Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Ephesians 1:1-14, A circular letter opens with praise, a seal and a down payment
Paul greets God's holy people and launches one long blessing of God for choosing, adopting, redeeming and sealing a mixed people, with the Spirit as the down payment of their inheritance.
Ephesians 1:1-14, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul greets the believers, though some early copies leave out the words naming Ephesus. He then pours out one long sentence of praise to God for what he has done in Christ: chosen and adopted a people, set them free through Christ's death, and shown them his plan to bring everything together under Christ. The Spirit is God's seal on them and a first installment of what they will inherit, which gave a mixed church firm ground to stand on.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-and-letter-carriers\/","n":"Letters, scribes and carriers","s":"Letters were usually dictated to scribes, carried by trusted travelers because there was no public post, and read aloud to the people they were sent to.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/orators-and-sophists\/","n":"Orators, rhetoric and boasting","s":"Public speaking was the great skill of the Greek city. Traveling orators performed for crowds and gathered paying students, audiences judged them on voice and gesture as well as argument, and the fans of rival speakers boasted of their own man against the rest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/adoption-and-heirs\/","n":"Adoption, heirs and wills","s":"A family's property passed to its heirs; in Jewish practice the land went to the sons, the eldest with a double share. Roman law also let a man adopt a son, often a grown one, who left his old debts and ties behind and became his heir. A will, sealed before witnesses, settled who inherited and who looked after an heir too young to inherit.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/seals-and-deposits\/","n":"Seals, down payments and deposits","s":"A seal pressed into wax showed who owned or witnessed a document or a jar of goods and proved that no one had opened it. A down payment was the first part of the price, paid as a pledge that the rest would follow. A deposit left in someone's keeping had to be guarded and returned.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/present-age-and-age-to-come\/","n":"This age and the age to come","s":"Jews divided history into the present age, under the rule of evil nations, and the age to come, when God would rule unchallenged. The sufferings expected before the change were called birth pangs.","r":""}
Where Paul was held is disputed: Rome, about AD 60 to 62 (Keener, his notes, the ESV and CSB Study Bibles), or Ephesus, about 55 (Wright; Wright and Bird); Carson, Moo and Morris also weigh Caesarea, find that the arguments for and against Ephesus "cancel each other out", and give a little more weight to Rome. Critics doubt that Paul wrote it, citing style, vocabulary and closeness to Colossians, and date it about 70 to 90; Carson, Moo and Morris and Wright hold it to be his. Some early manuscripts lack the words in Ephesus. Many take it as a circular (Keener and his notes; Wright, who suggests it was written from Ephesus rather than to it); the ESV Study Bible holds the words original, and Carson, Moo and Morris conclude that no one knows for sure. Ephesus was a trading city "that had few equals anywhere in the world" (the cultural backgrounds article). In one long sentence of praise, 1:3-14 gives Israel's titles to Jews and Gentiles together (Keener and his notes). The seal and the deposit were business words for ownership and a down payment (Keener and his notes; Wright); the ESV Study Bible stresses protection, Keener attestation.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Ephesians, Situation, introduction to 1:3-14, and on Ephesians 1:1-2, 1:4-5 and 1:13-14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Introduction to Ephesians, Quick Glance, and notes on Ephesians 1:1, 1:3-14, 1:4-14 and 1:14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Ephesus in the Time of Paul
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to Ephesians, Author and Title, and Date, and study note on Ephesians 1:13
- CSB Study Bible, Introduction to Ephesians, Background
- N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography, ch. 10, Ephesus I, and ch. 11, Ephesus II
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 20, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, Introduction
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, comment on Ephesians 1:1-3 and 1:11-14
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 11, Ephesians, Author, Date and Destination, and ch. 13, Colossians, Provenance
