Ephesians 1


Ephesians 1 is the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Traditionally, it is believed to have been written by Apostle Paul while he was in prison in Rome, but more recently, it has been suggested that it was written between AD 80 and 100 by another writer using Paul's name and style. This chapter contains the greeting, followed by a section about "The Blessing of God" and Paul's prayer.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 23 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
The greeting of this epistle follows the typical of Paul's usual address format, "X to Y, greeting" or "peace".

Verse 1

While English translations indicate that the letter was addressed to "the saints who are in Ephesus", the words "in Ephesus" do not appear in Papyrus 46, one of the earliest manuscripts containing this epistle. See the section on the place, date, and purpose of the writing of the letter in the article on Epistle to the Ephesians for more details.

Verse 2

The Blessing of God (1:3–14)

Theologian James Dunn considers this section "one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible" among Christian praise, "unlike anything else in Pauline letters". The Greek text of this part can be punctuated as a single sentence. It contains a four-dimensional blessing, sketched a circle starting from God and directing to God as the source and resource of it, reaching from the time "before the foundation of the world", into the revelation of the divine mystery, until the end of time to "sum up everything in Christ" with "the Spirit as the guarantee" of "the final redemption of God's own possession".

Verse 3

An rhetorical antanaclasis: God has blessed us in one sense, we bless Him in another; an "ingenious correlation of the passive εὐλογητός and the active εὐλογήσας ".

Verse 13

This section contains the thanksgiving and prayer for the receivers of this epistle, concerning their "faith in the Lord Jesus" and the love of all believers, followed by a hope in "the working of the great might of God".

Verse 16

Lutheran theologian Johann Bengel suggests that "Paul made mention of all the churches in his prayers" as is similarly stated in and.