Friday in Ephesus

 

SNEEZE SNEEZE SNEEZE SNEEZE SNEEZE ... What the heck brought that on, maybe a dozen sneezes - - far as I know, I'm not allergic to anything, but all's different this morning is having four tiny (little finger size) slices of strawberry Kringle with my hot & black. 

This one I ordered from That Other Kringle company in Wisconsin because O&H seems never to offer a strawberry Kringle (although this year they've offered a berry Kringle that includes strawberry among others, and I've got one of thos lying in wait not yet opened and cut). This strawberry Kringle from That Other has been waiting in the freezer for several weeks until after my annual doctor's visit weigh in. 

This is the second Time I've ordered from That Other company, but I don't usually, because while I like their strawberry, either because it's sweet, or because it's really strawberry tasting, or more likely because it's red, That Other's pastry is gummy and the O&H Kringle pastry is invariably flaky. But SNEEZE? IDK. There were several things my mother couldn't eat because they gave her hay fever or asthma, maybe I'm getting some late onset allergy, IDK. 

Just now ate the last of this morning's tiny slices, and here comes the sneeze impulse again. WTH.

I know you were really interested and fascinated with that personal line of thought, we'll have to do it more often, eh?

Anyway, here from Revelation 2 is the letter to the church at Ephesus (The Message)

To Ephesus

2:1 Write this to Ephesus, to the Angel of the church. The One with Seven Stars in his right-fist grip, striding through the golden seven-lights’ circle, speaks:

2-3 “I see what you’ve done, your hard, hard work, your refusal to quit. I know you can’t stomach evil, that you weed out apostolic pretenders. I know your persistence, your courage in my cause, that you never wear out.

4-5 “But you walked away from your first love—why? What’s going on with you, anyway? Do you have any idea how far you’ve fallen? A Lucifer fall!

“Turn back! Recover your dear early love. No time to waste, for I’m well on my way to removing your light from the golden circle.

6 “You do have this to your credit: You hate the Nicolaitan business. I hate it, too.

7 “Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches. I’m about to call each conqueror to dinner. I’m spreading a banquet of Tree-of-Life fruit, a supper plucked from God’s orchard.”

++++++++

As our second lesson or epistle reading this Sunday, August 11, we'll hear the next in our seven Sunday series of readings through Ephesians.

Aside first, here are maps of "Paul's Missionary Journeys" that include Ephesus, according to Luke's stories about Paul in Luke's book The Acts of the Apostles. For a serious Bible student, it is important and a matter of both intelligence and integrity, fully to recognize that what Luke wrote is not "history" in a modern sense, it's Luke's story about Paul, it's NOT Paul's story about himself.  

And here's a link to an interesting essay about Ephesus in biblical Times: http://resources.takingground.org.uk/ephesus-in-the-first-century/

Moving on to our Ephesians readings,

Lectors, readers, seem to like to announce knowingly, "A letter from Paul's letter to the Ephesians," as I'm pretty sure I did when I was a lector in our Pennsylvania parish before I went off to theological seminary; but anymore when I hear that it strikes me that either the lector doesn't know that most scholars are sure Paul didn't write it, or they know but have decided for themselves to believe anyway that Paul did write it. 

Ephesians is in the thirteen-epistle body of what's called the Pauline corpus, but it's one of the six that are disputed and that most scholars say Paul did not write, and date Ephesians 80 to about 110 CE, at least a couple decades after when Paul's death is believed to have happened. 

Below (scroll down), is a copy and paste from the wonderful online website Early Christian Writings, with "Information on Ephesians," an assembly of quotes of literary analysis from several recognized and competent NT scholars; and that's all I'm going to say about it, I'm not going to blogpost this morning my own comments that I might be inclined to work up for a Sunday school class or midweek Bible study. 

However I will point out that our Lectionary Framers, who try with great integrity to do a good job for us, purposely omit the first couple verses of Ephesians, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ," undoubtedly because they didn't want to have us announcing "Paul's letter" when competent modern scholars point out that Paul didn't write it.

If you want to insist that Paul wrote it because that's what you want to believe, fine! You can insist that "it says 'Paul' right there in Ephesians 1:1, and that's not in dispute. All that proves is that whoever wrote it wrote that, it does not prove that Paul wrote it! And no manner or intensity of belief makes anything true.

Why is this important to me? Discovering these things and sharing them with others is part of competent Bible study, and it's part and parcel of "seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will."

++++++++

Here's this coming Sunday's reading:      

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Here's the intro to Ephesians:

1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful[a] in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here's the information from the website "Early Christian Writings"

Information on Ephesians

Kummel provides three arguments that have persuaded most scholars to consider Ephesians to be deutero-Pauline (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 358-361): language and style, dependence upon Colossians, and theological differences.

