Here is an annotated list of books on Ephesians, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles (that is, the letters that are assigned a “secondary” standing in the New Testament collection of Paul’s letters because scholars doubt they were actually composed by Paul himself) with a couple of commentaries specifically on Ephesians.  One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. ****************************** Beker, J. Christiaan. The Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1991. A clear assessment of the theology of the Deutero-Pauline, especially in light of the views embodied in the undisputed Paulines. Ehrman, Bart D. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Biblical Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. San Francisco: Harper One, 2010. An account of the phenomenon of literary forgery (pseudepigraphy) throughout the early Christian tradition that asks how and why a [...]

When I have talked about the “disputed” Pauline letters, the ones that scholars have argued were not written by Paul (even though the author claims to be Paul), I have pointed out that one reason for thinking so is that the writing style of, say Ephesians, is significantly different from what you find in Paul’s “undisputed” letters, such as Romans and 1 Corinthians. Some readers have asked whether this argument is compromised by the fact that so many of Paul’s letters claim to be “co-authored.”  Colossians, for example, claims to be from Paul “and Timothy” but 1 Corinthians from Paul “and Sosthenes.”  If they were jointly authored, wouldn’t we expect differences in writing style?  So how convincing is this argument? Good question.  I deal with it in my book Forgery and Counterforgery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) pp. 212-13.  The book is written for scholars, but this particular discussion is not particularly difficult.  Here is what I say about the issue there.  You’ll notice that I adopt a rather polemical tone!  Ah, I was [...]

Now that I have summarized the major themes and emphases of Ephesians (in the previous post), I can move to the issues of who wrote it, when, and why. The “Who” is the big question in this case, with the “when” and “why” depending on our answer. As I indicated in the earlier post, broadly speaking Ephesians sounds like something that Paul could have written, since it addresses a number of themes known from Paul’s seven undisputed letters:  salvation coming by the death and resurrection of Jesus, the unity of Jew and gentile in the church, the need for strong ethical standards and behavior, etc.  There would, of course, be differences with a letter of this sort, since unlike Paul’s other letters that are addressed to specific situations of specific churches, and this appears to be  a circular letter in which the author addresses no specific problem, such as moral improprieties or false teachings, and therefore offers no specific resolutions. But even taking into account the different kind of letter it is, is it likely [...]