was about to occur, and did not assume the
base and detestable character of an informer, he is a man
whose good or bad opinion of me may be equally repugnant and
despicable.
Entertaining these sentiments, I may be asked why I did not
join John Brown—the noble old hero whose one right hand has
shaken the foundation of the American Union, and whose ghost
will haunt the bed-chambers of all the born and unborn
slaveholders of Virginia through all their generations, filling them
with alarm and consternation. My answer to this has already
been given; at least impliedly given—“The tools to those who
can use them!” Let every man work for the abolition of slavery in
his own way. I would help all and hinder none. My position in
regard to the Harper’s Ferry insurrection may be easily inferred
from these remarks, and I shall be glad if those papers which
have spoken of me in connection with it, would find room for this
brief statement. I have no apology for keeping out of the way of
those gentlemanly United States marshals, who are said to have
paid Rochester a somewhat protracted visit lately, with a view to
an interview with me. A government recognizing the validity of
the Dred Scott decision at such a time as this, is not likely to
have any very charitable feelings towards me, and if I am to
meet its representatives I prefer to do so at least upon equal
terms. If I have committed any offense against society I have
done so on the soil of the State of New York, and I should be
perfectly willing to be arraigned there before an impartial jury;
but I have quite insuperable objections to being caught by the
hounds of Mr. Buchanan, and “bagged” by Gov. Wise. For this
appears to be the arangement. Buchanan does the fighting and
hunting, and Wise “bags” the game. Some reflections may be
made upon my leaving on a tour to England just at this time. I
have only to say that my going to that country has been rather
delayed than hastened by the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. All
know that I had intended to leave here in the first week of
November.
Frederick Douglass.”
CHAPTER X.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
My connection with John Brown—To and from England—Presidential contest

—Election of Abraham Lincoln.
WHAT was my connection with John Brown, and what I knew of his
scheme for the capture of Harper’s Ferry, I may now proceed to
state. From the time of my visit to him in Springfield, Mass., in 1847,
our relations were friendly and confidential. I never passed through
Springfield without calling on him, and he never came to Rochester
without calling on me. He often stopped over night with me, when we
talked over the feasibility of his plan for destroying the value of slave
property, and the motive for holding slaves in the border States. That
plan, as already intimated elsewhere, was to take twenty or twenty-
five discreet and trustworthy men into the mountains of Virginia and
Maryland, and station them in squads of five, about five miles apart,
on a line of twenty-five miles; each squad to co-operate with all, and
all with each. They were to have selected for them, secure and
comfortable retreats in the fastnesses of the mountains, where they
could easily defend themselves in case of attack. They were to
subsist upon the country roundabout. They were to be well armed,
but were to avoid battle or violence, unless compelled by pursuit or
in self-defense. In that case, they were to make it as costly as
possible to the assailing party, whether that party should be soldiers
or citizens. He further proposed to have a number of stations from
the line of Pennsylvania to the Canada border, where such slaves as
he might, through his men, induce to run away, should be supplied
with food and shelter and be forwarded from one station to another
till they should reach a place of safety either in Canada or the
Northern States. He proposed to add to his force in the mountains
any courageous and intelligent fugitives who might be willing to
remain and endure the hardships and brave the dangers of this
mountain life. These, he thought, if properly selected, on account of
their knowledge of the surrounding country, could be made valuable
auxiliaries. The work of going into the valley of Virginia and
persuading the slaves to flee to the mountains, was to be committed
to the most courageous and judicious man connected with each
squad.
Hating slavery as I did, and making its abolition the object of my
life, I was ready to welcome any new mode of attack upon the slave
system which gave any promise of success. I readily saw that this
plan could be made very effective in rendering slave property in
Maryland and Virginia valueless by rendering it insecure. Men do not
like to buy runaway horses, nor to invest their money in a species of
property likely to take legs and walk off with itself. In the worse case,
too, if the plan should fail, and John Brown should be driven from the
mountains, a new fact would be developed by which the nation
would be kept awake to the existence of slavery. Hence, I assented
to this, John Brown’s scheme or plan for running off slaves.
To set this plan in operation, money and men, arms and
ammunition, food and clothing, were needed; and these, from the
nature of the enterprise, were not easily obtained, and nothing was
immediately done. Captain Brown, too, notwithstanding his rigid
economy, was poor, and was unable to arm and equip men for the
dangerous life he had mapped out. So the work lingered till after the
Kansas trouble was over, and freedom was a fact accomplished in
that Territory. This left him with arms and men, for the men who had
been with him in Kansas, believed in him, and would follow him in
any humane but dangerous enterprise he might undertake.
After the close of his Kansas work, Captain Brown came to my
house in Rochester, and said he desired to stop with me several
weeks; “but,” he added, “I will not stay unless you will allow me to
pay board.” Knowing that he was no trifler and meant all he said, and
desirous of retaining him under my roof, I charged three dollars a
week. While here, he spent most of his time in correspondence. He
wrote often to George L. Stearns of Boston, Gerrit Smith of

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Reformation Heritage Bible Commentary Galatians

The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early

David A. deSilva is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament at

general editor: Ben Witherington III

published volumes in the series

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

ii. recommended resources 40

iii. commentary on ephesians 46

2:11–22: “Then” and “Now,” Part 2 130

Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum

Num. Rab. Numbers Rabbah

T. Benj. Testament of Benjamin (Testaments of the Twelve

Ephesians is unlike many of Paul’s letters in that it neither polemicizes nor

faithful exercise of his divine commission on the addressees’ behalf

genre and structure

proceeds from theological argument (Eph 1–3) to ethical exhortation

followed by a propositio, summing up the points to be demonstrated to

“salvation . . . by God’s grace through faithfulness,” to be developed in 2:11–22; 3:1–21;

practices that would characterize a just and noble response to those

speaking ﬁguratively, to having “fought with wild animals in Ephesus”

A Closer Look: The Text of Ephesians 1:1

The addressees are primarily Gentile Christians, as they are consist-

committed to their calling to be “light” to their family members, neighbors,

unknown author, most likely a surviving member of Paul’s ministry team,

settled.35 Indeed, the arguments both in favor of authenticity and pseudo-

Author’s Relationship with the Audience

If the house churches continued to evangelize and multiply at anything

The Picture of Paul and the other Apostles in Ephesians

Style and Vocabulary

A number of the stylistic features of Ephesians, however, are thoroughly

praying the prayers of Israel, whether the canonical Psalms or prayers

concluded that no group of letters (including the Hauptbriefe) “stand[s]

Secretarial involvement is also evident in the composition of 1

Theological (In)compatibility with Undisputed Pauline Letters

composition of the Epistle completely impossible.”71 Others are more

justiﬁcation and future salvation.”76 This distinction, however, is far from

to a period following Paul’s death.83 There is also no hint of this debate in

Table 1 Parallels in Ephesians and Colossians

Ephesians Colossians Shared emphases

Table 2 Parallels scattered throughout verses in Ephesians and Colossians

Moreover, while the chart shows parallels appearing also in parallel

each of these passages in Colossians can be traced to a single passage in

This is no fancy sketch of the times indicated. The situation

“B. F. Blackall, Esq.,

Gentlemen—I have information such as has caused me,

There is no reason to doubt that James Buchanan afforded

Canada West, Oct 31st, 1859.

My connection with John Brown—To and from England—Presidential contest

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