The phrase used here in Ephesians defines the apostleship as an office which came to Paul neither by his own will nor by the act of any man, but by direct Divine call and appointment. His Epistles certainly reflect his consciousness of this fact. His work, his discourses, his letters all alike reveal the conviction that he was in actu- ality what he had been declared to be in the message to Ananias—“‘ a vessel of election ’’ (Acts ix. 15). This is the main idea in the defining sentence and its equiv- alents. They vindicate Paul’s author- ity, indeed, when that is challenged, but they express primarily the fact that it was by grace he was what he was (1 Cor. xv. 10).—toig ἁγίοις. Those addressed are designated first by a term which ex- presses the great Old Testament idea of their separation. It does not immedi- ately or distinctively denote their per- sonal piety or sanctity in our sense of the word, though that is dealt with as going with the other. It expresses the larger fact that they are set apart to God and taken into a special relation to Him. In three of the Epistles of the Captivi (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians) it takes the place which the Church has in the superscriptions of the earlier Epistles ως. Corinthians, Galatians), The reason for the varia- tion is not easy to see. It has been supposed to be due to the desire to give ‘‘a more personal colouring to the Epistle as if addressed to the members of the Church as individuals rather than as a body” (Abbott). The distinction, indeed, is not carried through the two groups of Epistles; for in Philemon it is again “τῆς Church,” not “the saints”, —tois οὖσιν ἐν ᾿Εφέσῳ. The local definition ἐν ᾿Εφέσῳ (on which see more in the Introduction) is inserted by the vast majority of manuscripts, both uncial and cursive, and Fathers, and, as far as we know, by all the Versions. It is supported also to some extent by the fact that in the oldest manuscripts the title of the Epistle is προς Εφεσιους; by the apparently unanimous tradition of the Early Church that this Epistle was addressed to the Ephesians; by the absence of all evidence indicating that the Epistle was claimed in ancient times for any other Church definitely named; and by certain parallels in Ignatius. On the other hand, it is omi by the two oldest and most im t uncials, B and Ν (in which it has been inserted by later ands); it is expurged from the cursive 67 by a corrector who seems to have had an older document before him; it did not
τ--2
9 . ‘ Cpls 2. "χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη κυρίου ᾿Ιησοῦ χριστοῦ.
, a Ιησοῦ.