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 EPHESIANS

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EPHESIANS

this leads us first of all to try to ascertain the object of the letter to the Ephesians.

III. Object. — It has been said that St. Paul com- bated immoral doctrines and an antinomian propa- ganda that especially endangered those to whom the letters were addressed (Pfleitlerer), but this hypothesis would not e.vplain the dogmatic part of the Epistle, and even in the hortatory part nothing betokens po- lemical preoccupation. All the warnings adminis- tered are called forth by the pagan origin of the read- ers, and when the author addresses his prayers to Heaven in their behalf (Eph., i, 17 sqq.; iii, 14 sqq.) he does not mention any particular peril from which he would have God deliver their Christian life. Klopper thought that the author had Judeo-Christians in view, stDl denying converted pagans their full right in the Church, and Jacquier gives this as an additional mo- tive. Others have said that the Gentile-Christians of the Epistle had to be reminded of the privileges of the Jews. But not one word in the letter, even in the sec- tion containing exhortations to unity (Eph., iv, 2 sq.), reveals the existence of any antagonism among those to whom the Apostle writes, and there is no question of the reproduction or re-establishment of unity. The author never addresses himself to any save converted pagans, and all his considerations tend solely to pro- vide them with a full knowledge of the blessings which, despite their pagan origin, they have acquired in Christ and of the greatness of the love that C!od has shown them. If, in chapter iii, St. Paul speaks of his personal Apostleship, it is not by way of defending it against attacks but of expressing all his gratitude for having been called, in spite of his unworthiness, to an- nounce the great mystery of which he had sung the praises. Briefly, nothing in the letter allows us to suspect that it responds to any special need on the part of those to whom it is addressed, nor that they, on their side, had given the author any particular occa- sion for wTiting it. In so far as either its dogmatic or moral part is concerned, it might have been addressed to any churches whatever founded in the pagan world.

IV. To Whom Addressed. — To whom, then, was the Epistle addressed? This question has evoked a vari- ety of answers. There are critics who maintain the traditional opinion that the Epistle was written to the Ephesians exclusively (Danko, Cornely), but the greater number consider it in the light of a circular letter. Some maintain that it was addressed to Ephe- sus and the churches of which this city was, so to speak, the metropolis (Michelis, Harless, and Henle), while others hold that it was sent to the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse (H. Holtzmann) or to the circle of Christian communities within and around Colossa; and Laodicea (Godet, Haupt, Zahn, and Belser); or again to the faithful of Asia Minor (B. Weiss) or to all the Gentile-Christian Churches (Von Soden). The ques- tion can only be solved by comparing the Epistle with the knowledge possessed of the life and literary activity of the .\postle. Those who deny the authenticity of the letter must certainly grant that the Pseudo-Paul (i, 1) was careful to conform to literary and historical prolia- bilities; and if not, since the letter vouchsafes no di- rect indication as to the correspondents whom he sup- posed the Apostle to be addressing, it would be idle to imagine who they were.

The words iv 'E^^o-i^, in the first verse of the Epistle, do not belong to the primitive text. St. Basil attests that, even in his day, they were not met with in the ancient MSS.; in fact they are missing from the Co- dices B and K (first hand). Moreover, the examina- tion of the Epistle does not warrant the belief that it was addressed to the church in which the .\postle had sojourned longest. When St. Paul writes to one of his churches, he constantly alludes to his former relations with it (seeThess., Gal., Cor.), but here there is nothing personal, no greeting, no special recommendation, no

allusion to the author's past. Paul is unacquainted with his correspondents, although he has heard them spoken of (Eph., i, 15), and they have heard of him (Eph., iii, 2; cf. iv, 21). When addressing himself to any particular church, even be it at the time still a stranger to him as, for instance, Rome or Colossa;, the Apostle always assumes a personal tone; hence the abstract and general manner in which he treats his subject from the beginning to the end of the Epistle to the Ephesians can best be accountetl for by beholding in this Epistle a circular letter to a group of churches still unknown to Paul. But this explanation, founded on the encyclical character of the Epistle, loses its value if the Church of Ephesus is numbered among those addressed; for, during his three years' sojourn in this city, the Apostle had had frequent intercourse with the neighboining Christian communities, and in this case he would have had Ephesus especially in view, just as in wTiting to all the faithful of Achaia (II Cor., i, 1) it was chiefly to the Church of Corinth that he addressed himself.

Nevertheless, it was to a rather restricted circle of Christian communities that Paul sent tliis letter, as Tychicus was to visit them all and bring them news of him (Eph., vi, 21 sq.), which fact precludes the idea of all the churches of Asia Minor or of all the Gentile- Christian churches. Moreover, since Tychicus was bearer of the Epistle to the Colossians antl that to the Ephesians at one and the same time (Col., iv, 7 sq.), those to whom the latter was addressed could not have been far from Colossse, and we have every reason to suppose them in Asia Minor. However, we do not believe that the Epistle in question was addressed to the churches immediately surrountling Colossie, as the perils which threatened the faith of the Colossians vir- tually endangered that of the neighbouring communi- ties, and wherefore, then, two letters differing in tone and object? Having had no personal intercourse with the Colossians, the Apostle would have been sat- isfied to address to them antl their Christian neigh- bours an encyclical letter embodying all the matter treated in both Epistles. Hence it behooves us to seek elsewhere in Asia Minor, towards the year 60, a rather limited group of churches still unknown to St. Paul. Now, in the course of his three journeys, Paul had traversed all parts of Asia Minor except the northern provinces along the Black Sea, territory which he did not reach prior to his captivity. Nevertheless, the First Epistle of St. Peter shows us that the Faith had already penetrated these regions; hence, with the his- torical data at our disposal, it is in this vicinity that it seems most reasonable to seek those to whom the Epistle was addressed. These Christians must have been named in the authentic text of the inscription of this Epistle, as they are in all of St. Paul's letters. Now, whenever the substantive participle appears in one of these inscriptions, it serves the sole purpose of introducing the mention of locality. We are there- fore authorized to believe that, in the address of the Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph., i, 1: tois ar^loii otxriv KoX TTiffToTt iv Xpirrrip 'Ii;(7oO), this participle, so dif- ficult to understand in the received te.xt, originally pre- ceded the designation of the place inhabited by the readers. One might assume that the line containing this designation was omitted owing to some distrac- tion on the part of the first copyist; however, it wouUI then be necessary to admit that the mention of local- ity, now in question, occurred in the midst of qualifying adjectives applied by the Apostle to his roa<lers (a7(ois

Toif oSaiv iria-Tots), and this is something that

is never verified in the letters of St. Paul. Hence we may suppose that, in this address, the indication of place was corrupted rather than omitted, and this paves the way for conjectural restorations. We ourselves have proposed the following: to?s 47(015 Toi! oJirti' (tar' Ipiv rois iv X/Jicrrip 'Itjo-oO. (Ladeuze in Revue biblique, 1902, pp. 573 sq.) Grammati-