HistoricalChristian.Faith

Does the New Testament quote, as Scripture, words found in no Old Testament book? (Ephesians 5:14)

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: contested. The bare phenomenon is sound and undisputed: at Ephesians 5:14 (and at a small cluster of sister passages) the New Testament introduces words with a Scripture-citation formula, yet those words stand in no surviving Old-Testament canonical book. But the interpretation the phenomenon is pressed to serve — that the apostles therefore quoted a non-canonical writing as Scripture, so their Bible had no closed Old-Testament edge — is genuinely contested. For Ephesians 5:14 the stronger explanation is an early Christian hymn, not an apocryphon or a lost prophet; for the sister cases the proposed extra-canonical sources are disputed, late, or text-critically soft; and "introduced with a formula" is not the same as "received as canonical Scripture," the very point the companion deuterocanon-non-quotation argument turns on (Jude quotes 1 Enoch as prophecy without canonizing it) · back to timeline · the patristic witnesses are Jerome (cautious) and Epiphanius (located it "in Elijah"), with Origen behind the parallel at 1 Corinthians 2:9

Related arguments: New-Testament quotations with no Old-Testament source — this Ephesians 5:14 page is the centerpiece; see also the siblings 1 Corinthians 2:9, John 7:38, and Luke 11:49, and the undeniable case where the source is a named non-canonical book, Jude's quotation of 1 Enoch.

Here the sub-claim is the observation that the New Testament sometimes cites, as Scripture, words absent from any Old-Testament book — and the interpretation it serves: that apostolic "Scripture" reached beyond a closed Old-Testament canon.

The claim

"Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."

— Ephesians 5:14 (KJV). The Greek opens with dió légei ("wherefore he saith") — the same impersonal citation formula Paul uses across this letter to adduce Scripture (so 4:8, "wherefore he saith," quoting Psalm 68). Yet the words that follow match no Old-Testament passage. The argument generalizes from this and a handful of sister cases: since the New Testament introduces with a Scripture-formula material found in no canonical Old-Testament book, the apostolic category of "Scripture" was not bounded by a closed Hebrew canon — the apostles drew on writings outside it.1

The cluster of "strange quotations"

Ephesians 5:14 is the centerpiece of a small, long-noticed set of New-Testament citations whose words have no clean Old-Testament source:

That the set exists is not in dispute; it is catalogued in every serious study of the New Testament's use of the Old. The question is what it shows. The argument here is interested in the centerpiece — whether dió légei at Ephesians 5:14 points to a written authority outside the Old Testament canon — and the sister cases supply the pattern against which to weigh it. (The 1 Corinthians 2:9, John 7:38–39, and Luke 11:49 cases each warrant their own weighing; this page steelmans the centerpiece and uses the siblings as parallels.)1

The patristic record

Jerome could not find it, and floated an apocryphal origin — uncertainly. Commenting on the verse, Jerome canvasses the options without settling: a "simple answer" relates the words to an "arcane prophet" or "the writings called apocryphal," which Paul brings "into the open… not to substantiate the apocryphal texts" but as he elsewhere quotes the pagan poets Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander; a second view takes Paul to speak the words himself "as if… assuming the voice of the Holy Spirit." Jerome's own confession is the candid part:

"For my part, scanty as my knowledge is, I have nowhere found this written after diligently scouring all the editions of the ancient Scriptures and the texts of the Hebrews themselves."

So the great champion of the Hebrew canon registers the gap honestly — the words are not in the Hebrew Bible he knew — while declining to pronounce that Paul quoted an apocryphon. He raises the apocryphal-source option and leaves it open.2

Epiphanius located the words "in Elijah" — but did not name the Apocalypse of Elijah. Secondary handbooks routinely report that Epiphanius assigned Ephesians 5:14 to the apocryphal Apocalypse of Elijah. The primary text is more guarded. In the anti-Marcionite book of the Panarion (42.12.3, at the thirty-seventh Pauline passage he discusses), Epiphanius says only that the quotation stands "in Elijah" (pará tôi Ēlíai) — a bare locating phrase, not a named book. The identification with the surviving Apocalypse of Elijah is a later inference read back onto him, as the scholar Edmon Gallagher notes in working from Holl's Greek and Frank Williams's translation.3

