An Philemon, an die Kolosser, an die Epheser

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An Philemon, An die Kolosser, An die Epheser, by Hans Hubner. HNT 12. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1997. Pp. xii + 277. DM 59.00 (paper). Rather than revising the well-known volume by H. Dibelius and H. Greeven, Hubner has written a completely new commentary. Still, he conscientiously enters into conversation with Dibelius/Greeven, especially when discussing matters that they dealt with in some distinctive way. As one expects from this series, HUbner gives constant and careful attention to the Hellenistic background of ideas, images, and concepts found in the letters, although he breaks no new ground here. His search for the background of these letters is not limited to religionsgeschichte research. In fact, he explicitly orders the importance of types of background material so that one looks first to the Pauline letters, then to the LXX, and then the religionsgeschichte parallels. In the case of Ephesians, he also looks to Colossians early on. To incorporate these investigations the author has included many excursuses. But these are not limited to background research; some are on theological topics as well as a wide range of other subjects, including such matters as the worldview of the author of Ephesians and whether the devil exists (given in conjunction with the Ephesians passage on the armor with which the Christian resists the devil). Hubner sees these three letters as a set with each being dependent on the others for its preservation and inclusion in the Pauline corpus, with the references to the same characters establishing the ties. Hibner mostly assumes rather than argues that Colossians is deutero-Pauline and Ephesians is trito-Pauline. The consistency with which he interprets Colossians and Ephesians within this framework is one of the distinctive characteristics of this commentary. When dealing with Colossians he often comments on how he sees it building on and being different from the undisputed Paulines (see, e.g., his discussion of faith and hope, pp. 45-47). His methodology for interpreting Ephesians is that he looks first to Colossians, then the undisputed Paulines, and then the LXX. But this does not mean Hubner thinks that Ephesians only approaches Paul through Colossians, as we see in the case of pneumatology (p. 147), where Ephesians returns to Paul without going through Colossians. The excursus on the differences between Paul, Colossians, and Ephesians with which the commentary ends summarizes the differences in outlook he sees in the three. He finds the greatest development in ecclesiology, with Ephesians developing an ecclesiology that requires a more realized eschatology than that found in Paul. Hubner is extremely skeptical about the use of rhetorical analysis when interpreting Colossians and Ephesians because they are dependent on Paul's letters for their structure. …