Read this if you…
- want Paul at his most cosmic — God's whole plan is to unite everything in Christ, full stop
- like the 'armor of God' passage in chapter 6: helmet of salvation, shield of faith, sword of the Spirit
- care about the Church-as-the-body-of-Christ metaphor that has shaped Christian self-conception ever since
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
The lineage through Ephesians
- The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Ephesians shaped it. - Paul's *whole armour of God* becomes an actual wardrobe in Bunyan - The helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, and "all-prayer" — Ephesians 6 turned into gear Christian must put on before he can fight - "When he puts on Christ, he is then completely armed from head to foot," Bunyan writes, dramatizing the metaphor into a scene at the Palace Beautiful
- The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. Ephesians shaped it. - Paul's marriage doctrine in *Ephesians* — wives submit, husbands love — is the text Shakespeare folds into his Ephesus farce - Luciana paraphrases it directly: "men are masters to their females, and their lords; then let your will attend on their accords" - It surfaces again in the Abbess's closing sermon, giving the comedy's tangle of spouses a real argument underneath
- Paradise Lost by John Milton. Ephesians shaped it. - Paul's "armour of God" (6:11-17) — the helmet, the breastplate, the sword of the Spirit — is the gear Milton straps onto his loyal angels in the War in Heaven - *Paradise Lost* takes Ephesians' wrestling "not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil" and stages it literally across the battlefield of Book VI
Depicted in Art
Paul sits in a darkened cell, pen and codex on his lap, a sword leaning beside him — caught mid-composition by a shaft of light from a small window.
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1627
Crowded Flemish-Italianate composition: converted Ephesian magicians heap scrolls and codices onto a great fire as Paul preaches from the side under an architectural canopy.
Pieter Coecke van Aelst, 1529
Paul gestures upward from a marble plinth while converts hurl bound books into a smoking pyre at the center of a classical piazza.
James Thornhill, 1710
Rembrandt looks out from beneath a turban, a manuscript pressed to his chest and a sword-hilt protruding from his cloak — the painter casting himself as the letter-writing apostle.
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661
Paul stands on a stone platform in Ephesus, arm raised, as listeners burn their books of magic at his feet — the dramatic moment of his Ephesian mission.
Eustache Le Sueur, 1649
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Oxford University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Notable Quotes
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet and critic, 1772–1834: "It is the divinest composition of man."
- John Mackay, Scottish-American theologian, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1889–1983: "Ephesians is the most modern of the New Testament writings."
- F. F. Bruce, British biblical scholar, Manchester Rylands Professor, 1910–1990: "Ephesians is the quintessence of Paulinism."
- John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Church Father, c. 347–407: "The thoughts which he scarcely so much as utters anywhere else, he here plainly declares."
- Reinhold Niebuhr, American public theologian & political philosopher, 1892–1971: "It combines the high point of the Christian ethic, which is forgiving love, with … the historical revelation in Christ."
- William Barclay, Scottish theologian, University of Glasgow professor of Divinity, 1907–1978: "Ephesians has been called 'The Queen of the Epistles'—and rightly so."
- C. H. Dodd, Welsh New Testament scholar, Cambridge professor, 1884–1973: "Ephesians is the crown of Paulinism."
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