Romans, Epistle To The

VIEW:37 DATA:01-04-2020

ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
1. Time, occasion, and character.—The letter to the Romans belongs to the central group—which includes also Galatians, and the two letters to the Corinthians—of St. Paul’s Epistles. Marcion’s order—Gal., Cor., Rom.—Is not unlikely to be the order of writing. A comparison of the data to be found in the letter, with statements in Acts, suggests that Rom. was written from Corinth at the close of the so-called third missionary journey (i.e. the period of missionary activity described in Act_18:23-28). After the riots in Ephesus (Act_19:23-40) St. Paul spent three months in Greece (Act_20:3), whither Timothy had preceded him. He was thus carrying out a previous plan somewhat sooner than he had originally intended. Act_19:21-22 informs us that the Apostle wished to make a tour through Macedonia and Achaia, and afterwards, having first visited Jerusalem once more, to turn his steps towards Rome. From the letter itself we learn that he was staying with Gains (Act_16:23), who is probably to be identified with the Gains of 1Co_1:14. At the time of writing, Paul and Timothy are together, for the latter’s name appears in the salutation (1Co_16:21). Sosipater, whose name also appears there, may he identified with the Sopater mentioned in Act_20:4. Phœbe, the bearer of the letter, belongs to Cenchreæ, one of the ports of Corinth. The allusions in the letter all point to the stay in Corinth implied in Act_20:1-38. Above all, the letter itself, apart from such important passages as Act_1:10-11 and Act_15:22; Act_15:30, is ample evidence of St. Paul’s plans to visit Rome,—the plans mentioned in Act_19:21-22. It is then more than probable that the letter was written from Corinth during the three months’ stay in Greece recorded in Act_20:3.
A comparison of Rom_15:22; Rom_15:30 with Act_19:21-22 brings out one of the most striking of Paley’s ‘undesigned coincidences.’ The parallel references to Jewish plots in Rom_15:31 and Act_20:3 are also noteworthy. It should, however, be mentioned that if on critical grounds ch. 16 has to be detached from the original letter, and regarded as part of a lost letter to the Ephesians, much of the evidence for the place and date of Romans is destroyed, though the remaining indications suffice to establish the position laid down above.
The date to which the letter is to be assigned depends on the chronology of St. Paul’s life as a whole. Mr. Turner (Hastings’ DB [Note: Dictionary of the Bible.] , s.v. ‘Chronology of NT’) suggests a.d. 55–56. But for further treatment of this subject, readers must consult the general articles on Chronology of NT and Paul.
The immediate occasion for the letter is clearly the prospective visit to Rome. St. Paul is preparing the way for his coming. This explains why he writes to the Romans at all; it does not explain why he writes the particular letter we now possess. A shorter letter would have been sufficient introduction to his future hosts. How are we to account for the lengthy discussion of the central theme of the gospel which forms the larger part of the letter? Some suspect a controversial purpose. The Church at Rome contained both Jews and Gentiles; through Priscilla and Aquila and others St. Paul must have known the situation in Rome; he could, and doubtless did, accommodate his message to the condition of the Church. The objections he discusses may be difficulties that have arisen in the minds of his readers. But the style of the letter is not controversial. St. Paul warns the Romans against false teachers, as against a possible rather than an actual danger (Act_16:17-20). Similarly, the discussion of the reciprocal duties of strong and weak (ch. 14) is marked by a calm conciliatory tone which suggests that the writer is dealing with problems which are probable rather than pressing. In fact, St. Paul seems to be giving his readers the result of his controversial experiences in Corinth and Galatia, not so much because the Church in Rome was placed in a similar situation, as because he wished to enable her members to profit from the mistakes of other Churches. If the letter is not controversial, it is not, on the other hand, a dogmatic treatise. Comprehensive as the letter is, it is incomplete as a compendium of theology. The theory that St. Paul is here putting his leading thoughts into systematic form ‘does not account for the omission of doctrines which we know Paul held and valued—his eschatology and his Christology, for instance’ (Garvie). Romans is a true letter, and the selection of topics must have been influenced by the interest of the Church to which he was writing.
