ABSTRACT

How did the author and the audience of the deutero-Pauline (Best 2004: 24-36) letter to the Ephesians experience that the behavioral norms in the letter were obliging, important, relevant, and true for them as Saints and Christ-believers? How could the norms of the letter, if practiced, contribute to the group dynamics of the group and the sense that the group was valuable? Why did the letter have the rhetorical power to induce the perception that the norms in the letter were normative for the recipients and that they needed to improve their behavior? In this chapter, I will lean on insights about basic cognitive properties of our minds in order to answer these questions.