The New Testament writing, which is delivered as Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is according to the historical-critical research neither written by Paul nor specially addressed to a congregation in Ephesus. Instead, it is suggested that an unknown Christian author wrote the text around 30 years after the apostle’s death in his name in order to present an actualized version of Paul’s gospel. While the exegeses, as usual still keeps focusing on the origin of the letter and on the intention of the hypothetical “real author”, as the leading criteria for interpretation, in this project, the pseudepigraphical character and thus the fictionality of the letter will be considered seriously. As the real author hides s/he should not be the point of interpretation. Since, the historical-critical methods are not sufficient to analyze this fictional text as such, a methodology for the understanding of the text will be developed with the help of the theory of fictionality and tools of narrative analysis. For e.g., the fictitious author, focalization, gaps etc. will serve as the key concepts for the interpretation. The text, read as fiction, can appeal to the people of different Christian traditions – Jewish or non-Jewish – and thus linking them ecumenically through the reading of the same text.

My research project in Greifswald, combining the theoretical discussion on methodology and practical application, will be imparted in the Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians for the series „Ökumenischer Taschenbuchkommentar“.

-> For the current Fellow year

-> Find Fellows from previous years