But apart from the position of the Roman Christians, and apart from the wish of the Apostle to prepare the way for his visit to them, the form and character of the letter were probably determined by the place Rome held in the Apostle’s mind. St. Paul was proud of his Roman citizenship. He was the first to grasp the significance of the Empire for the growth of the Church. The missionary statesmanship which led him to seize on the great trade-centres like Ephesus and Corinth found its highest expression in his passionate desire to see Rome. Rome fascinated him; he was ambitious to proclaim his gospel there, departing even from his wonted resolve to avoid the scenes of other men’s labours.
It should be noted that the Church at Rome was not an Apostolic foundation. The Christian community came into existence there before either St. Paul or St. Peter visited the city.
He explains his gospel at some length, because it is all-important that the capital of the Empire should understand and appreciate its worth. He is anxious to impart some spiritual gift to the Roman Christians, just because they are in Rome, and therefore, lest Jewish plots thwart his plans, he unfolds to them the essentials of his message. Indeed, his Roman citizenship helped to make St. Paul a great catholic. The influence of the Eternal City may be traced in the doctrine of the Church developed in Ephesians, which was written during the Roman captivity. The very thought of Rome leads St. Paul to reflect on the universality of the gospel, and this is the theme of the letter. He is not ashamed of the gospel or afraid to proclaim it in Rome, because it is as world-wide as the Empire. It corresponds to a universal need: it is the only religion that can speak to the condition of the Roman people. It is true he is not writing for the people at large. His readers consist of a small band of Christians with strong Jewish sympathies, and perhaps even tending towards Jewish exclusiveness. His aim is to open their eyes to the dignity of the position, and to the world-wide significance of the gospel they profess.
Jülicher further points out that Rome was to be to St. Paul the starting-point for a missionary campaign in the West. Consequently the letter is intended to win the sympathy and support of the Roman Church for future work. It is to secure fellow-workers that the Apostle explains so fully the gospel which he is eager to proclaim in Spain and in neighbouring provinces.
2. Argument and content.—Romans, like most of the Pauline letters, falls into two sections: doctrinal (chs. 1–11) and practical (chs. 12–16). In the doctrinal section, it is usual to distinguish three main topics: justification (chs. 1–4), sanctification (chs. 5–8), and the rejection of the Jews (chs. 9–11). It is not easy to draw any sharp line between the first two. The following is a brief analysis of the argument:—
The salutation is unusually long, extending to seven verses, in which St. Paul emphasizes the fact that he has been set apart for the work of an Apostle to all the Gentiles. Then follows a brief introduction. The Apostle first thanks God for the faith of the Roman Christians, and then expresses his earnest desire to visit them and to preach the gospel in Rome. For he is confident—and here he states is central theme—that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all men, if they will only believe (Rom_1:1-17).
Salvation for all through the gospel—that is the thought to be developed. And first it is necessary to show that such a saving power is a universal need. The evidence for this is only too abundant. Nowhere have men attained God’s righteousness: everywhere are the signs of God’s wrath. The wilful ignorance which denies the Creator has led to the awful punishment of moral decay with which St. Paul had grown sadly familiar in the great cities of the Empire. Indeed, so far has corruption advanced that the consciences of many have been defiled. They not only commit sin without shame; they openly applaud the sinner (Rom_1:18-32). Nor can any one who still perceives this failure hold himself excused. The very fact that he recognizes sin as such, condemns him in so far as he commits it. His keener conscience, if it leaves him unrepentant, will evoke the heavier penalty. God will judge all men according to their deeds. Both Jew and Gentile will be judged alike, the conscience in the Gentile corresponding to the Law in the case of the Jew (Rom_2:1-16). This passage is usually referred to the Jews, whose habit of judging and condemning others is rebuked in Mat_7:1. It may have a wider application. The remainder of the chapter deals with the Jews. The principle of judgment according to deeds will be applied without distinction of persons. The privileges of the Jew will not excuse him in the eyes of God. Neither the Law nor circumcision will cover transgression. The true Jew must be a Jew inwardly: the actual Jews have by their crimes caused the name of God to be blasphemed. A Gentile who does not know the Law and yet obeys it is better than the Jew who knows and disobeys (Rom_2:17-23). But is not this condemnation a denial of the Jews’ privileges? No, the privileges are real, though the Jews are unworthy of them; and the mercy of God is magnified by their ingratitude. Yet even so, if God’s mercy is brought to the light by their sin, why are they condemned? The full discussion of this difficulty is reserved to chs. 9–11. Here St. Paul only lays down the broad truth that God must judge the world in righteousness, and apparently he further replies to Jewish objectors by a tu quoque argument. Why do they condemn him if, as they say, his lie helps to make the truth clearer? (Rom_3:1-8). St. Paul now returns to his main point, the universality of sin, which he re-states and re-enforces in the language of the OT. The whole world stands guilty in the sight of God, and the Law has but intensified the conviction of sin (Rom_3:9-20).
