Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 1:1
To whom was this letter written? What a strange question Ian.
- Of course it was written to the Ephesians. We all know that.
- The title of the book in our Bibles says Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
- The first verse says “Paul . . . to the saints in Ephesus”.
Well of course. Silly me.
Take a careful look at your Bible. Take note of the details. ALL OF THE DETAILS. If you miss the detail you miss important things. You paid for your whole Bible. That includes footnotes, maps, end notes, cross references and the like. Get your money’s worth and use them. A careful reading of the text will show you there is a superscript note on “to the saints in Ephesusa“. But if you look at the printed copy of your Bible you will see it is marked with a superscript letter a. If you look down at the footnote you will read “Some early manuscripts don’t have ‘in Ephesus’ “.
If you don’t have a footnote on this verse in your printed Bible then it is time to get a new Bible. The one you hold at the moment doesn’t have a full set of footnote references. Many modern printed Bibles are light on footnoting. I guess because they know the readers don’t use them. That’s true, isn’t it? Most of you don’t bother with the footnotes. That’s for nerds and geeks. Well there are things that you ought to know which are put into the footnotes. They are more appropriate in the footnotes than in the text. This is one of those examples. Be a geek for a week.
Over to you now. Go search it out. But Ian what do I do? Well if you really don’t know, you need to consult the helps at your disposal. In E-Sword simply click your cursor in the verse in question [Eph 1:1] and click any one of the commentaries you have downloaded. Some will give you the input but most will refer you to the Introduction. That which we looked at yesterday but I know most of your skipped over it. Ian gave you the summary, so why would you bother to look further? Well I did tell you in Bible Gem 593 “Here are some highlights: (But it would still do you good to read all that is available to you through E-Sword)”
I conned you, I confess it. I sold you short, led you up the garden path, up the creek without a paddle. I was prefiguring coming to this point now. I did it to make my point. Search out these things for yourself. And what is more it is all there for you, you just have to know where to look. A number of the commentaries in E-Sword simply refer you to the Introduction because they cover it there.
Ok over to you. Solve the problem for yourself. Is this letter written to the Ephesians or not?
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
Don’t just show up to church, GROW up at church.
Casey Treat
You can’t be enlarged unless you are willing to be stretched.
Ian Vail