Origen is the witness who actually names the apocryphon — but for the sister verse. It is the 1 Corinthians 2:9 puzzle, not Ephesians 5:14, that Origen ties to the Elijah literature: in his Commentary on Matthew (the Latin Commentariorum Series 117) he writes that the words "are found in no canonical book, except in the Secrets of Elijah the prophet" (in nullo regulari libro hoc positum invenitur, nisi in Secretis Eliae prophetae), and Ambrosiaster says the same of that verse. This is the strongest patristic anchor for the apocryphal-source reading — and it concerns the verse Jerome assigned instead to Isaiah 64:4.4

The evidence for the affirmative reading

The phenomenon is real, and the formula is the formula of Scripture. Dió légei is not a throwaway "it is said": in this very letter it introduces an Old-Testament citation (Ephesians 4:8 quoting Psalm 68:18), and kathôs gégraptai at 1 Corinthians 2:9 is the standard "as it is written" that elsewhere always heads Scripture. So the introductory machinery genuinely is the machinery of citation, and the quoted words genuinely are absent from the Old-Testament canon — a real datum, not an apologist's manufacture, and conceded by the most Hebrew-canon-minded Father on the timeline when Jerome admits he cannot find the words anywhere in the Scriptures or "the texts of the Hebrews themselves."2

An early patristic stream did locate some of it in apocrypha. Origen on 1 Corinthians 2:9 and Ambrosiaster after him, the source behind Epiphanius's "in Elijah," and Jerome's own first-listed "simple answer" all show that ancient readers — including learned ones — found it natural to suppose the apostles had drawn on writings outside the Hebrew canon. The reading is not a modern invention; it has a fourth-century pedigree.4

Adversarial assessment

What holds. The bare observation is sound and ought to be conceded plainly: at Ephesians 5:14 — and at 1 Corinthians 2:9, John 7:38, and Luke 11:49 — the New Testament introduces with a citation formula words that are not in any Old-Testament canonical book. Apostolic "Scripture" plainly had softer outer edges than a later, formally closed canon: the same New Testament quotes 1 Enoch as prophecy (Jude 14–15) and the Greek Septuagint's readings against the later Hebrew. As an observation about the looseness of the apostolic citation-practice, the point stands.

What is overstated. The leap from "words with no clean Old-Testament source" to "the apostles quoted a non-canonical writing as Scripture" outruns the evidence at three joints.

  1. For the centerpiece, the better explanation is a hymn, not an apocryphon. The mainstream of modern scholarship reads Ephesians 5:14 as a fragment of an early Christian hymn — most likely a baptismal acclamation ("Awake… arise… Christ shall give thee light") — its three short rhythmic lines marked off by dió légei exactly as a liturgical citation would be. On this reading the words are no quotation of any book, canonical or apocryphal, and the argument's premise that a written Scripture is being cited simply fails for its strongest case. A rival explanation keeps the source in the Old Testament: Paul freely fusing the "Awake, awake" of Isaiah 52:1, the dawning light of Isaiah 60:1, and the resurrection of Isaiah 26:19 ("Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust") — the very emendation Holl proposed for Epiphanius's text, reading "Isaiah" for "Elijah." This reading has an ancient precedent: Hippolytus, cataloguing the resurrection prophecies in his treatise on Antichrist, quotes Isaiah 26:19 ("The dead men shall arise… the dew from thee is healing to them") and then Ephesians 5:14 ("Awake, thou that sleepest…") in the same breath, introducing the latter as the words of "the prophet" — the very juxtaposition Holl invoked to back the emendation. Either way, the citation need not reach outside the canon at all.5

  2. The patristic apocryphal-source evidence is divided, late, and possibly inside-out. Epiphanius did not name a book; Holl thought even his bare "Elijah" a corruption of "Isaiah"; and for the one verse a Father does pin to the Apocalypse of Elijah — 1 Corinthians 2:9, via Origen and Ambrosiaster — Jerome flatly disagreed, tying it to Isaiah 64:4 and denying that Paul depended on an apocryphon. Worse for the reading, the surviving Apocalypse of Elijah is a late Coptic Christian recension that postdates the New Testament and does not contain the phrase. So the direction of borrowing may well run the other way: a later apocryphon absorbing Paul's famous words, not Paul quoting it — which would invert the argument entirely. The most one can say is that some lost Jewish saying may lie behind both.6

