Have You Ever Read Ephesians?

How does the number of particular words a book uses tell us about its value?How does the words and numbers of them tell us that Paul is actually the author?The gnostic writings have some of the most transcendental and beautiful language you can imagine. If I came into this thread and started proclaiming the virtues of the gnosis based on the fact that the Gospel of Truth uses the words:perfect or pefection 26 times
Father 84 times
truth 16 timesWhat would you think of my argument? Would you be compelled to believe that it was inspired based my analysis?Would you want to look back critically as to why the early church called the people who used this book heritics?Do you think there are other reasons why people had problems with this book and rejected it from orthodox christianity?

I am not sure how important it is that I agree or disagree with this. Let me just see if I understand this and I'll ask you to respond if my characterization is inaccurate. If this is an accurate summary of what you are saying then I may have more to comment on it.1. Both Paul and Jesus, in other places, talk about submission to authority.
2. The husband is an authority to the wife on the basis that SHE accepts his desire for her to be his wife.
3. Because of this acceptance, the edicts about submission from step 1 apply and THAT is what makes Ephesians 5 concordant with Jesus and Paul elsewhere.Did I characterize that appropriatly? I am honestly just trying to reflect this back to make sure we have the same understanding of your point. Well, first of all, that reasoning probably falls into at least one of these:Historian's Fallacy
Argument from Popularity
Appeal to TraditionWho are you trying to impress with that exactly? For most of human history we had value for the idea that the earth was fixed, immobile, flat, and timeless. No matter how many thousands of years and millions of people those ideas are represented by, none of them are true.That being said. I don't recall ever making the claim that Ephesians is totally worthless. Some parts do have value on their own. For example: and Would only more Christians actually live by those words.But my point is, and continues to be, that these words are not holy. Whatever value they have is inherant in their own right. A pagan or atheist or zoroastrian could have said these exact same things couched in different religious and non-religous terms and they would have had the exact same value.The providence of Ephesians shows that it is not from God in the way that believers claim it to be. It is a product of its time, by men, and we have moved on.

Yes! You are right! Paul in Philemon is very effective in his plea to a Christian slave master to accept his slave... Paul prefaces this with a very strong statement. He says that he is EMPOWERED TO COMMAND Philemon to do this for Onesimus but that he would rather Philemon do it of his own accord: This Paul is awesome! This is an enduring example of both morality and effective leadership.How beautiful is his reasoning directed toward trying to convince Philemon to free Onesimus? Paul says he is holding back the hammer and yet he even offers to take Onesimus' debt in order to make it happen without that.How could Paul forget this eloquence when he later wrote to the Ephesians? How do you go from accept them as "no longer as a slave" and as "a beloved brother", to "Stop threatening them". I don't know how you can get more parochial than that. I also don't know how you accept this situation as legitimate LET ALONE CLAIM that Philemon is in support of Ephesians. You have it exactly backwards!Edited by Jazzns, : FormattingEdited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

You missed the point entirely. Paul in Ephesians could have given a message to slave masters that was of the same theme that he gave to Philemon. But he did not do that.Simple ceasing to threaten your slaves does not make you "just and equal". What Paul spoke to Philemon to do was in fact "just and equal". Why did he not give that same message in Ephesians? When people use his words to drive social reform, it becomes the business of those who wish to move us forward to deconstruct the badly justified claims. In your apologetics, everything may be fine and dandy for yourself, unified in the indwelling of Christ of whatever. But not all people read or have read the bible the way you do. They do not use the hammer of apologetics to try to bang out the dents left by these obvious contradictions.They will simply persist in cognitive dissonance about the difference between Paul in Philemon and Paul in Ephesians. Or they may just simply use the Bible like you fear, taking pieces as they need for their own agenda. Or they may just be completely ignorant of the differences because they don't read the bible a whole book at a time.I am glad that you have found a way to harmonize all this for yourself. But what I see from how you justify this, you are using faith to smooth over a jagged edge in a plain reading of the text. Your explanation only works if you believe in the list of premises encoded in your preaching.I do not believe, so the jagged edge remains.

