Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary

Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary. By Harold W. Hoehner. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002, xxix + 930 pp., $54.99.

The cover quotes Fuller Professor Hagner, "A tour de force." The dust jacket cites numerous other luminaries who laud Professor Hoehner's new commentary. Let me join the throng. Clearly reflecting decades of reading and research on Ephesians by the long-time professor of New Testament at Dallas Seminary, this book tops the list of important new works on the crucial Epistle to the Ephesians. After a too-long hiatus, the last dozen or so years have witnessed an impressive production of excellent commentaries on Ephesians: Lincoln, Best, O'Brien, and Muddiman. Yet none can challenge the erudition and sheer quantity of research that Hoehner demonstrates in this commentary. And though it has been long in the making, readers will see that he is up-to-date in his citations all along the way-even to the point of including references to both BAGD and BDAG in his word studies. Virtually no source has been neglected or overlooked; no exegetical issue is addressed without recourse to other published works on the problem. The list of commentaries consulted runs to 125! The footnotes are numerous and extensive, including both ancient and modern sources. If one desires a handy 9 ¼ by 6 ½ by 2 ½ inch file cabinet of virtually all the research ever done on Ephesians, get this book.

The subtitle underscores that Hoehner has written a commentary based on the Greek text, so that in scope it parallels what one finds in the NIGNT, the ICC, or the WBC series. At the same time, Hoehner carefully translates all his citations of Greek texts so that a reader without Greek, or whose Greek is a bit rusty, can still find great profit and follow the essential arguments. However, the author does not shy away from technical discussions of morphology and syntax, though he relegates his detailed and technical discussions of text critical issues to the footnotes. The writing style is clear and precise for the most part. The commentary follows Hoehner's detailed and precise outline verse-by-verse and then clause-by-clause or phrase-by-phrase, with explanations followed by concluding summaries. The reader can turn to any verse and discover not only what Hoehner concludes about its meaning, but can locate the sources, see the options available, and follow the reasoning that helped him shape his judgments. Beyond the commentary on the text itself, Hoehner includes at the appropriate points eight excursuses on crucial topics in the epistle including: in Christ, election, pleroma, mystery, household code, and slavery. These are substantial essays in themselves (e.g. the one on slavery runs to five pages of very small font size). Of course, the book's sheer size may give some teachers pause when they decide upon texts for courses in Ephesians. However, as a reference resource for all things Ephesians, it will be neglected only to the reader's peril.

Going against the current critical consensus, Hoehner adopts the traditional view that Paul authored the letter we call Ephesians. In typical fashion, he employs three charts over twelve pages and catalogues scholars' position on this question from 1519 (Erasmus) to the present. Hoehner shows that the traditional position of Pauline authorship is not the minority view that some scholars today allege (pp. 9-20). Then in painstaking detail for sixty pages (plus seventeen pages of bibliography) he takes on all the objections to Pauline authorship and provides a comprehensive and convincing defense of this traditional position. He investigates the external and internal evidence. He reviews the unanimous, early attestation for Pauline authorship and the number of lexical and linguistic distinctives of the letter that appear in the undisputed letters of Paul. He shows that the early church did not accept pseudonymity as a valid category for authoritative texts. While not breaking new ground in the discussion, he does amass all the arguments in one place and shows how convincing and likely the early church's view is that Paul wrote the letter. He includes the other typical issues of introduction: structure, genre (it is a typical and actual Hellenistic letter), historical setting (not a circular letter but one written to the church in Ephesus; against most scholars Hoehner accepts the reading in 1:1 in which the words "in Ephesus" were part of the original letter Paul wrote), the historical setting of the letter in Paul's career (adopting the traditional view that Paul wrote the letter from prison in Rome in AD 61-62), purpose (to promote "love" in the church), and theology. In all, 130 pages of introduction set the stage for what follows.

Several other general comments are in order. Hoehner provides us with a laudable model for doing word studies: not merely summarizing what others have concluded, for important words he traces their uses in all relevant literature and their ranges of meanings (almost mini-summaries of TDNT or NIDNTT) and draws his own conclusions of Paul's intended sense in the context in Ephesians. Likewise, Hoehner is thorough in his attempt to identify the grammatical significance of the features in the Greek text. If there is a genitive (or other) case, Hoehner surveys the possible ways Paul might intend its use and arrives at his conclusion. He exercises the same thoroughness in his analysis of participles, verb tenses, and moods all along the way. Concerning verb tenses, however, in a few places he falls into the subtle trap of identifying a particular use of the tense as if that is its form rather than Hoehner's interpretation of the use in that location (e.g. he says, "It is a consummative aorist stressing . . ."; p. 836). Theologically, readers will also detect hints along the way of what appears to be Hoehner's dispensational preunderstanding as when he avers in various places that nothing of the OT applies to the Christian and the church unless the NT specifically repeats it (e.g. pp. 376, 447). Or he insists that since the canon of Scripture is closed, "the gift of prophecy does not seem to be operative today" (p. 546). Many would disagree with both these assertions. At the same time, he counters the excesses of those he terms "hyper dispensationalists." On text critical issues he appears more attracted to the readings of the majority text tradition than most modern interpreters of Ephesians. Besides the inclusion of "in Ephesus" in 1:1, Hoehner prefers the majority text reading against the one favored by the UBS^sup 4^ and NA^sup 27^ in several places: e.g. the inclusion of hypotassesthe (submit) in 5:22 or the longer and obscure reading "out of his flesh and out of his bones" in 5:30 (for other examples see on 1:14; 3:14; 4:32). He adopts none, however, without a careful consideration of the evidence.