yet it is also a debt. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their 28 spiritual good, they owe them a debt of service in material good. When I have finished this, then, and have securely delivered this fruit to them, 29 I will depart for Spain by way of you. And I know that when I come to I shall come with the fulness of the blessing of Christ. Now 30 you, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit I appeal to you, 31 brothers, strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be rescued from the disobedient in Judea, and that my ministry of 32 aid for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints, so that through the will of God I may come to you in joy and be refreshed along with you. The God of peace be with you all: Amen. 33 16 21 23 25 Timotheus my fellow-worker salutes you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipatros, my kinsmen. I Tertius, who write the letter, salute you in the Lord. Gaius, my host and the host of the Community at large, salutes you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city, salutes you; so does brother Quartus. [Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and preaching of Jesus Christ, in virtue of the revelation of the secret which 26 has been kept silent throughout times eternal but is now disclosed and, by the prophetic scriptures in virtue of the command of the eternal God, 27 displayed to all the nations to secure obedience to the faith-to the only wise God through Jesus Christ, to him be the honour for ever: Amen.] anday, A NOTE TO EPHESUS THAT a note addressed to Ephesus (Schulz) lies embedded in the 16th Although the letter is not expressly addressed to Ephesus, the 1 Though it is only fair to add that several critics, including Harnack, Zahn, Denney, and Dr. Drummond, are still unconvinced. 2 This note to Ephesus, it has been often argued (recently by J. Weiss, ThLz (1893), p. 395, ThSt. pp. 182-184), made up, along with some other fragments, a larger Ephesian letter. See below, Appendix, ad loc. As the greater part of chap. 15 is probably genuine, the real Roman letter appropriately ends as it began (18-15) with the apostle's hope and project of reaching the capital on his missionary travels. There is nothing decisive to show that this Ephesian note originally was a part of a larger epistle. It is self-contained and intelligible by itself. 3 On the other hand, "comme il y avait peu de relations entre Corinth et la 4 Occasionally, it is true (e.g. chaps. 14, 15) Paul seems to possess some acquaint-ve ל. individual detail and colour in 161-20 presupposes, on the contrary, a sphere where Paul had for long resided and worked. As he wrote from Corinth, the only other city which answers this description is Ephesus. There Paul's experience had been prolonged and varied, and indeed several of the names here are directly linked to Asia Minor (Epænetus, ver. 5, ảπaрxǹ τns 'Aσías, especially, and Prisca and Aquila, ver. 3, who were at Ephesus immediately before "Romans" was written,-Ac 1818. 26, 1 Co 1619,-and apparently were there not long afterwards, 2 Ti 419). Also, if genuine, the keen warning against schismatics and errorists (17-20) suits Rome1 less well than Ephesus (1 Co 168. 9, ȧVTIKEίμevoι Toλoi, Ac 20 291, Apoc 221). Most inapplicable of all to a church like Rome is the tone of Paul's remark in ver. 19 ("your obedience," "I will," etc.). The distant tone even of a passage like 1520 f. shows that he was not on close enough terms with the Roman Christians to speak thus pointedly, although as addressed to Ephesus the words would be perfectly legitimate; and "it cannot be❞ proved "that many of those with whom in the course of his twenty years ministry he had established such relations as are referred to here, had for one cause or another found their way to the great city." Paul had been a prisoner (167) long before his confinement at Caesarea or Rome (2 Co 18 1123), perhaps even at Ephesus, so that this letter need not have been written necessarily from the later imprisonment (Col 410, Philem 23). It was composed in all likelihood at the same time and place as Romans. But while Paul could send only general counsels to the Western church, his connection with the Eastern enabled him to write a very different note full of concrete and affectionate detail.2 This is corroborated by the further fact that Ro 161-20 forms a 1 No evidence, least of all any from the epistle to the Romans itself, has been forthcoming to prove the existence of διχοστασίαι and σκάνδαλα among the Roman Christians of that age. The only defence of 17-20 as Pauline, is to refer it to some community elsewhere. Dr. Drummond prefers to think of Greek adventurers rather than of Jewish Christian antagonists. At any rate, controversy against false teachers is conspicuously lacking in Romans; and it is hard to see how such an outburst can be reconciled with the general phenomena of the preceding chapters. When the Ephesian destination is accepted, the words are luminous and apt. When the Roman destination is advocated, interpreters are reduced to the strait of conjecturing that Paul was here vaguely warning the Romans against teachers who existed in other churches and might at some future date trouble themselves! This implies a most un Pauline airiness. Besides, the whole sense of vers. 17-20 is lost unless the readers know the facts and persons to whom the writer alluded. How else could they mark and turn away from them? The remark that Paul "definitely states that he is only warning them that they may be wise if occasion arise (ICC, Romans," p. xciv) is quite misleading and emasculates the apostle's language. Had he feared the advent of Judaising emissaries to Rome, he could and would have made this clear to his readers. Instances of similar warning, such as Gal 19 53, Ph 31,-(adduced by Zahn)-are not genuine prophylactic counsels. In the former of these the mischief had already begun, which, as even Zahn admits, was not the case in Rome when the apostle wrote; while the remarkably intimate relations between Paul and Philippi differentiate Philippians entirely from an epistle like Romans. 