Why are you going off on a tangent? I was still interested in discussing your justification for men's authority over women.Since you responded to one of my previous posts, I don't know if you saw this from my response to you about your authority argument. Please, help me just understand what you are trying to say. Hopefully you just misclicked and meant to reply to this: Am I understanding you jaywill?

Don't put words in my mouth, that not what I said and you are ignoring my point.I specifically said that I agree that there are still wrongs akin to slavery going on today. My retort to you was that those things are STILL EVIL and worthy of condemnation.My criticism of Paul is not that he failed to produce a laundry list of evil things. My criticism is that he endorses ONE evil thing that we have for the most part rid ourselves of no thanks to him. But that only really matters if you are assuming that Paul is being self-consistent which I don't think anyone has adequatly supported.My MAIN criticism is that Paul is being inconsistent with himself and in particular the values of the early church. In Acts, you see the beginnings of a totally egalitarian resistance movement. Property no longer belongs to the self, people of all kinds, sinners, poor, rich, sick, even Gentiles are all made equal. In Paul's own ministry, from his genuine epistles, is for the most part a pretty egalitarian dude. As you may have seen in my discussion with jaywill, Paul even talks about the issue of slaver to Philemon in a lot of eloquence, humility, and authority. What does he tell Philemon...he tells him that the Christian thing to do is to FREE his slave.So, its not JUST that Paul in Ephesians fails to condemn slavery. Its that he fails to do so given the fact that he had in the past, in a most superior manner, consistent with the behavior of the early church. That, I think is one of the things that tips the scale to the side of this letter not being legitimate.

As I said when I mentioned it, I do not think that my opinions about God are on topic. I stopped believing in God because of the problem of human suffering, not because the people who write about him or who validated the authority of the books are terrible at their job. I would be willing to talk about it in another thread if you care to propose it. Or if you care, you can post in my deconversion thread if you search for it.

Right, so why did you bring up the number of words? Right, not because it had an insufficient number of the correct words. Do you see why I made that point? Thats great for you. I don't find that sufficient and in fact I find the contradictions revealing.When police are doing detective work, its not the concurrences between witnesses and evidence that is most revealing as to the truth of the case. It is the differences between those things that are most enlightening.

What? Really? What do the words "no longer a slave" mean to you? And yet inside of your very quote: Notice again that Paul is talking to the slave not the master. I don't really know how to make it any clearer. There is no exhortation to slave masters in that quote. He is saying, don't fret about your position. Your quote is one of many that is indicative of a Paul who is convinced of the very imminent return of Christ. Similarly, early in 1 Corinthians Paul says: Paul really believes the whole, "this generation shall not pass away" stuff. Too bad he was disappointed.Also, I never claimed that Paul was or should be a crusader for social justice. That is something you and jaywill seem to be trying to force upon me. You aren't dealing with the contradiction AND you aren't dealing with the immorality.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

Why must you continually respond to the minutia of my posts rather than the main content?Richh keeps bringing up quotes from Paul about the proper behavior of slaves in order to try to salvage Paul's contradiction or immoral advice to masters in Ephesians. This discussion of the second coming is was in relation to his quote from Corinthians where Paul is telling slaves to "hang tight" so to speak. My point is supported by my follow-up quote from Corinthians but it does not rely only on it.Did you not get that gist from reading the whole post?

I understand your desire to move on to other topics in Ephesians. I wouldn't mind seeking to a conclusion of this line of debate myself. If nothing else I would like a response to message 188 Message 188 where I am simply asking if you could validate my understanding of your position on authority. I want to make sure that I am not replying to a misinterpretation of your argument.

