THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF EPHESIANS THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF EPHESIANS surveys the modern debate on the authenticity of the letter. Attention is focus ed on the hypothesis of E. J. Goodspeed and on subsequent Ephesian studies which again point in the direction of Pauline authorship. }AMES J. COOK Ephesians provides one of the most baffling chapters in the story of modern New Testament research. Although the date, destination, and place of writing are naturally related questions, the essential problem is the question of authenticity. From the standpoint of chronology the debate on this question is relatively brief, for it was not necessary to speak of an Ephesian problem until about the middle of the nineteenth century. 1 Although Erasmus was struck by the stylistic peculiarity of Ephesians in comparison with the other letters of Paul, and an Englishman, Edward Evanson, disputed its authenticity in 1792, the modern history of the problem begins with W. M. L. deWette. DeWette first published his doubt about the authenticity of Ephesians in 1826. Less than twenty years later that doubt had grown to certainty. His reasons for denying the letter to Paul included the letter's Ephesian address, the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians, the verboseness and peculiarity of grammatical construction, and the presence of elements suggestive of a post-apostolic period. Inde­ pendently, Schleiermacher came to the opinion that Tychichus had written Ephesians on behalf of Paul. His judgment against authenticity was based upon the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians. From the time of the Tiibingen school to the end of the century, the criterion was the content of the letter. Baur and Schwegler saw indications of a post­ apostolic period in the emphasis on the unity of the church, in the ap­ parent reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, and in traces of Montanism. Baur detected some connection with Gnosticism as well. In the sixth and seventh decades of the century, the question of the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians moved into the foreground. The man chiefly responsible for this emphasis was H. J. Boltzmann. As a solution to the question of priority he offered a complex theory of inter­ dependence. The Ephesian letter, he argued, was composed by an author 1Much of the following sketch is dependent upon the summary of the history of the problem in Ernst Percy, Die Probleme der Kolosser-rmd Epheserbriefe (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1946), pp. 1-5. An earlier summary is in H. ]. Holtzmann, K1·itik der Epheser-1111d Kolosserbriefe (Leipzig : Wilhelm Engel­ mann, 1872), pp. 2-7. 3 living in the second century in imitation of a primitive Pauline Letter to the Colossians. Later, either this same author or another, expanded the small, primitive Colossians by an extensive interpolation of the non­ Pauline Ephesians. Although this view found little acceptance, Holtz­ mann' s analysis of the affinities between the two letters, and of their stylistic peculiarities commanded a lasting respect. Subsequently, the authenticity of Ephesians was denied by Wrede, Johannes Weiss, Bousset, Norden, Wendland, Reitzenstein, Moffatt, Goguel, Hans von Soden, Weinel, and Dibelius. Thus, by the third decade of the twentieth century, a substantial list of objections to the authenticity of Ephesians could be compiled. The most significant among them were these: ( 1) Ephesians differs from all admittedly Pauline letters in that it reflects no definite historical situation which it was intended to meet. Its detached tone suggests a treatise rather than a letter. (2) The doctrinal content of Ephesians differs substantially from that of any one of Paul's earlier letters, or from all of them taken together. In Galatians and Romans, e.g., Paul is struggling to gain an equal status with Jewish Christians for his Gentile converts. In Ephesians the status of the latter is not only taken for granted, but is deduced from the eternal purpose of God rather than from the abrogation of the law. Moreover, the doctrine of the church encountered in Ephesians is too developed to fit Paul's day. Paul writes to churches, not to the church. Yet, here Christians throughout the world are described as together making up the body of a single ecdesia, of which Christ is the Head. Suggestive of the same later period is the use of such terms as pleroma and aiones. (3) The writer's apparent veneration of apostles and prophets as the foundation of the church (Eph. 2: 20) and the holy recipients of revelation (Eph. 3:5) is not only inconsistent with Paul's expressed atti­ tude (I Cor. 3: 11), but also echoes a post-apostolic period. ( 4) The style of the letter with its unusually long sentences is unlike anything else that is recognized as from the pen of Paul. Ephesians seems hopelessly remote from the characteristically rapid, terse, and incisive manner of Paul. ( 5) A vocabulary analysis reveals an unusually high percentage of words which are not found elsewhere in Paul's epistles. For example, ho diabolos is used twice in Ephesians ( 4: 27; 6: 11), whereas the pre· ferred Pauline word for this meaning is satanas. ( 6) The literary relationship between Colossians and Ephesians is absolutely unique among Paul's letters. While the numerous parallel passages suggest a common authorship, the fact that the similarities often convey very different ideas points to another author for Ephesians. 