Ephesians, EPISTLE TO THE, one of the letters attributed to the apostle Paul, and supposed to be written during his imprisonment either at Cæsarea or at Rome. It falls into two parts, separated by the doxology, iii. 20, 21, the first part being doctrinal and the second practical. The earliest MSS. have not the words 'at Ephesus' in i. 1, and the hypothesis of Ussher (1650) that the letter was an encyclical writing sent to a number of churches in proconsular Asia has found favour with many scholars. Some hold that it is 'the epistle from Laodicea' mentioned in Col. iv. 16, and Tertullian tells us that Marcion called it the 'Epistle to the Laodiceans.' It has a very remarkable similarity to the Epistle to the Colossians, and De Wette held that it is 'little more than a verbose amplification' of the latter; but Holtzmann has shown that each of the two epistles is equally indebted to the other. Its authenticity, denied by De Wette (1843) and most later critics, has been defended (among others) by Rückert, Klöpfer, Schenkel, and Reuss.
See the special commentaries by Rückert (1834), Eadie (1854), Hodge (1856), Ellicott (3d ed. 1864), Ewald (1870), Dale (1882), and Gore (1898); also H. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe (1872).