A.V. Authorized Version (King James)
5 Whether Colossians preceded Ephesians or vice versa cannot be established with certainty. The usual — and it would seem logical — view is that Paul, having written Colossians which deals with a particular situation (the denial of Christ’s all-sufficiency for salvation), afterward passed from the particular to the more general, from conditions existing in one particular church or in the churches of the Lycus Valley to God’s plan of redemption with reference to the church universal. The fact that Ephesians is the longer epistle, enlarging on certain subjects that are merely touched upon in Colossians, can also be interpreted as pointing to that conclusion. Colossians 4:16b (“see to it that you also read the letter from Laodicea”) is not a refutation of this theory. It does not indicate that Ephesians must have preceded Colossians. Even if the letter “from Laodicea” should refer to Ephesians, a supposition that cannot be proved (see N.T. on Colossians and Philemon, pp. 196, 197), this would still leave room for at least two possibilities neither of which would preclude the priority of Colossians: a. the apostle wrote (i.e., dictated) Colossians in its entirety, including 4:16, having already planned to write Ephesians very soon afterward, the two letters (plus the letter to Philemon) to be carried to their respective destinations by the same carrier, Tychicus, on the same trip (cf. Col. 4:7–9; Eph. 6:21, 22); or b. having written Colossians, with the exception of 4:16 (at least) and having afterward also composed Ephesians, Paul then revised the former by adding 4:16. For the very complicated theory of H. J. Holtzmann regarding the composition of the two letters see N.T.C. on Colossians and Philemon, p. 29. For defense of Colossian priority cf. E. P. Sanders, “Literary Dependence in Colossians,” JBL (March 1966), p. 29.
6 The manner in which this argument, however, is still being used even in a relatively recent commentary, with many excellent features, leaves something to be desired. I refer to F. W. Beare’s work on Ephesians in The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 10, p. 598. After informing the reader that the number of new words is extraordinarily large in Ephesians, he mentions five of them. However, no less than three of these five are found in 6:11 ff., the paragraph on the Christian’s spiritual armor, a new subject (at least as to detail), with respect to which we expect new words (see No. [2] above). The remaining two words are not “new” at all: one is found also in Romans; the other in II Corinthians. Negative criticism will have to do better than this!
7 See A. C. King, “Ephesians in the Light of Form Criticism,” ET 63 (1951–1952), pp. 273–276.
8 However, I purposely skip the debate with reference to XII.2. It is not needed to prove the point.
A.V. Authorized Version (King James)
9 It was also left out by the corrector of 424, whose corrections were based on a very ancient manuscript, and by 1739.
R.S.V. Revised Standard Version
10 See W. E. Ward, “One Body — the Church,” RE, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Fall, 1963), pp. 398–413; F. W. Beare, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X), York and Nashville, 1953, pp. 606, 607; and L. Berkhof, New Testament Introduction, Grand Rapids, 1916, p. 189. The latter points out that while Colossians discusses Christ, the head of the church, Ephesians is concerned more emphatically with the church, the body of Christ.