in 1 Cor 15 has many connections with the philosophical jargon of the day. Often philosophers would speak of battling their passions and hedonistic rivals with language similar to Paul. Paul quotes from the philosopher Menander, “Bad company corrupts good character” (15:32), which suggests he is placing his argument in the context of a philosopher’s admonitions. Moreover, Paul uses the diatribe method, firing off rhetorical questions to jar the Corinthians back to their senses and act rightly.46 This form of argumentation was common among philosophers.
Finally, we must raise the obvious question: Why would Paul send a letter to the Ephesians, or even to satellite churches surrounding Ephesus, if he was imprisoned in their midst? Or from another angle, if he was unable to speak with the Ephesian Christians, one would presume that he would lack the liberty to write to them. Either way, if Paul was in an Ephesus jail, it seems highly unlikely that he would choose to write to the church in that very same city. Indeed those who postulate an Ephesus locale for Colossians and Philemon generally suggest a Rome venue for Ephesians, precisely because it is so difficult to explain why Paul would write when he could presumably speak directly with the Ephesian church. The similar statements in Ephesians and Colossians about Tychicus delivering the letters are usually explained as the author of Ephesians copying from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.
Rome Imprisonment
That leaves Rome as the most likely spot for Paul’s imprisonment in composing the four prison epistles. The major roadblock raised against this theory is the length of time it would take to make a journey from Rome to Philippi, Ephesus, or Colossae. At this point we should note that Philippi and Ephesus were major cities in themselves; Ephesus was the largest and most important city in Asia Minor, and Philippi was a Roman colony. Thus travel between these cities and Rome by all manner of traders, government officials, and military personnel would have been frequent. Assuming the typical distance of 15–20 miles per day on foot, it would take the average traveler from Rome to Philippi about two or three weeks to traverse the 360 miles to the eastern Italian port city of Brundisium, then two days to sail to Greece (perhaps the port cities of Dyrrachium or Aulona), with the final 370 miles of the journey along the Via Egnatia (the superhighway of the day) to Philippi taking about another two weeks. The 800 miles could be covered in about a month and a half. Alternatively, Paul’s envoy traveling to Ephesus might take a boat from Italy to Corinth, then on to Ephesus. This route would take one to two weeks from Rome to Corinth, and then another week to Ephesus, but so much depended upon the winds.47 The time involved, then, in traveling to Rome from either Ephesus or Philippi was not appreciably more than traveling on foot between the two latter cities. Hence a Roman imprisonment seems the most likely provenance for the letter to the Ephesians.
Date of Ephesians
Assuming Paul wrote from Rome, we can then date the letter to the early 60s CE. The first letter he wrote would be to Philemon. This might have been written within a few months of his arrival at Rome. After Onesimus returned to Rome (which might take as little as two and a half months), Paul set about writing to the Colossians and the Ephesians. We might suggest that Paul wrote these in late 60 or early 61. This date takes into account the earthquake that hit nearby Laodicea. Tacitus explains that, though it was devastated, Laodicea rebuilt quickly and without Rome’s financial assistance. Because no mention of such a natural disaster is noted by Paul, many argue Colossians could not have been written after the tragedy. Alternatively, since we do not have Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans, we have no way of knowing whether Paul was writing to encourage the church as they faced the catastrophe. However, Paul made no mention of the expulsion of Jews from Rome under Claudius in his later letter to the Romans, so we need not assume that major social or natural upheavals would be so noted in Paul’s letters. Arguably he might have considered such a note redundant or obvious. Thus, while a date in early 61 would work, it is unclear whether we should accommodate the date of the earthquake when determining the writing of Colossians and Ephesians. And while these movements are taking place, Paul is also communicating with the Philippian church, with Epaphroditus serving as their envoy conveying aid and service to Paul.
Audience of Ephesians
A major hurdle in describing the community (or communities) receiving this letter is that the church described is universal. Moreover, if we take Ephesians as an encyclical letter, we are left to surmise which satellite towns received the letter. While I argue that Ephesus is the most likely target for the letter, the possibility of several outlying churches receiving it is quite strong. In either case, the fact that Paul speaks of the church not as a local body but in its universal dimensions means that we must look to topics in the letter which pertain to the general social world in reconstructing the recipients. Such an approach is similar to 1 Peter, James, or Hebrews, letters whose addressees are unspecified in terms of a city. Judging by the content of the letter itself, several tentative conclusions can be drawn about the audience receiving this letter. Unlike his tension-filled letter to the Galatians, in this epistle Paul is comfortable with the congregation. They are on good terms, and Paul feels his time among them has been effective (1 Cor 16:9). But that does not mean that Paul’s time in Ephesus was one long holiday. Paul informs the Corinthians of serious struggles and suffering he endured in Ephesus, and Acts describes the riot that flared up surrounding Paul’s teaching and healing. It seems probable that the Ephesian Christians faced similar hostility, though not of the same magnitude. Both the Philippian and the Thessalonian churches faced serious persecutions, and Acts indicates that Paul was persecuted harshly in both cities. The same pattern likely existed in Ephesus.
First Corinthians gives us a window into at least a few members of the Ephesian church. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus (1 Cor 16:8) and his coauthor was Sosthenes (1 Cor 1:1). Was this the same person who in Acts was a leader in the synagogue in Corinth? The fact that Paul offers no introduction beyond the label “brother” suggests that Sosthenes was well known to the Corinthians, lending weight to the conclusion that this person met Paul in Corinth, and traveled with him to Ephesus. Paul notes that some people from Chloe reported divisions within the Corinthian church. We know precious little about these people, or Chloe for that matter. The strongest suggestion is that they were outsiders to the local Christian community because they brought what Paul evaluates as unbiased information. We could reasonably surmise that Chloe’s people (and perhaps Chloe herself) were members of the Ephesian church. In the final chapter he mentions Timothy coming to the Corinthians, presumably from Ephesus. He also notes the presence of Apollos, who was not anxious to travel to Corinth in the immediate future, and we might assume that he remained in Ephesus. From 2 Cor 2:4 and 7:6–11 we learn that Titus was with Paul in Ephesus, and took his “tearful” letter to them. Finally Paul makes special mention of Aquila and Priscilla and the church meeting in their home in 1 Cor 16:19. This Jewish couple is described in Acts (18:2) as originally coming to Corinth from Rome (being expelled under Emperor Claudius). Paul shared their profession (tent making or leather working), and lived with them. After eighteen months, all three left Corinth and headed to Ephesus, where it appears the couple remained for some years.
We find them mentioned again by Paul in his letter to the Romans (16:3–4). This curiosity has prompted the theory that Rom 16 was actually sent to the Ephesians, perhaps as a letter of recommendation for Phoebe, the deacon of Cenchreae. Textual evidence is called upon to support this theory: the earliest copy of Romans (P46) includes chapter 16 after the doxology of 16:25–27, for example, suggesting the names were attached by a later copyist. If this reconstruction is accurate, then we have a decidedly clearer picture of some who populated the Ephesian church. However, serious doubts are raised, including that every ancient manuscript contains the listing. And we have every reason to suppose that Priscilla and Aquila, with Claudius’s edict rescinded, returned to Rome along with many of their Jewish compatriots. In Paul’s other letters to churches he started, he does not offer a list of people to receive his greetings (see Galatians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians). Would someone in Ephesus feel snubbed if Paul forgot (or declined) to mention them by name? Instead, it seems most likely that the list of names in Rom 16:1–16 was intended for Rome, an opportunity for Paul to connect with the wider community by noting that he has friends and acquaintances among them.48
