INTRODUCTION. § 1. THE FIRST READERS OF THE EPISTLE. PAUL came, for the first time, to Ephesus, the famous capital of proconsular Asia, as he, after a year and a half's sojourn in Corinth, was concluding his second missionary journey, and was travelling thence to Jerusalem. However, on this occasion he only touched at Ephesus, and stayed but a few days there (Acts xviii. 19, 20). Nevertheless, he even then formed connexions, and was besought to pass a longer time there; but a vow compelled him to haste; he therefore soon took leave, though with the promise of returning thither for a longer visit. This promise he very soon performed; after ending his journey, he left Jerusalem once more for his third missionary journey, and went through Galatia and Phrygia directly to Ephesus. Now, he found here so favourable a soil for the gospel, that he remained here two years and three months, and founded a prosperous church. (Acts xix. 8, 10.) He would probably have stopped there still longer, had not the goldsmith Demetrius obliged him, by a tumult, to leave the city. Meanwhile, the church in Ephesus had been sufficiently established. Judaism and Gentilism threatened it no more, but internal schisms through false teachers were imminent. When, therefore, Paul, in his last journey to Jerusalem, passed through Miletus, he sent thither for the presbyters of the Ephesian church, and took leave of them in a moving speech. (Acts xx. 17-38.) At a later period John chose for himself Ephesus as a centre for his comprehensive labours in Asia Minor. Their effects were so considerable, that a few decennia later Pliny was already obliged to write to Trajan that paganism appeared to be almost entirely lost in hither Asia. (Plin. Ep. x. 97.) To this important church in Ephesus the second of the shorter epistles of Paul is, according to its superscription and title, addressed. But extrinsic and intrinsic reasons combine to excite doubt as to that destination of the epistle. First, as to the extrinsic reasons. But little stress were to be laid on the fact in itself that MSS. B. and 67 have not v Epéow in the text (for the former, the Codex Vaticanus, has at least the words in the margin, and that by the original hand, and in Codex 67 they are wanting only ex emendatione), but this want becomes important by its coincidence with other data. For Tertullian informs us in his controversy with Marcion (adv. Marc. v. 11): prætereo hic et de aliâ epistolâ, quam nos ad Ephesios præscriptum habemus, hæretici (Marcion cum suis) verò ad Laodicenos; with which chapter xvii. of the same work is to be connected, where the words run: ecclesiæ quidem veritate (i. e., according to mere ecclesiastical tradition) epistolam istam ad Ephesios habemus emissam, non ad Laodicenos; sed Marcion ei titulum aliquanto interpolare (i. e, according to Tertullian's usual language, merely corrumpere, whether addendo or delendo) gestiit, quasi et in isto diligentissimus explorator. Nihil autem de titulis interest, quum ad omnes scripserit Apostolus, non ad quosdam. According to this, therefore, even in the time of Tertullian our epistle was known as an Epistle to the Ephesians; only Marcion and his sect declared it to be addressed to the Laodiceans. Tertullian does not intimate what reading they found in the passage Eph. i. 1, but it lies in the nature of the case that they could not have read ¿v 'Epéow, if they considered the epistle as addressed to the Laodiceans. Now, true as might have been, on the whole, Tertullian's charge against Marcion, that he had altered the text of the Scriptures, so far as he received them, yet it is not easy to see what could here have influenced him to the alteration. Dogmatical reasons determined him in his alterations; but these could find no application here. However, this notice of the African Father upon the Marcionite dealing with the epistle, becomes important only through the more accurate communication which we owe to Basil. (Basil. M. cont. Eunom. operum, vol. i. p. 254, edit. Garnier.) For this Father gives us express information as to the state of the MSS., and that, too, of the old MSS., in the passage Eph. i. 1. He informs us that the reading was: Tołę dyíos τοῖς οὐσι καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, with the important addition : οὕτω γὰρ καὶ οἱ πρὸ ἡμῶν παραδεδώκασι, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐν τοῖς παλαιοῖς τῶν ἀντιγράφων εὑρήκαμεν. Thus Basil grounds on tradition, and his own inspection of old MSS. the conviction, that the words ¿v 'Epéσw were wanting in the exordium of our epistle; the Father even uses this reading for a dogmatical argument; he finds in it that Paul calls the Ephesians övres, an intimation that they through the knowledge of faith, were essentially united to Christ, the only truly existing. (Τοῖς Ἐφεσίοις ἐπιστέλλων ὡς γνησίως ἡνωμένοις τῷ ὄντι δι' ἐπιγνώσεως, ὄντας αὐτοὺς ἰδιαζόντως ὠνόμασεν. **) Through this accu * In Jerome's Comm. on Ephes. i. 1, we also read: Paulus Ephesios essentiæ vocabulo nuncupavit; but the Father himself finds fault with that interpretation; he remarks: alii simpliciter vertunt; non ad eos qui sint, sed qui Ephesi sancti et fideles sint, scriptum arbitrantur. Böttger (Beit. part iii. p. 37) justly infers from the arbitrantur, that Jerome also did not find the reading ¿v 'Epɛco in the MSS., he only knew it as a conjecture. But I cannot accede to Böttger's view (that originally there was no name of a town rate communication Tertullian's reports as to the nature of the Marcionite text, as also the state of some of our MSS., certainly become very important. To these extrinsic arguments, which are calculated to excite doubts whether our epistle is addressed to the Ephesians, are added intrinsic ones also, by which these doubts are very much confirmed. We should expect from the relation of Paul to the Ephesian church, that some personal allusions to it and its members would be prominent features in the epistle. But such are altogether wanting. True, a hearty cordiality pervades the epistle, but that is based merely on the common consciousness of faith, not on personal acquaintance and friendship. The circumstance that Paul had commissioned Tychicus, the bearer of the epistle, to relate of him by word of mouth (vi. 21, 22), certainly in some measure explains a total want of greetings and personal intelligence; but still it is hard to think, in the case of an epistle of Paul to a church in which he lived longer than two years, that he should have spoken of their faith as if he had only heard of it by report (i. 15), and that he leaves in doubt whether the readers had heard of the grace of God which had been given to him (iii. 2). Thus, even apart from extrinsic reasons, the contents of our epistle itself lead us to suppose a wider circle of readers, whose circumstances were not known to the apostle in the same degree as those of the Ephesians must have been; for, that Paul means to address only those converted after his departure from Ephesus, who were therefore as yet unknown to him, is a totally inadmissible assumption, as nowhere is such a distinction among the Christians at Ephesus hinted at. We might resolve this difficulty by assuming that our epistle is the one written to the Laodiceans, of which mention is made Col. iv. 16, as Grotius, Mill, Wetstein, and lately Holzhausen, have asserted. For Paul did not know the Laodiceans personally; therefore the passages of our epistle, which surprise us as addressed to the Ephesians, would seem quite well adapted to the church in Laodicea. It was also obvious to seek in the similar assumption of the Marcionites a historical basis for this view, the rather that Marcion originated in Asia Minor, and therefore we might suppose his manuscripts to contain the purest text. But there are decisive reasons against this assumption. Had Paul written at the same time to the Christians in Colossæ and in Laodicea, he would not certainly have commissioned the Colossian Christians to make his greetings to the Laodiceans also (Col. iv. 15). Further, Paul's wish, that the Laodiceans might read the Epistle to the Colossians, seems to have but little motive, on the assumpstood in the greeting, and therefore ovo is to be taken in a pregnant sense), for the reason developed in what follows. |