There is a close literary relationship between the Colossians and Ephesians. Over forty passages in Ephesians are expansions or variations of passages in Colossians. E. F. Scott argued that Paul used one letter as a model for the other,Scott, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians (1930) p. 121 whereas others have considered Ephesians to be derivative of Colossians, edited and reworked by another.e.g. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (1951) pp. 245-255 Donald Guthrie summarized the implications of this: "Advocates of non-Pauline authorship find it difficult to conceive that one mind could have produced two works possessing so remarkable a degree of similarity in theme and phraseology and yet differing in so many other respects, whereas advocates of Pauline authorship are equally emphatic that two minds could not have produced two such works with so much subtle interdependence blended with independence."Guthrie p. 511