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If you don't want to continue on these points, that is fine. Let me just try to clarify your characterization of my position and then if you like we can simply let the record stand. I decided to handle these in reverse. I have clarified this multiple times now. That you still have this misunderstanding seems strange. I don't desire Paul to do anything. I am simply noticing that he is being inconsistent with himself or if he is not, then he falls short of an enduring moral. I don't have a problem with Paul being a creature of his time and culture and this writing simply being a reflection of that. But that makes it far from the enduring word of God. My position really isn't that complicated. Perhaps endorsing is a strong word, but rather failing to stigmatize it when Christians are the ones owning the slaves it AS HE HAD PREVIOUSLY. It is similarly inconsistent with the behavior of the early church according to Acts. Its obvious that it does not on this point. This is one single piece of evidence among many that help address the issue of the authenticity of Ephesians. I have also said before that in the grand scheme of things, Ephesians is on the bubble. It is possible that Paul wrote it but it is also unlikely. I am happy enough to live in this gray area but I understand that Christians who revere the Bible would not be.

Hi jaywill,I just wanted to write you a quick post to say thanks for responding in such a detailed way to my post.I read and enjoyed your two posts concerning point 1 of my characterization. I don't want you to think that a lack of a detailed response to mean I haven't read it. I have but it is just that I don't think there is much more needed to discuss on this point as I agree with you.I think it is a valid theological interpretation of the scripture to say that the bible calls for Christians to be submissive and accepting of authority. It is well in line with how the apostles behaved in acts. It makes sense given the circumstances of the early persecution of the church by the Romans. It makes sense given the behavior of Jesus (for the most part). Christians (should) buck trends and confront illegitimate authority with words and good deeds.I think "submission" does have its limits. At what point does the equivalent of civil disobedience, clearly expressed many times in the bible, run up against this notion of submission?I think the possibilities for discussion here are large and somewhat astray of the topic so I wouldn't mind just leaving that question as rhetorical.I will have more to say about part 2 though when I have time to sit down with it and do it justice. I just didn't want to leave you with no feedback for part 1.Thanks

I wanted to put your last point first just to say that this is likely the outcome of many of these arguments and that is okay. I feel I have sharpened myself against you and jaywill and I hope you feel equally fulfilled. Just because there isn't a decisive end to a debate does not make it un-fruitful. I believe this is the first time someone has brought up this point of Paul supporting Ephesians 6 from his other pseudographic works. Starting off here with Colossians, this is perhaps to be expected considering how similar the letters are and many believe that these two letters have influenced each other either due to copying or from a similar source. It certainly is plausible that the same person who wrote Ephesians wrote Colossians and that would explain the similarities.Philemon is another story. I honestly haven't taken a deep dive into the origins of Philemon. All I know of it is that it is considered authentic by scholars and it seems to make sense given that the doctrine matches well with the other undisputed works of Paul.Using the similarity of their endings to date them does not seem valid or all that convincing even if it was. It is obvious from the other Paul forgeries that attempts were made to adhere to the legitimate Paul's style. Can you produce any other evidence for this claim that Philemon and Ephesians were written near the same time? No they are not mutually exclusive, I did not make that claim.But "no longer a slave" seems pretty clear to me. I notice that you did not answer that question but deflected it. His words really are quite plain. It really is hard to see why you are fighting me so hard on this point. The ENTIRE THEME of the letter clearly is Paul asking Philemon to free and accept Onesimus. Yea. Pretty much. I don't think my point hinges on this. I was mostly responding to your quotation of 1 Cor. More importantly is that Paul is talking to slaves in that quote. He is saying, "hang tight better things are coming". It is not support for his advice to slave masters. Not all quotes in the bible about slavery are linked together in some harmonious chain. I know believers would like to think that these self-consistent threads exist throughout the bible but believing that they do and presenting convincing evidence that they do are not the same. It likely is his first epistle yes and thus more likely to be legitimate. Right! How again do you see this as in concordance with Ephesians? Ephesians claims that there IS A DIFFERENCE between slaves and free men, male and female. I haven't had time to dig out quotes to specifically how original Paul contradicts himself in Ephesians but I didn't really need to. You and jaywill have done it for me brilliantly! The Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) are second only to Revelations as the most awful and most obviously forged books of the New Testament. I would love to take this up in another thread if you are interested.But the main thing to notice here is the same as I mentioned for Colossians. These are on the other side of the divide between the works of Paul and so it is unsurprising that they support Ephesians in this regard. The later works of Paul are very much more concerned with the earthly order of things, keeping slaves and women in their place, making a church leadership heriarchy, etc.Original Paul was much more interested in keeping spiritual matters in order.