4 (7) If the Ephesian address is maintained, Pauline authorship is incredible. Not only is there an inexplicable absence of personal warmth and greeting for this cherished congregation, but it is also apparent that the letter's writer and recipients are personal strangers (Eph. 1:15). This critical offensive against Ephesians did not go unanswered. Bernhard Weiss replied to the arguments of deWette, von Soden, Holtz­ mann, and Schwegler. F. J. A. Hort contributed what was to become a classic defense of the Pauline authorship. These defenders, fortified by the unanimous testimony of the external evidence, met the internal argu­ ments point by point. They were subsequently joined by Abbott, Lock, Zahn, and Harnack. Somewhere between the offense and the defense was the position held by Adolf Jiilicher. He admitted that on the whole, there was no serious objection to the hypothesis that about A.D. 90, a Pauline Christian, inti­ mately familiar with the Pauline epistles (especially Colossians), wrote Ephesians in Paul's name as a plea for true catholicism. Yet, he refrained from going beyond the conclusion that in view of the difficulty of the decision, the question ought to be left open as not yet ripe for settlement. Jiilicher was representative of a group of scholars who were aware of the strength of the arguments against the Pauline authorship, but were restrained by certain factors from a complete break with authenticity. These restraining factors have been summarized as follows: 1. No set of circumstances has yet been suggested into which the production of Ephesians by a disciple of Paul after his death can convincingly be placed. 2. No sufficient motive has been proposed to account for the produc­ tion of such a letter in the name of Paul, yet written by a disciple of Paul. 3. We have already noted the curious relationship of Ephesians to Colossians - its very close dependence on Colossians, and yet, in comparison, its neglect of other Pauline epistles; its strangely pli­ able use of phrases borrowed from Colossians, and the absence of considerable verbatim borrowings. This relationship is very hard to explain on the assumption that Ephesians is an imitative work based on Colossians by some non-Pauline author. 4. No adequate explanation is forthcoming of the recognition from earliest times of Ephesians as a Pauline epistle, and of its un­ disputed place in the Pauline Corpus, except on the assumption of Pauline authorship. 2 This, then, was the situation as the twentieth century entered its second quarter. New Testament students were divided into three groups over Ephesians: one maintaining its traditional authorship; a second holding 2c. L. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 43. 5 it to be the work of a Paulinist; and a third contending that the unsolved problems on either side demanded an open verdict. It was at this juncture that the American New Testament scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed entered the debate. Joining himself to the second group, he offered to the third a reconstruction designed to remove each restraining factor. Goodspeed took as his starting point what he termed a series of ob­ jective considerations generally accepted by modern learning, namely: that Ephesians is not by Paul; that it was not addressed to the Ephesians, but to Christians everywhere; that it comes from about A. D. 90 or a little later; that it deals with Christian unity, against the rising sects; that it shows acquaintance with other Pauline letters; and that it has certain ideas of its own to bring forward and emphasize. The segment of New Testament scholarship which had accepted these considerations was no more able to provide an occasion for the writing of Ephesians than were the Pauline defenders. Representative of those who found this critical failure to be decisive for authenticity was, as we have seen, Ji.ilicher who climaxed his discussion of the problem with the observation: "Nor has a clear hypothesis of the circumstances under which a Paulus redivivus might have composed the Epistle to the Ephesians ever been provided, for it is impossible to see what purpose he could have served or why he made such a particularly thorough use of Colossians, when he himself did not lack independent ideas and was also acquainted with other Pauline Epistles." While others simply noted this gap, Goodspeed set himself to .fill it.