Alexandrian terms, and suggests the ideas of the Gospel of John. (c) The conception of the Church as the body of Christ is new. (d) There is said to be a general softening of Pauline thought in the direction of the Christianity of the 2nd century, while very many characteristic ideas of the earlier epistles are absent.
With regard to the changed state of affairs in the Church, it must be said that this can be a conclusive argument only to one who holds the view of the Tübingen scholars, that the Apostolic Age was all of a piece and was dominated solely by one controversy. The change in the situation is surely not greater than can be imagined within the lifetime of Paul. That the epistle implies as already existent a developed system of Gnostic thought such as only came into being in the 2nd century is not true, and such a date is excluded by the external evidence. As to the other points, the question is, whether the admittedly new phase of Paul’s theological thought is so different from his earlier system as to be incompatible with it. In answering this question different minds will differ. But it must remain possible that contact with new scenes and persons, and especially such controversial necessities as are exemplified in Colossians, stimulated Paul to work out more fully, under the influence of Alexandrian categories, lines of thought of which the germs and origins must be admitted to have been present in earlier epistles. It cannot be maintained that the ideas of Ephesians directly contradict either in formulation or in tendency the thought of the earlier epistles. Moreover, if Colossians be accepted as Pauline (and among other strong reasons the unquestionable genuineness of the epistle to Philemon renders it extremely difficult not to accept it), the chief matters of this more advanced Christian thought are fully legitimated for Paul.
On the other hand, the characteristics of the thought in Ephesians give some strong evidence confirmatory of the epistle’s own claim to be by Paul. (a) The writer of Eph. ii. 11-22 was a Jew, not less proud of his race than was the writer of Rom. ix.-xi. or of Phil. iii. 4 ff. (b) The centre in all the theology of the epistle is the idea of redemption. The use of Alexandrian categories is wholly governed by this interest. (c) The epistle shows the same panoramic, pictorial, dramatic conception of Christian truth which is everywhere characteristic of Paul. (d) The most fundamental elements in the system of thought do not differ from those of the earlier epistles.
The view which denies the Pauline authorship of Ephesians has to suppose the existence of a great literary artist and profound theologian, able to write an epistle worthy of Paul at his best, who, without betraying any recognizable motive, presented to the world in the name of Paul an imitation of Colossians, incredibly laborious and yet superior to the original in literary workmanship and power of thought, and bearing every appearance of earnest sincerity. It must further be supposed that the name and the very existence of this genius were totally forgotten in Christian circles fifty years after he wrote. The balance of evidence seems to lie on the side of the genuineness of the Epistle.
If Ephesians was written by Paul, it was during the period of his imprisonment, either at Caesarea or at Rome (iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20). At very nearly the same time he must have written Colossians and Philemon; all three were sent by Tychicus. There is no strong reason for holding that the three were written from Caesarea. For Rome speaks the greater probability of the metropolis as the place in which a fugitive slave would try to hide himself, the impression given in Colossians of possible opportunity for active mission work (Col. iv. 3, 4; cf. Acts xxviii. 30, 31), the fact that Philippians, which in a measure belongs to the same group, was pretty certainly written from Rome. As to the Christians addressed, they are evidently converts from heathenism (ii. 1, 11-13, 17 f., iii. 1, iv. 17); but they are not merely Gentile Christians at large, for Tychicus carries the letter to them, Paul has some knowledge of their special circumstances (i. 15), and they are explicitly distinguished from “all the saints” (iii. 18, vi. 18). We may most naturally think of them as the members of the churches of Asia. The letter is very likely referred to in Col. iv. 16, although this theory is not wholly free from difficulties.
Bibliography.—The best commentaries on Ephesians are by C. J. Ellicott (1855, 4th ed. 1868), H. A. W. Meyer (4th ed., 1867), (Eng. trans. 1880), T. K. Abbott (1897), J. A. Robinson (1903, 2nd ed. 1904); in German by H. von Soden (in Hand-Commentar) (1891, 2nd ed. 1893), E. Haupt (in Meyer’s Kommentar) (8th ed., 1902). J. B. Lightfoot’s commentary on Colossians (1875, 3rd ed. 1879) is important for Ephesians also. On the English text see H. C. G. Moule (in Cambridge Bible for Schools) (1887). R. W. Dale, Epistle to the Ephesians; its Doctrine and Ethics (1882), is a valuable series of expository discourses.