Many terms in Ephesians aren't found in genuine Paulines but are found in the later NT writings and early patristic writings. Also, the author of Ephesians uses different words for important Pauline concepts. "Although these and related linguistic and stylistic differences alone could not prove the Pauline authorship of Eph to be impossible, they make extremely difficult the supposition that Paul could have written Eph in the form in which it has been handed down."

Almost all of Ephesians evinces verbal contacts with Colossians, indicating that the author of Ephesians wrote in imitation of Colossians, and the author also shows contact with the rest of the Pauline corpus (excepting II Thess). "Decisive against assuming that the same author wrote Col and Eph very quickly one after the other are those instances where Eph manifests clearly (a) literary dependence or (b) at the same time a really substantive difference from Col."

Kummel shows five different ways in which Ephesians clearly has a further developed theology than Colossians. Moreover: "If these developments beyond Paul are in any case completely inconceivable in a letter of Paul written at almost exactly the same time as Col, other ideas and formulations in Eph stand in any case in irreconcilable opposition to Paul. In characteristic fashion, Eph 2:10 in reworking Col 1:10 employs the plural εργα αγατηα which Paul always avoids (see 21.4.1). Equally characteristic is the fact that Eph in contrast with Col uses several εν-formulae that Paul does not have: εν τω χριστο ιησον (3:11), εν τω ιησον (4:21), εν τω κυριο ιησον (1:15). And in 1:15 πιστισ is linked with κυριοσ, while in Paul it is linked only with χριστοσ. Also it cannot be an accident that only in Eph 1:17; 3:14 (in contrast to all the Pauline letters) do we hear God addressed as Father in petition. Still more essential than these divergences, however, are three other factors which cannot be reconciled with Pauline authorship. First, in contrast to all the Pauline letters including Col 3:4, there is lacking in Eph any mention of the expectation of the parousia. With its formulation εισ πασασ τασ γενεασ τον αιωνοσ των αιωνων, Eph 3:21 is scarcely counting on a near eschaton. The valuing of marriage as the image of the heavenly union of Christ and his church (5:25 ff) is scarcely open to the same Paul who wrote I Cor 7. Finally, the statement that Paul's commissioned office was to proclaim the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the promise of Christ (3:2 ff) is contradicted by his own statements including Col 1:25 ff, and the self-designation of Paul as εγαχιστοτεροσ παντων αγιων (3:8) is scarcely a conceivable overstatement of εγαχιστοσ τον αποστολων (I Cor 15:9)."

Richard Heard writes (An Introduction to the New Testament): "These developments of Pauline thought are of great value and importance, but seem to be the building of another thinker on Pauline foundations rather than Paul's continuation of his own work. This impression is confirmed by the nature of the epistle itself which does not address itself to a particular situation, as all of Paul’s genuine epistles do, but is more of a treatise than a letter. The personal references (3:1, 4:1, 6:21-22) appear to be selected from Colossians, and the reference to 'holy' apostles (3:5) sounds strange from Paul's pen, although natural to a writer of the next generation."

A. D. Howell-Smith writes (Jesus Not a Myth, pp. 132-133):

If the Pauline authorship of Colossians is doubtful, that of Ephesians is still more so. In style it differs even more than the Epistle to the Colossians from the earlier Epistles attributed to Paul. Though it has stylistic peculiarities, as well as expressions, which differentiate it from Collosians, there are such close resemblances, in places, between the two as to suggest that Ephesians was written in imitation of the other work. The Christologies of both Epistles are similar. It is hard to believe that Paul wrote that the Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephes. ii, 20); would one who had to fight so hard for his claim to apostleship against those who denied it have spoken in this impersonal way of the Apostles as a closed and sacred body? Still harder is it to regard as Pauline the statement that the "mystery which from all ages has been hid" - to wit, "that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs" of the Gospel of Christ - has been now revealed "unto (Christ's) holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit" (Ephes. iii, 5, 6, 9). The "holy apostles" are here represented as joint recipients of the same revelation, and Paul is merged in the group as having no special status of his own in the divine economy. That which Paul called "my Gospel" is no longer recognized as such, and the long struggle he had undergone to win for his Gentile converts spiritual equality with Jewish Christians has been quite forgotten.

Against Wallace, it is not the case that 1 Clement is familiar with Ephesians. The earliest author to show clear dependence upon Ephesians is Ignatius (Eph 12:1, Polyc 5:1). Kummel reasons (op. cit., p. 366): "If, then, it is determined that Eph was written in the post-Pauline period, the fact that Ignatius knows it implies a date no later than the first decade of the second century. A more exact date might be determined if we could prove a literary dependence of I Peter on Eph, but in view of the common paranetic tradition this is not convincing. And since Eph seems to know the collected Pauline letters, an earlier date is not likely. The date of writing cannot be determined more closely than sometime between 80 and 100."

+++++++++

Friday the Eighth of August, another hot summer day of Life is Good!

RSF&PTL

T88&c