Reading Ephesians

A Helsinki-based researcher of early Jewish and Christian movements, Shkul presents a slightly revised version of her December 2007 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Sheffield. She examines how the epistle deliberately shapes emerging Christianness by providing ideological and social paradigms for the community of Christ-followers. Part of that, she explains, is positioning the group in a Jewish symbolic universe, which is reconfigured to make room for Jesus Christ and his non-Israelite followers, and modelling the group after Israel as God's people. Among her topics are a theoretical framework for exploring social remembering and communal legitimation, the communal functions of remembering Christ, and a theoretical framework for exploring communal social orientation. -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc. This volume examines how the letter to the Ephesians engages in social entrepreneurship, that is, the deliberate shaping of emerging Christianness by providing ideological and social paradigms for the community of Christ-followers. After a 42-page introduction, it develops a theoretical framework for exploring social remembering and communal legitimation, and presents readings of Ephesians 2 ('remembering Christ' and its communal functions) and Ephesians 3 (remembering Paul and communal legitimation). Then it provides a theoretical framework for exploring communal social orientation, and presents a reading of Ephesians 4-6 (prototypes and antitypes--paradigms for social orientation). Shkul concludes that Ephesians responded to its diverse cultural matrix by self-enhancing discourse and compelling imagination which invented traditions of Jesus' messiahship and non-Israelite election and led its readers to imagine blessedness and God's favor. -New Testament Abstracts, Vol. 54 Shkul's work is a fine example of the usefulness of social-scientific perspectives and tools for NT study. -- Journal for the Study of The New Testament, Volume 33 Number 5 Shkul's work provides an astute, although highly dense, look at Ephesians best suited for readers with a great deal of familiarity with social scientific theories as well as the particularities of Ephesians. -- Religious Studies Review Mentioned in the Church Times