Epistle to the Ephesians

According to one scholarly source, the letter was probably written "by a loyal disciple to sum up Paul's teaching and to apply it to a new situation fifteen to twenty-five years after the Apostle's death".

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.

"[8] Bible scholar Raymond E. Brown asserts that about 80% of critical scholarship judges that Paul did not write Ephesians.

[5] This lack of any internal references to Ephesus in the early manuscripts may have led Marcion, a second-century heresiarch who created the first New Testament canon, to believe that the letter was actually addressed to the church at Laodicea.

[14][16][17] The Jerusalem Bible notes that some critics think the words "who are" would have been followed by a blank to be filled in with the name of "whichever church was being sent the letter".

On his last journey to Jerusalem, the apostle landed at Miletus and, summoning together the elders of the church from Ephesus, delivered to them a farewell charge,[29] expecting to see them no more.

Originating in the circumstance of a multicultural church (primarily Jewish and Hellenistic), the author addressed issues appropriate to the diverse religious and cultural backgrounds present in the community.

[citation needed] The author exhorts the church repeatedly to embrace a specific view of salvation, which he then explicates.

Frank Charles Thompson[39] argues that the main theme of Ephesians is in response to the newly converted Jews who often separated themselves from their Gentile brethren.

[44] Dallas Theological Seminary professor Daniel Wallace understands it to be an extension of Ephesians 5:15-21[45] on being filled by the Holy Spirit.