Reconsidering the Letter to the Ephesians in Ancient Context

Study of the Deutero-Pauline letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament has typically focused on ecclesiology by assuming a generalized notion of church. In contrast, in this interdisciplinary volume the contributors delve into an array of underlying subjects in order to give the terms governing our understanding of Ephesians a much-needed further specificity and an enlarged foundation. The contributions in this collection address the following questions: Is the nature of the church in fact the main topic of Ephesians? If so, what exactly is that church's relationship to contemporary forms of Jewish community? What are the proper conceptualities and terminologies for analyzing the political, juridical, cultural, cultic, architectural, or religious distinctions most relevant to Ephesians? In what ways is Ephesians dependent on the Pauline letters and on Colossiansold questions explored in new ways? Highly attuned to questions of social location, space and urban setting, philosophy, epistolography, and ancient Judaism(s), in these essays the agenda for an improved reading of Ephesians is set and exegetical analysis in New Testament studies is enhanced.

Auteur
is Professor of New Testament Theology and Exegesis and leads the Corpus Hellenisticum Institute at the Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. Born 1984; 2002-08 Study of Theology and Religious Studies at Leiden, Oxford, and Leuven; 2013 Dr. theol. (KU Leuven); 2019 Dr. theol. habil. (University of Freiburg); currently Extracurricular Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Head of Independent Junior Research Group in the Heisenberg Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG).