it professed to be. In short, in oldest antiquity there is nothing to show that the claim which it bore upon its face was questioned, or that it was assigned to any other writer than Paul.
It is possible that within the NT writings themselves we have an important indication of the authorship. In Col. iv. 16 mention is made of an Epistle “from Laodicea”. If Colosstans is accepted as what it professes to be, and that Epistle “from Laodicea” can be identified, as many hold it can, with our Epistle to the Ephesians, we have a very direct witness to the Pauline authorship. But apart from that there are things of great interest in relation to the question of authorship in very early Christian literature. Even in Clement of Rome there are forms of expression which look like echoes of ideas and terms characteristic of this Epistle. Thus the phrase ἠνεῴχθησαν ἡμῶν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ τῆς καρδίας in chap. 36 recalls Eph. i. 18. The state- ment in Eph. i. 4 of our election of God in Christ (καθὼς ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ, etc.) may perhaps be reflected in what is said of Christ Himself and us in chap. 64---ὁ ἐκλεξάμενος τὸν Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν καὶ ἡμᾶς δι᾽ αὐτοῦ εἰς λαὸν περιούσιον. The paragraph on unity, too, in Eph. iv. 4-6 may be reflected in chap. 46---ἢ οὐχὶ ἕνα Θεὸν ἔχομεν καὶ ἕνα Χριστόν; καὶ ἕν πνεῦμα τῆς χάριτος τὸ ἐκχυθὲν ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς, Kal μία κλῆσις ἐν Χριστῷ. The most that can be said, however, of these analogies is that they are suggestive. Still less can be made of the witness of the Didaché or of certain passages in the Epistle of Barnabas (vi. 15, xix. 7). In the first of these two writings we have these two statements which have a general, but only a general, resem- blance to Eph. vi. δ, 9, viz., ὑμεῖς δὲ of δοῦλοι ὑποταγήσεσθε τοῖς κυρίοις ὑμῶν ds τύπῳ Θεοῦ ἐν αἰσχύνῃ καὶ φόβῳ (Did., iv., 11), and οὐκ ἐπιτάξεις δούλῳ σου ἢ παιδίσκῃ τοῖς ἐπὶ τὸν αὐτὸν Θεὸν ἐλπίζουσιν, ἐν πικρίᾳ σου. But this is all.
It is different with the testimony of Ignatius. It is claimed indeed by some excellent scholars that in one interesting passage Ignatius speaks definitely and unmistakably of Paul as the writer of an Epistle to the Ephesians. That is the statement in Ep. ad Eph., ο. 12, Παύλου συμμύσται (ἐστε) τοῦ ἡγιασμένου . . . ὃς ἐν πάσῃ ἐπιστολῇ μνημονεύει ὑμῶν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. The difficulty attach- ing to the interpretation of the second clause is seen perhaps in certain ancient variations of reading—in the substitution of μνη- µονεύω in the Armenian Version, and in the amplification ὃς πάντοτε ἐν ταῖς δεήσεσιν αὐτοῦ μνημονεύει ὑμῶν which it receives in the longer form of Ignatius. In order to make it carry the inference drawn from it the rendering “in all the Epistle” or “in every part of the Epistle to you” must be given it. But, not to speak of the inept