Jacob Lollar: “A Well-Known Textual Variant” in the Letter to the Ephesians

Jacob A. Lollar, “The Meaning of Ephesians: Competing Christianities in Second-Century Ephesus,” NovT 67 (2025), 342.

A well-known textual variant exists in the opening line of Ephesians: several early mss lack the inscription ἐν Ἐφέσῳ in the original scribal hand. This variant is particularly noteworthy because, without the address, there is nothing to link this letter specifically to Ephesus. [Edgar] Goodspeed recognized this in the 1930s, saying that the letter “reflects no definite, localized, historical situation which it is intended to meet,” but is rather an amassing of Pauline thought and theology: “it is altogether built up of Pauline materials […] it reads like a commentary on the Pauline epistles.” The missing title is key to the letter and its function: first, it shows there is nothing to explicitly link the letter to Ephesus; second, it reveals important information regarding the date and reception of the letter as “to the Ephesians.”