To meet this utter failure of men, God has revealed in Christ Jesus a new way of righteousness, all-embracing as the need. Here too is no distinction of persons; all have sinned, and salvation for all stands in the free mercy of God, sealed to men in the propitiatory sacrifice of His Son, whereby we know that our past sins are forgiven, and we enter the new life, justified in the sight of God. The righteousness of God is thus assured to men who will receive it in faith. Faith is not defined, but it seems to mean a humble trust in the loving God revealed in Jesus. There can no longer be any question of establishing a claim on God by merit, or of superiority over our fellows. All need grace, and none can be saved except by faith. Jew and Gentile here stand on the same level (Rom_3:21-30).
Does not this righteousness through faith make void the Law? St. Paul scarcely answers the general question, but at once goes on to prove that the father of the race, Abraham, was justified by faith, i.e. by humble trust in God, in whose sight he could claim no merit. His trust in God was reckoned unto him for righteousness. His blessedness was the blessedness of the man whose sins are hidden, St. Paul here introducing the only beatitude found in his letters. This blessing came to Abraham before circumcision, on which clearly it did not depend. Similarly, the promise of inheriting the earth was given to him apart from the Law, and the seed to whom the promise descends are the faithful who follow their spiritual ancestor in believing God even against nature, as Abraham and Sarah believed Him. Surely it was for our sakes that the phrase ‘was reckoned unto him for righteousness’ was used in the story of Abraham. It enables us to believe in salvation through our faith in Him who raised Jesus from the dead (Rom_3:31 to Rom_4:25).
At this point opens the second main stage in the doctrinal section of the letter. The fact of justification by faith has been established. It remains to say something of the life which must be built on this foundation. Jesus has brought us into touch with the grace of God. His death is the unfailing proof of God’s love to us sinful men. What can lie before us save progress to perfection? Reconciled to God while yet enemies, for what can we not hope, now that we are His friends? Christ is indeed a second Adam, the creator of a new humanity. His power to save cannot be less than Adam’s power to destroy. Cannot be less? Nay, it must be greater, and in what Jülicher rightly calls a hymn, St. Paul strives to draw out the comparison and the contrast between the first Adam and the Second. Grace must reign till the kingdom of death has become the kingdom of an undying righteousness (Rom_5:1-21).
Does this trust in the grace of God mean that we are to continue in sin? Far from it. The very baptismal immersion in which we make profession of our faith symbolizes our dying to sin and our rising with Christ into newness of life. If we have become vitally one with Him, we must share His life of obedience to God. The fact that we are under grace means that sin’s dominion is ended. If we do not strive to live up to this we fail to understand what is involved in the kind of teaching we have accepted. If we are justified by faith, we have been set free from sin that we may serve God, that we may win the fruit of our faith in sanctification, and enjoy the free gift of eternal life (Rom_6:1-23). The new life likewise brings with it freedom from the Law; it is as complete a break with the past as that which comes to a wife when her husband dies. So we are redeemed from the Law which did but strengthen our passions (Rom_7:1-6). Not that the Law was sin; but as a matter of experience it is through the commandment that sin deceives and destroys men (Rom_7:7-12). Is, then, the holy Law the cause of death? No, but the exceeding sinfulness of sin lies in its bringing men to destruction through the use of that which is good. And then in a passage of intense earnestness and noble self-revelation St. Paul describes his pre-Christian experience. He recalls the torturing consciousness of the hopeless conflict between spirit and flesh, a consciousness which the Law only deepened and could not heal. The weakness of the flesh, sold under sin, brought death to the higher life. But from this law too, the law of sin and of death, Christ has set him free (Rom_7:13-25). For the Christian is not condemned to endure this hopeless struggle. God, in sending His Son, has condemned sin in the flesh. The alien power, sin, is no longer to rule. The reality and the strength of the Spirit of God have come into our lives with Jesus, so that the body is dead, to be revived only at the bidding of the indwelling Spirit (Rom_8:1-12). We are no longer bound to sin. God has put it into our hearts to call Him ‘Abba, Father.’ We are His little ones already. How glorious and how certain is our inheritance! That redemption for which creation groans most surely awaits us, far more than recompensing our present woes; and patience becomes us who have already received the first-fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit of God prays for us in our weakness, and we know that we stand in God’s foreknowledge and calling. All must be well (Rom_8:12-31). And then in a final triumph-song St. Paul asks, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ The victory of the Christian life requires a new word: we are more than conquerors. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom_8:31-37).
