The New Testament book that is typically named, Ephesians probably wasn’t originally sent to the Ephesian church or meant for them.
Other of Paul’s letters derive their names from his intended recipients as given in his greeting. For instance, the sister letter to “Ephesians,” that we call Colossians, contains the Greek prepositional phrase, “en Kolossais,” in verse 2. Similarly, the Greek manuscripts from which the King James Version was translated contained, “en Ephesos,” in verse 1. No problem.
Except that when older, and more reliable Greek texts began to be discovered in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was discovered that “en Ephesos” was missing from the greeting. After a couple of centuries of textual criticism few serious scholars accept this phrase as original to Paul.
Since this is the only one of Paul’s letters that doesn’t specifically mention its recipients, it is thought that he intended it to be more general and circular – a form letter in today’s vernacular. The one assigned to publicly read or copy the letter was simply to fill in the name of the church to which he was reading it.
This may have been partially true, but, while I can’t prove it, I strongly suspect the letter’s original recipients – the ones Paul had in mind while writing – were the Laodiceans. In Paul’s farewell to the Colossians, we get this exhortation:
Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea (Colossians 4:15-16-NRSVue).
So, we know Paul wrote a letter to the Laodiceans that does not appear in our New Testaments. It’s also likely that “Ephesians” (which is very similar to Colossians) was not written to the Ephesians. Hmm…
But why would whichever scribe insert “en Ephesos” where no recipient was given? We can’t know, but I suspect that he or she surmised that Paul must have written a letter to the church where he had ministered for almost 3 years. That was the longest time he’d spent anywhere. Surely, he longed for them and was concerned over them after he left. The absence of such a letter possibly compelled the later scribe to fill it with the insertion of those two words. And with the provision of a letter to Paul’s most familiar faith family our esteem of him as a pastor is rescued.
And yet, such “provision” was unnecessary because we do have Paul’s pastoral words to the Ephesian church. We actually have two such “letters” that we might call First Ephesians and Second Ephesians. 1 Ephesians can be found in Acts 20:17-35. 2 Ephesians is the book of 1 Timothy. Or more accurately, 2 Ephesians was Timothy himself whom Paul likely left there after his Acts 20 visit.
While I was preaching, I never went through the pastoral letters (1Tim, 1Tim, Titus). So, I thought I would do a devotional series through the book of 1 Timothy which I’m calling, “The Letter to the Letter to Ephesians.”
Nathan Wilkerson 