Ephesians in Tabor’s article The Quest for the Historical Paul: Sources, Presuppositions, and Method Are Everything. Extracts are below.
- Tier 2 – Disputed Paul or Deutero-Pauline: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians (80-100 A.D.)
- In tiers 2 and 3 the domestic roles of husbands, wives, children, widows, masters, and slaves are specified with a level of detail uncharacteristic of Paul’s ad hoc instructions in his earlier letters (Ephesians 5:21-6:9; Colossians 3:18-4:1; 1 Timothy 5:1-16). …
- Some have argued that the passing of time and the changing of circumstances might account for the differences, but detailed studies of the commonly used vocabulary in Paul’s undisputed letters, in contrast to the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral letters, has settled the question for most scholars. I will make little use of these later documents in trying to reconstruct the “historical Paul.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Epistle to the Ephesians – The first verse in the letter identifies Paul as its author. While early lists of New Testament books, including the Muratorian fragment and possibly Marcion’s canon (if it is to be equated with the Epistle to the Laodiceans), attribute the letter to Paul,[13] more recently there have been challenges to Pauline authorship on the basis of the letter’s characteristically non-Pauline syntax, terminology, and eschatology.[14] Footnote 14 – Attridge, Harold W.; Meeks, Wayne A., eds. (2006). The HarperCollins Study Bible (rev. ed.). New York: HarperCollins. pp. 1982–83. ISBN 978-0-06122840-7 has more about why Paul’s authorship is doubtful.
Did Paul Write “Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians”? by Bart Ehrman
- For one thing, the writing style is not Paul’s. Paul usually writes in short pointed sentences; the sentences in Ephesians are long and complex. … Some scholars have pointed out that in the hundred or so sentences in Ephesians, nine of them are over fifty words in length. Compare this with Paul’s own letters. Philippians for example has 102 sentences, only one of them over fifty words; Galatians has 181 sentences, again with only one over fifty words.
- The book also has an inordinate number of words that otherwise don’t occur in Paul’s writings, 116 altogether, well higher than average (50% more than Philippians, for example, which is about the same length).[4]
- But the main reason for thinking that Paul didn’t write Ephesians is that what the author says in places does not gel with what Paul himself says in his own letters. Ephesians 2:1-10, for example, certainly looks like Paul, but just on the surface. Here, as in the letters that Paul himself definitely wrote, we learn that believers were separated from God because of sin but have been made right with God exclusively through his grace, not as the result of “works.” But here, oddly, Paul includes himself as someone who before coming to Christ, was carried away, by the “passions of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and senses.” This doesn’t sound like the Paul of the undisputed letters, who says that he had been “blameless” with respect to the “righteousness of the law” (Phil. 3:4). In addition, even though he is talking about the relationship of Jew and Gentile in this letter, the author does not speak about salvation apart from the “works of the law”, as Paul does. He speaks instead of salvation apart from doing “good deeds.” That simply was not the issue Paul addressed.
- Re: Resurrection
- Relatedly, and most significantly, Paul was emphatic in his own writings that Christians who had been baptized had “died” to the powers of the world that were aligned with the enemies of God. They had “died with Christ.” But they had not yet been “raised” with Christ. That would happen at the end of time, when Jesus returned and all people, living and dead, would be raised up to face judgment. That’s why in Romans 6:1-4 Paul is emphatic: those who are baptized “have died” with Christ and they “will be raised” with him, at Jesus’ second coming. Paul was extremely insistent on this point, that the resurrection of believers was a future, physical event, not something that had happened yet…Paul devotes 1 Corinthians 15 to showing that no, the resurrection is not something that has happened yet. It is a future physical event yet to occur. Christians have not yet been raised with Christ.
- But contrast this statement with what Ephesians says: “Even when we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ…and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places” (2:5-6). Here believers have experienced a spiritual resurrection and are enjoying a heavenly existence in the here and now. This is precisely the view that Paul argued against in his letters to the Corinthians!
From Brittanica here https://www.britannica.com/topic/Letter-of-Paul-to-the-Ephesians.
- The words “in Ephesus” are lacking in the earliest manuscripts and citations, and
- The author probably wrote the text sometime before 90 CE while consulting Paul’s letter to the Colossians (see Letter of Paul to the Colossians). Of the 155 verses in Ephesians, 73 have verbal parallels with Colossians, and, when parallels to genuine Pauline epistles are added, 85 percent of Ephesians is duplicated elsewhere.
Another interesting point involves the name of the book. It is called “Ephesians” because most modern English translations of the letter begin with the author’s greeting to “the saints who are in Ephesus (1:1).” Ephesus was a major city in the province of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) where Paul was thought to have established a church. However, Ehrman notes that our earliest and best manuscripts of Ephesians lack the words “in Ephesus,” making it likely that it was not written to a specific Christian community but rather as a kind of general letter intended to circulate to many communities. From here.
Archaeology Gives New Reality to Paul’s Ephesus Riot by James R. Edwards
This BAR article has a lot of history about the city, Artimus, and the economics cited in Luke.
What are the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”?
Ephesians 6:10-12 — Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (NRSV)
