This article focuses on the background and structural meaning of the topos of the armor of God in Eph. 6,11-17. It argues that this topos represents a continuation of the ancient Greek epic topos widely used in Hellenic and Hellenistic times, found first and foremost in Homer’s Iliad. There among the plethora of descriptions of various heroes wearing the full armor (e.g., Paris, Ajant, and Agamemnon) stands the even fuller description of Achilles panoply (18:478-617). That Homeric paradigm of armoring a hero lying behind later descriptions, including Eph. 6:11-17, is seen in the correspondence of weapons, the importance given to the fact that the panoply is god-made, and the centrality of the shield.

The Homeric epic paradigm is present in Greek epic poetry as demonstrated by Hesiod in The Shield of Hercules and continues through the Tragic Poets (e.g., Aeschylus), Euripides, Virgil and on through pseudo-Heraclitus, for whom the shield of Achilles allegorically represents Greek cosmology.

The article then goes on to argue Greek epic roots of the topos behind Eph. 6:11-17, and evaluates the meaning of its usage, which includes the motif of the centrality of the shield in offering an opportunity for the writer to frame his worldview, namely faith (pistis). Finally, the article examines the meaning of faith in the rest of the Epistle to the Ephesians concluding that the passage Eph. 6:11-17 faithfully follows the rest of the Epistle in extolling faith as the central idea and virtue in the Christian worldview.