Almost abruptly St. Paul turns to his third main question. The rejection of the Jews, by which the grace of God has come to the Gentile, grieves him to the heart. How is God’s treatment of the Jews to be justified? There was from the first an element of selectiveness in God’s dealings with the race of Abraham. The promise was not the necessary privilege of natural descent. It was to Isaac and not to Ishmael, to Jacob and not to Esau (Rom_9:1-13). God’s mercy is inscrutable and arbitrary but it must be just. Whom He wills, He pities: whom He wills, He hardens. If it be said, ‘Then God cannot justly blame men; how can the clay resist the potter?’, St. Paul does not really solve the problem, but he asserts most emphatically that God’s right to choose individuals for salvation cannot be limited by human thought (Rom_9:14-21). The justice of God’s rejection of the Jews cannot be questioned a priori. But what are the facts? The Jews, in seeking to establish their own righteousness, have failed to find the righteousness of God. They have failed, because the coming of Christ puts an end to legal righteousness, a fact to which Moses himself bears testimony. They ought to have realized this, and they cannot be excused on the ground that they have had no preachers. They are responsible for their own rejection: they have heard and known and disobeyed (Rom_9:30 to Rom_10:21). But though God has the right to reject His people, and though the Jews are themselves responsible for, their refusal to accept the gospel, yet St. Paul cannot believe that it is final. Even now a remnant has been saved by grace; and the present rejection of Israel must have been inteoded to save the Gentiles. What larger blessing will not God bestow when He restores His people? The Gentiles must see in the fall of Israel the goodness of God towards themselves, and the possibilities of mercy for the Jews. This is enforced by the illustration of the wild olive and the natural branches (Rom_11:17-24). The Jews are enemies now, in order that God may bless the Gentiles. But they are still beloved, for the sake of the fathers. No, God has not deserted His people. If they are at present under a cloud, it is God’s mercy and not His anger that has willed it so. And the same unsearchable mercy will one day restore them to His favour (Rom_11:25-36).
With the thought of the infinite mercies of God so strikingly evidenced, St. Paul begins his practical exhortation. Self-surrender to God is demanded as man’s service. ‘Thou must love Him who has loved thee so.’ A great humility becomes us, a full recognition of the differing gifts which God bestows on us. A willingness to bear wrong will mark the Christian. He must he merciful, since his confidence is in the mercy of God. The conclusion of ch. 11 underlies the whole of ch. 12. St. Paul goes on to urge his readers to obey the governing powers; to pay to all the debt of love, which alone fulfils the Law; to put off all sloth and vice, since the day is at hand (ch. 13). The duties of strong and weak towards each other will call for brotherly love. We must not surrender the principle of individual responsibility. Each standeth and falleth to the Lord. We have no right to judge, and we must not force our practices on our fellows. On the other hand, we must not push our individual liberty so far as to offend our brothers. Let us give up things we feel to be right, if we cause strife and doubt by asserting our liberty. The strong must bear the infirmities of the weak. Even Christ pleased not Himself. May we find our joy and peace in following Him! (Rom_14:1 to Rom_15:12).
St. Paul then concludes by explaining why he was so bold as to write to them at all, and by unfolding his plans and hopes for the future (Rom_15:13-33). The last chapter contains a recommendation of Phœbe who brings the letter, and a number of detailed salutations to individual members of the Church, and to some house-churches. A brief warning against teachers who cause division, greetings from St, Paul’s companions, and an elaborate doxology bring the letter to a close (ch. 16).