  3. "Introduced with a formula" is not "received as canonical." Even granting that Paul cites a written source outside the Hebrew canon, that would not make the source canonical Scripture in his eyes any more than Jude's naming of 1 Enoch as prophecy ("Enoch… prophesied… saying") canonizes Enoch, or Paul's quoting Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander canonizes the pagan poets. Jerome himself draws exactly this parallel for Ephesians 5:14 — Paul brings the words "into the open… not to substantiate the apocryphal texts" but as he uses the poets. The citation formula marks a quotation, not a canon-verdict; the apostolic notion of "Scripture" being broader than a formally closed list is a far weaker claim than the apostles' having canonized a particular apocryphon. (This is the mirror image of the companion deuterocanon-non-quotation argument's finding that "quotation as Scripture" is a fuzzy test the New Testament applies inconsistently at both ends.)7

What the phenomenon really shows. Strip the over-reading away and a true, modest residue remains: the apostolic category of "Scripture" was not yet a hard-edged list, and the New Testament does on occasion cite — by formula — words found in no Old-Testament book. That genuinely complicates any argument that leans on a tightly closed Hebrew canon already fixed in Jesus' day (the cessation-of-prophecy and "Abel-to-Zechariah" demarcations weighed elsewhere on this timeline). But it does not establish the strong thesis it is usually enlisted for: that the apostles received an apocryphal writing as canonical Scripture. The centerpiece is most likely a hymn; the firmest apocryphal anchor (1 Cor 2:9) is disputed and may have the borrowing backwards; and even at its strongest the datum shows a soft boundary, not a wider canon.

Assessment

Contested. The phenomenon — that the New Testament introduces, with Scripture-formulae, words absent from any Old-Testament canonical book — is sound and undisputed, conceded even by Jerome, who scoured "all the editions of the ancient Scriptures and the texts of the Hebrews themselves" and could not find Ephesians 5:14. But the interpretation the phenomenon is pressed to serve — that the apostles thereby quoted a non-canonical writing as Scripture, so their Bible had no closed Old-Testament edge — splits down the middle. Strong by one reading: apostolic "Scripture" demonstrably had soft outer edges (the same New Testament cites 1 Enoch and follows the Septuagint), which tells against any cleanly-closed-canon premise. Weak by another: for the centerpiece the better explanation is an early Christian hymn, not an apocryphon or lost prophet; the one verse a Father pins to the Apocalypse of Elijah (1 Cor 2:9, via Origen) is contested by Jerome and rests on a source that postdates the New Testament and lacks the words, so the borrowing may run the other way; and a citation formula marks a quotation, not a canon-verdict — Jude quotes Enoch as prophecy without canonizing it. No clear winner: the soft-boundary point holds, the wider-canon claim does not follow. (Distinct from the deuterocanon-non-quotation argument, where the quoted source is a specific disputed Old-Testament book; here the quoted source is outside any Old-Testament canon — apocryphal, hymnic, or lost. The two are companions, not the same case.)

Sources

  1. The verse and the cluster: Ephesians 5:14 (KJV), opening dió légei ("wherefore he saith"); the same formula heads an Old-Testament citation at Ephesians 4:8 (Psalm 68:18). The companion "strange quotations" with no verbatim Old-Testament source: 1 Corinthians 2:9 ("Eye hath not seen…," kathôs gégraptai), John 7:38 ("as the scripture hath said…"), and Luke 11:49 ("said the wisdom of God…"). The cluster and its patristic discussion are surveyed by Edmon Gallagher, "Epiphanius on Ephesians 5:14" (2017), who treats the same material in his scholarly work on the early Christian Old Testament (see Edmon L. Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 114, Leiden: Brill, 2012). ↩

  2. Jerome, Commentary on Ephesians, on 5:14: "The one who is content with a simple answer will say indeed that Paul must have read this phrase in some arcane prophet or in the writings called apocryphal… not to substantiate the apocryphal texts but in the same way that he makes use of verses elsewhere from Aratus, Epimenides and Menander…. Someone less content with this simple answer might argue that the apostle said this as an exhortation to penitence. It is as if he were assuming the voice of the Holy Spirit. For my part, scanty as my knowledge is, I have nowhere found this written after diligently scouring all the editions of the ancient Scriptures and the texts of the Hebrews themselves." Gallagher cites the commentary ad loc. at p. 223. ↩

