Book review: No Longer Living as the Gentiles: Differentiation and Shared Ethical Values In Ephesians 4.17– 6.9 Darko, Daniel K. New York: T&T Clark, 2008 pp. x + 160. $130.00

Abstract

This work is a revision of a thesis presented to the University of London in 2006. In it the author, Daniel K. Darko, Adjunct Professor at the University of Scranton, seeks to address a tension that he detects in scholarship on Ephesians between treatments of 4:17– 5:21 and 5:21–6:9. Chapter 1 explores that tension. Whereas most scholars see the former as sharply differentiating the community from outsiders, variously understood as reflecting ethical concern or social withdrawal, the most common interpretation of the household code sees it serving to enhance the community’s relation with its world, either by enabling it to adapt to community norms or apologetically to display that its own communities are in no way disruptive of what people considered good and orderly. The rest of chapter 1 deals with methods. They include textual analysis, comparative analysis of the text with Greco-Roman and Jewish moralists of the time, and social identity theory, a carefully nuanced discussion identifying current approaches and their applicability. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of authorship, destination, and the relationship between Ephesians and Colossians in which Darko inclines toward Pauline authorship, sees the letter addressing some concrete situation in Asia Minor, and indicates that he will view Ephesians in its own right and not through the lens of Colossians..