either Epistle, but that there were sections of Ephesians (e.g., i. 4, ef. Col. i. 22 ; i. 6, 7, cf. Col. 1. 13, 14; iit. 3, 5, 9, cf. Col. i. 26, ii. 2) which pointed to the priority of that Epistle, while there were a con- siderable number that pointed in the opposite direction. He took refuge, therefore, in the complicated theory that Colossians as we have it is not the Epistle as it originally was ; that there was a briefer Pauline Epistle to the Colossian Church on which the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians based his work; that the Colossian Epistle was afterwards enlarged by this author ; and that the hand that did all this was not Paul’s own, but perhaps that of the writer who added the closing doxology to the Epistle to the Romans.
This is a far-fetched explanation, and one beset by many difficul- ties. The terms supposed to have been taken from the Epistle to the Colossians come in quite simply and naturally in the sister Epistle, but by no means in the same context or connection. The most distinctive sections of the Colossian Epistle, those dealing with the strange, speculative views of Christ’s person and relations, have no place in the Ephesian Epistle, and it is surely a surprising cir- cumstance that a borrower such as the compiler of Ephesians is supposed to be should have so carefully avoided these things and should have appropriated only the least characteristic parts of the writing which he chose for the basis of his own communication. It is still more surprising that a writer capable of producing the Ephesian Epistle should have thought of using another composition inthis dependent manner. In point of fact there is nothing in the Epistle to the Ephesians, whether of likeness or of unlikeness, that may not be accounted for in a far simpler and more natural way. A writer addressing himself in two different communications, prepared much about the same time, to Churches in the same part of the world, not widely separated from each other, with much in common, but with something of difference also in their circumstances, their dangers and their needs, naturally falls into a style and a tenor of address which will be to a considerable extent the same in both writings and yet have differences rising naturally out of the different positions.
5. AUTHORSHIP OF THE ΕΡΙΘΤΙΕ. The historical evidence in favour of the Pauline authorship of this Epistle is very strong. We have the best reason for saying that by the end of the second century it was generally regarded as the work of Paul. There is evidence also that it was in circulation by the close of the first century or the
‘beginning of the second. The place which it had then, and the use which was made of it, also indicate that it was recognised as more than an ordinary writing—that it was accepted indeed for what