The theology and leading ideas of the letter cannot be treated here. In a sense, however, the importance of Romans lies rather in its religious power than in its theological ideas. The letter is bound together by St. Paul’s central experience of the mercy of God. In God’s grace he has found the strength which can arrest the decay of a sinful, careless world. In God’s grace he has found also the secret of overcoming for the man who is conscious of the awfulness of sin, and of his own inability to save his life from destruction. The problem of the rejection of the Jews is really raised, not so much by their previous privileges as by God’s present mercy. St. Paul cannot be satisfied till he has grasped the love of God, which he feels must he at the heart of the mystery. The reality and nearness of God’s mercy determine the Christian character and render it possible. It is noteworthy that, though St. Paul seldom refers to the sayings of Jesus, he arrives at the mind of Christ through the gospel of the grace of God. A comparison of the Sermon on the Mount with Rom_12:1-21; Rom_13:1-14; Rom_14:1-23 makes the antithesis, ‘Jesus or Paul,’ appear ridiculous. Above all, the glowing earnestness with which in chs. 4–8 he seeks to share with the Roman Christians—(note the use of ‘we’ throughout that section)—the highest and holiest inspirations he has learnt from Christ, reveals a heart in which the love of God is shed abroad. As Deissmann suggests, we do not recognize the special characteristic of St. Paul if we regard him as first and foremost the theologian of primitive Christianity. Romans is the passionate outpouring of one who has come into living touch with his heavenly Father.
3. Some textual points: integrity and genuineness.—The omission in manuscript G of the words en Rômç in Rom_1:7; Rom_1:15 is an interesting indication of the probability that a shortened edition of Romans, with the local references suppressed, may have been circulated in quite early times. The letter to the Ephesians seems to have been treated in the same way. This shorter edition may have concluded at Rom_14:23, where the final doxology (Rom_16:25-27) is placed in several MSS (ALP, etc.). But the shifting position of this doxology in our authorities perhaps indicates that it is not part of the original letter at all (see Denney, in the EGT [Note: Expositor’s Greek Testament.] ). But there is further evidence to show that some early editions of the letter omitted chs. 15 and 16. Marcion apparently omitted these chapters. Tertullian, Irenæus, and Cyprian do not quote them. There is also some internal evidence for thinking that ch. 16 at least may be part of a letter to Ephesus. The reference to Epænetus in Rom_16:5 would be more natural in a letter to Ephesus than in a letter to Rome. In view of Act_18:2 it is difficult to suppose that Aquila and Priscilla had returned from Ephesus to Rome. Moreover, it is not likely that St. Paul would have so many acquaintances in a church he had not visited. On the other hand, none of these considerations affects or explains ch. 15, and the two chapters cannot be separated very easily. Further, Sanday and Headlam have collected an imposing array of evidence to prove the presence at Rome of persons with such names as are mentioned in ch. 16 (‘Romans’ in ICC [Note: CC International Critical Commentary.] xxxiv f.). The question must still be regarded as open.
But while there is some probability that ch. 16 is part of a distinct letter, the theories of dismemberment, or rather the proofs of the composite character of Romans advanced by some Dutch scholars, cannot be considered convincing. The views of the late Prof. W. C. van Manen have received perhaps undue attention, owing to the fact that the art. on ‘Romans’ in the EBi [Note: Encyclopædia Biblica.] is from his pen. His criticism was certainly arbitrary, and his premises frequently inaccurate. Thus he quotes with approval Evanson’s statement that there is no reference in Acts to any project of St. Paul’s to visit Rome—a statement made in direct contradiction of Act_19:21 (EBi [Note: Encyclopædia Biblica.] , vol. iv. col. 4137). The year a.d. 120 is regarded as the probable date of Romans, in face of the external evidence of 1 Clement (ib. col. 4143). The general argument against the genuineness of Romans, which weighs most with van Manen, lies in the fact that ‘it has learned to break with Judaism, and to regard the standpoint of the law as once for all past and done with.’ This is ‘a remarkable forward step, a rich and farreaching reform of the most ancient type of Christianity; now, a man does not become at one and the same moment the adherent of a new religion and its great reformer’ (ib. col. 4138). Of this disproof of Pauline authorship it is quite sufficient to say with Prof. Schmiedel, ‘Perhaps St. Paul was not an ordinary man.’ Indeed, Prof. Schmiedel’s article on ‘Galatians’ (ib. vol. ii. col. 1620f.) is a final refutation of the Dutch school represented by van Manen. They have advanced as yet no solid reason for doubting the genuineness of Romans.