  3. Epiphanius, Panarion (Adversus Haereses) 42.12.3, at the thirty-seventh Pauline passage discussed in that section (so 42.12.3.37), in the book against Marcion. The Greek (Holl's GCS edition, pp. 179–80; English in Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1–46), 2nd ed., Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 63, Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 358–59) reads that the quotation stands "in Elijah" (pará tôi Ēlíai) — Epiphanius does not name the Apocalypse of Elijah, contrary to the way he is often cited; the point that the primary text says only "in Elijah" is made by Edmon Gallagher, "Epiphanius on Ephesians 5:14" (2017). The older handbook ascription of Ephesians 5:14 to the Elijah apocryphon is repeated, e.g., at "Apocalypse of Elijah," Wikipedia (citing Haer. xlii, ed. Oehler, ii.678). ↩

  4. Origen, Commentary on Matthew, Commentariorum Series 117 (the old-Latin Series), on 1 Corinthians 2:9: "in nullo regulari libro hoc positum invenitur, nisi in Secretis Eliae prophetae" — the words are in no canonical book except "the Secrets of Elijah the prophet"; Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:9, names the work likewise ("scriptum est in Apocalypsi Heliae in apocryphis"). See Joseph Verheyden, "Origen on the Origin of 1 Cor 2,9," in R. Bieringer (ed.), The Corinthian Correspondence (BETL 125; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996), 491–511, and the summary at "Apocalypse of Elijah," Wikipedia (citing O. S. Wintermute in Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, 728–30). Origen attaches the apocryphon to 1 Corinthians 2:9, not to Ephesians 5:14. ↩

  5. The early-Christian-hymn reading of Ephesians 5:14 is the mainstream of modern commentary — the three short rhythmic lines, the baptismal imagery of waking, rising, and illumination, and the dió légei citation of a known liturgical fragment: so Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (Word Biblical Commentary 42; Dallas: Word, 1990), 318–20, and Markus Barth, Ephesians (Anchor Bible 34A), both treating it as a hymn (likely baptismal) rather than an Old-Testament or apocryphal quotation. The rival free-adaptation-of-Isaiah reading fuses Isaiah 52:1 ("Awake, awake"), Isaiah 60:1 ("Arise, shine; for thy light is come"), and Isaiah 26:19 ("Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust"); this is the source Karl Holl proposed by emending Epiphanius's "Elijah" to "Isaiah," backing the change "with a parallel in Hippolytus" (Gallagher, "Epiphanius on Ephesians 5:14" (2017)). That parallel can be read at first hand. In his Treatise on Christ and Antichrist 65 Hippolytus strings together the resurrection prophecies — Daniel 12:2, then "Esaias says, 'The dead men shall arise, and they that are in their tombs shall awake; for the dew from thee is healing to them'" (Isaiah 26:19), then the Lord's word (John 5:25) — and immediately adds "And the prophet says, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light'" (Ephesians 5:14), setting the citation among the Isaian resurrection texts and ascribing it to "the prophet" rather than to any apocryphon — exactly the association Holl's emendation supposes. (The same words circulated as "Scripture" elsewhere in Hippolytus's milieu: the Naassene Gnostics he reports quote "Awake thou that sleepest…" as words "the Scripture speaks," Refutation of All Heresies 5.8.) ↩

  6. On the disputed and probably late status of the apocryphal source: Jerome ties 1 Corinthians 2:9 to a free rendering of Isaiah 64:4 ("since the beginning of the world men have not heard… what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him") and denies Pauline dependence on an apocryphon (Letter 57.9; Commentary on Isaiah on 64:4). The surviving Apocalypse of Elijah is a Coptic Christian recension dated c. 150–300 — postdating the New Testament — and does not contain the phrase Origen ascribes to it, so the extant work cannot be Paul's source and the borrowing may run from Paul to the later apocryphon, or both may draw a lost Jewish saying: see "Apocalypse of Elijah," Wikipedia (with Wintermute, OTP 1, 729–30), and M. E. Stone & J. Strugnell, The Books of Elijah, Parts 1–2 (SBL Texts and Translations 18; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979). ↩

  7. That a citation formula marks a quotation, not a canon-verdict: Jude 14–15 cites 1 Enoch 1:9 by name and as prophecy ("Enoch… prophesied… saying") without canonizing it, and Paul quotes the pagan poets Aratus (Acts 17:28), Epimenides (Titus 1:12), and Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33). Jerome draws the same parallel for Ephesians 5:14 (n. 2 above). The fuzziness of "quotation as Scripture" as a canon-test is weighed at length on the companion "Does the New Testament's never quoting the deuterocanon as Scripture prove it is not canonical?" (assessment: weak) and in Edmon L. Gallagher & John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity (Oxford, 2017). ↩