Questions of genuineness, purpose, &c., are discussed in the New Testament Introductions of H. Holtzmann (1885, 3rd ed. 1892); B. Weiss (1886, 3rd ed. 1897, Eng. trans. 1887); G. Salmon (1887, 8th ed. 1897); A. Jülicher (1894, 5th and 6th ed. 1906, Eng. trans. 1904); T. Zahn (1897–1899, 2nd ed. 1900); and in the thorough investigations of H. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe (1872), and F. J. A. Hort, Prolegomena to St Paul’s Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians (1895). See also the works on the Apostolic Age of C. Weizsäcker (1886, 2nd ed. 1892, Eng. trans. 1894–1895); O. Pfleiderer (Das Urchristenthum) (1887, 2nd ed. 1902, Eng. trans. 1906); and A. C. McGiffert (1897).
On early attestation see A. H. Charteris, Canonicity (1880) and the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford, 1905).
The theological ideas of Ephesians are also discussed in some of the works on Paul’s theology; see especially F. C. Baur, Paulus (1845, 2nd ed. 1866–1867, Eng. trans. 1873–1874); O. Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus (1873, 2nd ed. 1890, Eng. trans. 1877); and in the works on New Testament theology by B. Weiss (1868, 7th ed. 1903, Eng. trans. 1882–1883); H. Holtzmann (1897), and G. B. Stevens (1899). See also Somerville, St Paul’s Conception of Christ (1897).
For a guide to other literature see W. Lock, art. “Ephesians, Epistle to,” in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible, the various works of Holtzmann above referred to, and T. K. Abbott’s Commentary, pp. 35-40. (J. H. Rs.)
EPHESUS, an ancient Ionian city on the west coast of Asia
Minor. In historic times it was situate on the lower slopes of the
hills, Coressus and Prion, which rise out of a fertile plain near the
mouth of the river Caÿster, while the temple and precinct of
Artemis or Diana, to the fame of which the town owed much of
its celebrity, were in the plain itself, E.N.E. at a distance of about
a mile. But there is reason to think both town and shrine had
different sites in pre-Ionian times, and that both lay farther
south among the foot-hills of Mt. Solmissus. The situation of
the city was such as at all times to command a great commerce.
Of the three great river basins of Ionia and Lydia, those of the
Hermus, Caÿster and Maeander, it commanded the second, and
had already access by easy passes to the other two.
The earliest inhabitants assigned to Ephesus by Greek writers are the “Amazons,” with whom we hear of Leleges, Carians and Pelasgi. In the 11th century B.C., according to tradition (the date is probably too early), Androclus, son of the Athenian king Codrus, landed on the spot with his Ionians and a mixed body of colonists; and from his conquest dates the history of the Greek Ephesus. The deity of the city was Artemis; but we must guard against misconception when we use that name, remembering that she bore close relation to the primitive Asiatic goddess of nature, whose cult existed before the Ionian migration at the neighbouring Ortygia, and that she always remained the virgin-mother of all life and especially wild life, and an embodiment of the fertility and productive power of the earth. The well-known monstrous representation of her, as a figure with many breasts, swathed below the waist in grave-clothes, was probably of late and alien origin. In early Ionian times she seems to have been represented as a natural matronly figure, sometimes accompanied by a child, and to have been a more typically Hellenic goddess than she became in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Twice in the period 700–500 B.C. the city owed its preservation to the interference of the goddess; once when the swarms of the Cimmerians overran Asia Minor in the 7th century and burnt the Artemision itself; and once when Croesus besieged the town in the century succeeding, and only retired after it had solemnly dedicated itself to Artemis, the sign of such dedication being the stretching of a rope from city to sanctuary. Croesus was eager in every way to propitiate the goddess, and since about this time her temple was being restored on an enlarged scale, he presented most of the columns required for the building as well as some