H. G. Wood.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

1. Its Genuineness
2. Its Integrity
3. The Approximate Date
4. The Place of Writing
5. The Destination
6. The Language
7. The Occasion
8. Some Characteristics
9. Main Teachings of the Epistle
(1) Doctrine of Man
(2) Doctrine of God
(3) Doctrine of Son of God - Redemption; Justification
(4) Doctrine of the Spirit of God
(5) Doctrine of Duty
(6) Doctrine of Israel
LITERATURE
This is the greatest, in every sense, of the apostolic letters of Paul; in scale, in scope, and in its wonderful combination of doctrinal, ethical and administrative wisdom and power. In some respects the later Epistles, Ephesians and Colossians, lead us to even higher and deeper arcana of revelation, and they, like Romans, combine with the exposition of truth a luminous doctrine of duty. But the range of Roman is larger in both directions, and presents us also with noble and far-reaching discussions of Christian polity, instructions in spiritual utterance and the like, to which those Epistles present no parallel, and which only the Corinthian Epistles rival.

1. Its Genuineness:
No suspicion on the head of the genuineness of the Epistle exists which needs serious consideration. Signs of the influence of the Epistle can be traced, at least very probably, in the New Testament itself; in 1 Peter, and, as some think, in James. But in our opinion Jas was the earlier writing, and Lightfoot has given strong grounds for the belief that the paragraph on faith and justification (Jas 2) has no reference to perversions of Pauline teaching, but deals with rabbinism. Clement of Rome repeatedly quotes Romans, and so do Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin. Marcion includes it in his list of Pauline Epistles, and it is safe to say in general Romans ?has been recognized in the Christian church as long as any collection of Paul's Epistles has been extant? (A. Robertson, in HDB, under the word). But above all other evidences it testifies to itself. The fabrication of such a writing, with its close and complex thought, its power and marked originality of treatment, its noble morale, and its spiritual elevation and ardor, is nothing short of a moral impossibility. A mighty mind and equally great heart live in every page, and a soul exquisitely sensitive and always intent upon truth and holiness. Literary personation is an art which has come to anything like maturity only in modern times, certainly not before the Renaissance. In a fully developed form it is hardly earlier than the 19th century. And even now who can point to a consciously personated authorship going along with high moral principle and purpose?

2. Its Integrity:
The question remains, however, whether, accepting the Epistle in block as Pauline, we have it, as to details, just as it left the author's hands. Particularly, some phenomena of the text of the last two chapter invite the inquiry. We may - in our opinion we must - grant those chapters to be Pauline. They breathe Paul in every sentence. But do they read precisely like part of a letter to Rome? For example, we have a series of names (Rom_16:1-15), representing a large circle of personally known and loved friends of the writer, a much longer list than any other in the Epistles, and all presumably - on theory that the passage is integral to the Epistle - residents at Rome. May not such a paragraph have somehow crept in, after date, from another writing? Might not a message to Philippian, Thessalonian or Ephesian friends, dwellers in places where Paul had already established many intimacies, have fallen out of its place and found lodgment by mistake at the close of this letter to Rome? It seems enough to reply by one brief statement of fact. We possess some 300 manuscripts of Romans, and not one of these, so far as it is uninjured, fails to give the Epistle complete, all the chapters as we have them, and in the present order (with one exception, that of the final doxology). It is observable meanwhile that the difficulty of supposing Paul to have had a large group of friends living at Rome, before his own arrival there, is not serious. To and from Rome, through the whole empire, there was a perpetual circulation of population. Suppose Aquila and Priscilla (e.g.) to have recently returned (Act_18:2) to Rome from Ephesus, and suppose similar migrations from Greece or from Asia Minor to have taken place within recent years; we can then readily account for the greetings of Rom 16.
Lightfoot has brought it out in an interesting way (see his Philippians, on Phi_4:22) that many of the names (e.g. Amplias, Urbanus, Tryphena) in Rom 16 are found at Rome, in inscriptions of the early imperial age, in cemeteries where members of the widely scattered ?household of Caesar? were interred. This at least suggests the abundant possibility that the converts and friends belonging to the ?household? who, a very few years later, perhaps not more than three, were around him at Rome when he wrote to Philippi (Phi_4:22), and sent their special greeting (?chiefly they?) to the Philipplans, were formerly residents at Philippi, or elsewhere in Macedonia, and had moved thence to the capital not long before the apostle wrote to the Romans. A. Robertson (ut supra) comes to the conclusion, after a careful review of recent theories, ?that the case for transferring this section ... from its actual connection to a lost Epistle to Ephesus is not made out.?
