Loading...The goal of this long “nutshell” thread on the New Testament is to introduce each of the twenty-seven books and summarize its major themes and emphases; to discuss what we can know about who wrote it, when, and why; to provide suggestions for further reading for anyone who is interested; and to give an additional post or two on some specific interesting feature of it.
We are now up to book # 10 (!), the Letter to the Ephesians; it is the fifth letter in the “Pauline corpus” (that is, the collection of NT writings attributed to the apostle Paul) and is the first that is widely considered among scholars to be pseudonymous – that is, even though it clearly claims to be written by Paul, it appears to have been written instead by one of his later followers. Today we would call that a forgery (few of us use the term “pseudonymous” these days), even though lots of people are reluctant to use that term for a book of Scripture. Fair enough. In the next post I’ll be dealing with why the book was probably not written by Paul, and you can at that point see for yourself!
For now, I want to talk about the major themes and emphases of the book, and I begin with a fifty-word single-sentence summary of the book. If you know the book reasonably well, try doing it yourself before reading mine. Here’s my first-ever stab at it:
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If Ephesians was a circular letter, and Paul did not write it, then Linus might be considered as an authority that might have proposed and partially succeeded executing such a feat (having scribes write it for him). It certainly seems like a ‘pope-ish’ thing to do!
Off topic, and you may have written on this recently, sorry if so..
Is Paul’s conception of baptism a sort of real uniting with Christ? Are we somehow a part of Christ? Not just on the same team, best buds, or even a new part of a divine family, but having an actual connection with Christ and God through him? (“Connection” meaning more than same team, best buds, or family)
Yes, he appears to think that believers who are baptized are actually united with Christ and become part of “his body” (Romans 6:1-6)
If the words “in Ephesus” do not appear in some of the oldest Greek manuscripts, does the evidence suggest that these words were added in the first, second, or third century (or later)?
It could hav ebeen anywwhere from the first to fourth centuries. My guess it was first century, when the letter actually turned up in Ephsesus, copyists there added it to personalize it.
Are there any Muslim scholars who believe in the Swoon Theory?
I don’t know.
I might look that up