Ephesians 1:1, a letter addressed to… whom?
Ephesians may have been addressed to Ephesus or circulated with its destination left open: Ephesians 1:1 survives both with and without the city’s name. The earliest witnesses omit it; the APB prints it.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. The copies also carry Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The earlier witness classes decisively favor retaining the default.”
“The base text reads ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. The copies also carry the omission [greek majuscule; greek papyrus; early greek manuscript tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The two readers disagreed: the first chose the other wording and the second kept the base text. A departure needs both, so the base text stands. The shorter wording is early and difficult, which counts for it, but the place name is also early and more widely carried. The committee keeps the default with low confidence.”
The committee retained the words naming Ephesus: "The committee keeps the default with low confidence." GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI), the first translator, chose the omission; Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), the second translator, retained the base text. Changing it required agreement from both. After the committee's run, the chair changed the verse to include "in Ephesus" because the decided source text had changed. The committee retranslated the verse, but comparison checks rejected the English change required by that source. The wording passed the fidelity audit, meaning review and recall check. The committee's printed text now names Ephesus.
Before: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will, to the holy ones who are also faithful in Christ Jesus:
After: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will, to the holy ones who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus:
“The decided source text changed in the textual re-read of 2026-10-04 (GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Fable 5.1, blind): ἐν Ἐφέσῳ is added after οὖσιν. The committee retranslated the verse from the source (source_fix rr1004); code gates that compare the new English with the old refused the wording for what the changed source requires. The wording then passed the committee’s fidelity audit, meaning review and recall check (source_fix_rr1004_chair_gate_20261004).”
The argument for each reading
If a circular letter
The first hands of Papyrus 46, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus leave the address without a city. Their shared omission gives the shorter reading a place in the earliest witnesses. An open destination could fit a circular letter intended for more than one city, with each community filling in its own address. That possibility explains why the missing words matter, but the omission alone cannot establish how the letter circulated. The committee's textual note also recognizes the shorter wording as early and difficult. On this reading, the greeting identifies the recipients as saints without naming their city.
If addressed to Ephesus
Nestle-Aland 28 prints the words locating the recipients in Ephesus, though brackets mark uncertainty about their place in the text. All four editions print the words, and correctors added them to the three earliest witnesses. The committee's textual decision describes the place name as early and more widely carried. These features give the named destination a substantial claim, even while the first hands of the earliest witnesses leave it out. On this reading, the greeting explicitly addresses saints in Ephesus. The unresolved question is whether the place name belonged to the address from the outset.
The surviving difference leaves the letter's initial destination uncertain. An address without a city can support the circular-letter explanation, but it cannot establish that explanation by itself. The presence of Ephesus in the printed editions also leaves the early omission to be explained. The variant concerns the recipients' location. Their description as saints faithful in Christ Jesus and the following greeting of grace and peace remain in place.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.