Jensens survey of the old testament adam 491
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CHART 82: THE PLACE OF THE
CHRISTOLOGICAL EPISTLES IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT
B. PAUL THE PRISONER
All four of the prison epistles contain
direct references to Paul’s imprisonment.
Read Ephesians 3:1; 4:1; 6:20; Philippians
1:7, 13; Colossians 4:3, 18; Philemon 10, 13,
22, 23. Paul had previously experienced
being jailed (2 Cor. 11:23), but the rst
Roman imprisonment was of long duration
and involved extensive ministry outreach.
Read Acts 28:16-31 for Luke’s reporting of
some activities from part of that period.
C. PLACE OF WRITING
It is generally held that the prison epistles
were written at Rome, during the
imprisonment of Acts 28. Some advocate
either Caesarea or Ephesus as the place of
writing.3
D. ORDER OF WRITING
Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon were
written rst, dispatched at the same time by
the same messengers. (Read Ephesians 6:2122; Colossians 4:7-9; Philemon 12.)
Philippians was written at a later time. (The
date will be discussed when that epistle is
studied later.)
II. BACKGROUND
A. AUTHOR
Twice in the text of Ephesians, Paul is
identi ed as the author. Read 1:1 and 3:1.
Internal evidences of style and content, as
well as the external witness of tradition,
support this observation.
Paul was about sixty- ve years of age
when he wrote the letter. He referred to
himself as “the aged” when he wrote to
Philemon at this same time.
B. DATE AND PLACE OF WRITING
A date assigned to the writing of
Ephesians is A.D. 61. This is based on Paul’s
writing the epistle during his
rst
imprisonment in Rome, which lasted at least
two years (A.D. 61-62). At that time he also
wrote Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians,
as noted above. Read Acts 28:30-31. Were
circumstances favorable to Paul to meditate,
study, and write during this imprisonment?
John Bunyan wrote the classic The Pilgrim’s
Progress while in prison. Have you read of
other “prison masterpieces”? How do you
account for such a phenomenon, from the
human standpoint? Of course, in the case of
a canonical book like Ephesians, God was
the originator and user of the writing’s
setting.
C. DESTINATION
1 . Main views. There are two main views
regarding the original destination of