Two points of detail in the criticism of the text of Romans may be noted. One is that the words ?at Rome? (Rom_1:7, Rom_1:15) are omitted in a very few manuscripts, in a way to remind us of the interesting phenomenon of the omission of ?at Ephesus? (Eph_1:1 margin). But the evidence for this omission being original is entirely inadequate. The fact may perhaps be accounted for by a possible circulation of Romans among other mission churches as an Epistle of universal interest. This would be much more likely if the manuscripts and other authorities in which the last two chapters are missing were identical with those which omit ?at Rome,? but this is not the case.
The other and larger detail is that the great final doxology (Rom_16:25-27) is placed by many cursives at the end of Romans 14, and is omitted entirely by three manuscripts and by Marcion. The leading uncials and a large preponderance of ancient evidence place it where we have it. It is quite possible that Paul may have reissued Romans after a time, and may only then have added the doxology, which has a certain resemblance in manner to his later (captivity) style. But it is at least likely that dogmatic objections led Marcion to delete it, and that his action accounts for the other phenomena which seem to witness against its place at the finale.
It is worth noting that Hort, a singularly fearless, while sober student, defends without reserve the entirety of the Epistle as we have it, or practically so. See his essay printed in Lightfoot's Biblical Studies.

3. The Approximate Date:
We can fix the approximate date with fair certainty within reasonable limits. We gather from Rom_15:19 that Paul, when he wrote, was in the act of closing his work in the East and was looking definitely westward. But he was first about (Rom_15:25, Rom_15:26) to revisit Jerusalem with his collection, mainly made in Macedonia and Achaia, for the ?poor saints.? Placing these allusions side by side with the references in 1 and 2 Corinthians to the collection and its conveyance, and again with the narrative of Acts, we may date Romans very nearly at the same time as 2 Corinthians, just before the visit to Jerusalem narrated in Acts 20, etc. The year may be fixed with great probability as 58 AD. This estimate follows the lines of Lightfoot's chronology, which Robertson (ut supra) supports. More recent schemes would move the date back to 56 AD.
?The reader's attention is invited to this date. Broadly speaking, it was about 30 years at the most after the Crucifixion. Let anyone in middle life reflect on the freshness in memory of events, whether public or private, which 30 years ago made any marked impression on his mind. Let him consider how concrete and vivid still are the prominent personages of 30 years ago, many of whom of course are still with us. And let him transfer this thought to the 1st century, and to the time of our Epistle. Let him remember that we have at least this one great Christian writing composed, for certain, within such easy reach of the very lifetime of Jesus Christ when His contemporary friends were still, in numbers, alive and active. Then let him open the Epistle afresh, and read, as if for the first time, its estimate of Jesus Christ - a Figure then of no legendary past, with its halo, but of the all but present day. Let him note that this transcendent estimate comes to us conveyed in the vehicle not of poetry and rhetoric, but of a treatise pregnant with masterly argument and admirable practical wisdom, tolerant and comprehensive. And we think that the reader will feel that the result of his meditations on date and circumstances is reassuring as to the solidity of the historic basis of the Christian faith? (from the present writer's introduction to the Epistle in the Temple Bible; see also his Light from the First Days: Short Studies in 1 Thessalonians).

4. The Place of Writing:
With confidence we may name Corinth as the place of writing. Paul was at the time in some ?city? (Rom_16:23). He was staying with one Gaius, or Caius (same place) , and we find in 1Co_1:14 a Gaius, closely connected with Paul, and a Corinthian. He commends to the Romans the deaconess Phoebe, attached to ?the church at Cenchrea? (Rom_16:1), presumably a place near that from which he was writing; and Cenchrea was the southern part of Corinth.

5. The Destination:
The first advent of Christianity to Rome is unrecorded, and we know very little of its early progress. Visiting Romans (ἐπιδημοῦντες, epidēmoúntes), both Jews and proselytes, appear at Pentecost (Act_2:10), and no doubt some of these returned home believers. In Act_18:2 we have Aquila and Priscilla, Jews, evidently Christians, ?lately come from Italy,? and probably from Rome. But we know practically nothing else of the story previous to this Epistle, which is addressed to a mission church obviously important and already spiritually advanced. On the other hand (a curious paradox in view of the historical development of Roman Christianity), there is no allusion in the Epistle to church organization. The Christian ministry (apart from Paul's own apostleship) is not even mentioned. It may fairly be said to be incredible that if the legend of Peter's long episcopate were historical, no allusion whatever to his work, influence and authority should be made. It is at least extremely difficult to prove that he was even present in Rome till shortly before his martyrdom, and the very ancient belief that Peter and Paul founded the Roman church is more likely to have had its origin in their martyrdoms there than in Peter's having in any sense shared in the early evangelization of the city.