2 An attempt is sometimes made to evade the force of these arguments by urging, (a) that these people mentioned here may well have come to Rome through their migratory (Ja 413) habits, especially as there was constant communication between Rome and the provinces. But the point is that when Paul wrote Romans, such a migration had not occurred. Whatever evidence we possess tells against it. How incredible that an exodus of Paul's friends and their relatives should have taken place to the capital at that time! What turned twenty-four and more of them suddenly into nomads? Afterwards, it is quite possible that such a migration gradually followed letter of commendation given to Phoebê (erioтon σvσTATIKη): So Semler, Renan, Hausrath (iii. 260), Farrar (St. Paul, chap. xxxvii.), Holtzmann (Einl. pp. 242-46), Weiss, Weizsäcker, McGiffert, and Adeney (BI, pp. 379, 380).1 Paul would naturally introduce a person to a circle with which he already possessed some influence. The value of the commendation would mainly consist in the writer's title to respect and obedience from those to whom he spoke, with whom he was on intimate terms. How this note became incorporated in Romans, it is only possible to conjecture. It may have been because copies of both, as well as the originals, were written at the same time and from the same place, that the later editors of the Pauline literature added them together. Perhaps Phoebê, its bearer, ultimately arrived with it (the original or a copy) in Rome. In any case the only way of preserving a note so unimportant in itself was to put it in the wake of a larger letter, particularly as the note lacked any formal address. Romans was apparently edited-to judge from * its textual condition-before ever it reached the Canon; and in the two closing chapters especially it is possible to detect different textual strata, even although the process by which they were deposited is now largely obscure. The note may have been put in its present place at the end of Romans, since in the Muratorian Canon that epistle occupied the last place among the Pauline epistles to the churches, as afterwards in Tertullian's and Cyprian's lists (Zahn, GK, ii. p. 344). Probably, too, in a later age the note was appended to Romans because it contained the names of several Christians (like Ampliatus) who had become prominent figures in the Roman church subsequently to the original period of the letter. Their traditional connection with Rome and the obscurity of this note's original destination (which was natural in an epistle of commendation)—combined to further its incorporation with the large Roman epistle. in the footsteps of the apostle. Asiatics constantly betook themselves to the capital, and it is therefore far from remarkable that (b) the names mentioned here have almost all been found in the Roman Corpus Inscriptionum. Most of them are quite common throughout the Roman world, and half are found in the Greek Corpus Inscriptionum for Asia Minor. So far as any weight can be attached to the importance of names like Prisca, Amplias, Nereus, and Apelles, in the subsequent history of early Christianity in Rome, it is really irrelevant to the present question. These persons may have, and probably did, come to Rome at some later stage; but it is far from a valid inference that because they afterwards lived in the capital, they must have been there when Paul wrote "Romans." Finally, it may be asked how these hypothetical Christians resident at Rome had disappeared when their beloved friend Paul, some years later, wrote his prison-epistles from the capital? He mentions none of them. Had their nomadic habits again seized and scattered them? It is scarcely necessary to do more than mention Zahn's idea that Paul did not actually know all these Christians; some he was acquainted with, and from them he got information about the rest! Nor is it logical to argue that because Paul was a wanderer, his fellow-workers were likely to be wanderers also. 1 Also, O. Holtzmann (NT Zeitgesch, p. 132); von Soden (EBi, i. p. 812); Dr. Cone, Paul the Man, the Missionary, and the Teacher, p. 12 ff.; Haupt (SK, 1900, pp. 147, 148, in his review of Zahn); and at an earlier date, Laurent (pp. 32-38). This letter, written by Paul as an introduction for Phoebê, is not to be compared of course with the great epistles to the Galatian and Corinthian churches. It gives neither instructions nor exhortations, as they do. Nor does it to the same extent, therefore, reveal conditions and events in the inner life of the church; even the short address appended to it does not supply us with any information in this direction. But in the very names, and in their grouping, as well as in the short notes of a personal and historical nature, it still furnishes us with very valuable knowledge. To the introductory recommendation of Phoebê is appended, in the form of greetings, the list of those persons to whom she was to be introduced, and the note is thus of the nature of an attestation, which she could lay before the individuals, because it was expressly addressed to them. For the rest, a short exhortation is added, which was probably appended to the letter. It contains, indeed, several features, both in thought and language, that are unusual with Paul. Yet this is hardly more marked here than in the short additions that elsewhere close the Pauline letters, written in the apostle's own hand, and all distinguished by concise thoughts and figures, abrupt sentences, and peculiar words. -Weizsäcker. |