Jews, Gentiles and Ethnic Reconciliation

Introduction

There is now a broad consensus that most NT writers – including the author of Ephesians – were Christian Jews. The significance of this consensus on Ephesians, however, has not been fully appreciated. But with the ‘new perspective on Paul’ which helps us to gain a clearer view of the first-century Jews and Judaism, a fresh assessment of Ephesians within the ‘new perspective’ can now be made possible and is necessary.

The present chapter, which sets Ephesians within the ‘new perpective’, is to penetrate into the historical context of first-century Judaism within which our epistle was written. Since a major part of that ‘context’ is the self-understanding of the first-century Jews and Judaism, the following questions can therefore be posed at the outset of this study. Did the author of Ephesians see the world as a Jew? Can sufficient evidence be culled from the letter itself as regards his Jewish attitude toward the Gentiles? What picture of Judaism can we draw from Ephesians? Was there an interaction going on between our author with the self-understanding of the Jews and Judaism? What significant bearing does this self-understanding have upon our study of Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles? Our first interpretative move is therefore an attempt to go inside the historical context of the author of Ephesians, leaving aside some of the questions which will be dealt with in the course of this study.