You will notice that I was talking about all of the later works attributed to Paul including Timothy. In fact, I was responding to Richh's quote from Timothy.Did you just not notice?

There seems to be two main threads to your line of reasoning.1. That there are biblically external factors, proposal and acceptance, and protection while childrearing, that serve to outline the relationship between a husband and wife as dominant/submissive.2. That elsewhere in the bible there is a directive to hold wives in submission to their husbands.Let me talk about them in order. I am glad that you expanded and gave more than just this sentiment from your original reply because frankly this is not only demeaning to women, but it is also a weak argument. Perhaps this is how it was back in the times that marriages were more about property because you speak of it like a business contract. But this is not how marriages in modern civilized societies work. A woman does not "go along with the will" of a man but rather, a marriage is a convergence of wills to a common understanding.
Does your situation automatically reverse if a woman asks a man to marry her? Is she now an authority over him?I am glad you had more to say because this argument alone is just bad tasting weaksauce. That is why I was trying to clear it up earlier because I couldn't really believe that I was understanding you properly. The easy response to this is that the ability to provide protection and authority do not go hand in hand. It is the woman that holds the seeds to legacy of the family and so why shouldn't a man protect/provide for her by her will? In reality, if women aren't otherwise subjugated, they hold all the cards.Furthermore, and merit this argument has remaining disappears once you break outside of the box of our notion of a nuclear isolated family. I wish I could remember the name of a culture I read about because they provide a great counterexample to this. I recall they live in south east asia and the way they construct their society, women of childbearing age had the independence, personal property, etc. It was the whole extended family of brothers parents, cousins, etc that supported a women in her status. They have no such concept as a husband/wife relationship. A man empowers his genetic legacy by being one of the many people caring for his sister's children.The often touted as cheesy phrase "it takes a village" is actually a true accounting of how many people solve the problem of surviving in a dangerous world. It is only in our recognizable construction of a patriarchy that there is even this need to consider a women as helpless and needing a single man for protection.So in Paul's day and culture, yea this may have been true. But this is quite obviously a product OF his culture. Again I'll say that if what you are claiming is only that, that Paul is a creature of his culture and time then I have no beef. But it becomes much harder to support that these verses are universal, enduring, inspired, or that these are works to live by today.

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Now on to your Biblical support. I think your interpretations here are fine. The quote from Genesis is obvious and I don't really see anything wrong with your interpretation of Jeremiah.We are already somewhat far afield of Ephesians so I will only make some general points here. Something can be said about just how much you can actually tie Paul and other early Christians to the more "modern" synthesis of Christianity and Judaism. The term "Christian" itself was coined to distinguish the more liberal wing of Christianity given to the Gentiles by Paul and championed by Iraneus, from the other early Jesus religions which were simply messianic Judaism. Down here in the very small details we may be capable of continuing this argument but I don't think that would be worthwhileSo on this I actually concede the point here.If you choose accept as premises or apology:1. That the whole Bible is a unified accord of faith
2. That therefore Jesus himself is responsible for the sentiments in the Hebrew Old Testament.
3. That there is clear instruction for a man to have authority over his wife in these writings.Then your point is taken that Paul in Ephesians 5 is supported by Jesus.My only comment after my epic surrender will be that in order to gain this concordance, to have to accept as valuable the fictional horrors of the Old Testament, you lose any credibility to maintain Christianity as a source of actual truth or enduring morality.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.