“... In Ephesians, the imagery is used of the exalted Christ, now a heavenly being, and his relationship with the Church, to which believers on earth belong, although because of its relationship to Christ this Church has heavenly connections (cf. esp. 2:6). In Ephesians this union between Christ, the bridegroom, and the Church, his bride, is also seen as the archetype for human marriage, the “one flesh” relationship between husband and wife. Some scholars have correctly observed that because of this latter element, Ephesians’ use of the sacred marriage imagery goes beyond that of its OT antecedents. They have gone on to claim that in this regard its writer has been influenced by ideas from a Gnostic thought world. (Cf. Schlier’s lengthy excursus, 264–76, which concludes that the ideas that form the background to Ephesians “come mostly from the environment of a Gnosis connected with hellenistic Judaism” [275]. Batey, NTS 10 [1963] 121–27, claims more specifically that Ephesians was written in a milieu influenced by Jewish Gnosticism like that found in Justin the Gnostic’s Baruch, where the marriage between Elohim and Eden serves as a pattern for human marriage relationships; Fischer, Tendenz, 181– 200, adds to the material cited by Schlier Nag Hammadi texts such as Exeg. Soul 132–34; Gos. Phil. 64–72, 76, and concludes that while in Gnosticism the union between the Savior and Sophia serves ascetic tendencies, Eph 5 can be understood as a correction of the Gnostic mystery [195]. However, both these texts are dependent on Ephesians.) ...”