As to Rome itself, we may picture it at the date of the Epistle as containing, with its suburbs, a closely massed population of perhaps 800,000 people; a motley host of many races, with a strong oriental element, among which the Jews were present as a marked influence, despised and sometimes dreaded, but always attracting curiosity.

6. The Language:
The Epistle was written in Greek, the ?common dialect,? the Greek of universal intercourse of that age. One naturally asks, why not in Latin, when the message was addressed to the supreme Latin city? The large majority of Christian converts beyond doubt came from the lower middle and lowest classes, not least from the slave class. These strata of society were supplied greatly from immigrants, much as in parts of East London now aliens make the main population. Not Latin but Greek, then lingua franca of the Mediterranean, would be the daily speech of these people. It is remarkable that all the early Roman bishops bear Greek names. And some 40 years after the date of this Epistle we find Clement of Rome writing in Greek to the Corinthians, and later again, early in the 2nd century, Ignatius writing in Greek to the Romans.

7. The Occasion:
We cannot specify the occasion of writing for certain. No hint appears of any acute crisis in the mission (as when 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, or Colossians were written). Nor would personal reminiscences influence the writer, for he had not yet seen Rome. We can only suggest some possibilities as follows:
(1) A good opportunity for safe communication was offered by the deaconess Phoebe's proposed visit to the metropolis. She doubtless asked Paul for a commendatory letter, and this may have suggested an extended message to the church.
(2) Paul's thoughts had long gone toward Rome. See Act_19:21 : ?I must see Rome,? words which seem perhaps to imply some divine intimation (compare Act_23:11). And his own life-course would fall in with such a supernatural call. He had always aimed at large centers; and now his great work in the central places of the Levant was closing; he had worked at Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth; he was at last to think of the supreme center of all. Rome must always have had a dominant interest for the ?Apostle of the Nations,? and any suggestion that his Lord's will tended that way would intensify it to the highest degree.
(3) The form of the Epistle may throw further light on the occasion. The document falls, on the whole, into three parts. First we have Romans 1 through 8 inclusive, a prolonged exposition of the contrasted and related phenomena of sin and salvation, with special initial references to the cases of Jew and non-Jew respectively. Then come Romans 9 through 11, which deal with the Jewish rejection of the Jewish Messiah, developing into a prophetic revelation of the future of Israel in the grace of God. Lastly we have Romans 12 through 16. Some account of the writer's plans, and his salutations to friends, requests for prayer, etc., form the close of this section. But it is mainly a statement of Christian duty in common life, personal, civil, religious. Under the latter head we have a noble treatment of problems raised by varying opinions, particularly on religious observances, among the converts, Jew and Gentile.
Such phenomena cast a possible light on the occasion of writing. The Roman mission was on one side, by its locality and surroundings, eminently gentile. On the other, there was, as we have seen, a strong Judaic element in Roman life, particularly in its lower strata, and no doubt around the Jewish community proper there had grown up a large community of ?worshippers? (σεβόμενοι, sebómenoi) or, as we commonly call them, ?proselytes? (?adherents,? in the language of modern missionary enterprise), people who, without receiving circumcision, attended Jewish worship and shared largely in Jewish beliefs and ideals. Among these proselytes, we may believe, the earliest evangelists at Rome found a favorable field, and the mission church as Paul knew of it contained accordingly not only two definite classes, converts from paganism, converts from native Judaism, but very many in whose minds both traditions were working at once. To such converts the problems raised by Judaism, both without and within the church, would come home with a constant intimacy and force, and their case may well have been present in a special degree in the apostle's mind alike in the early passages (Romans 1 through 3) of the Epistle and in such later parts as Romans 2 through 11; 14; 15. On the one hand they would greatly need guidance on the significance of the past of Israel and on the destiny of the chosen race in the future. Moreover, discussions in such circles over the way of salvation would suggest to the great missionary his exposition of man's reconciliation with a holy God and of His secrets for purity and obedience in an unholy world. And meanwhile the ever-recurring problems raised by ceremonial rules in common daily life - problems of days and seasons, and of forbidden food - would, for such disciples, need wise and equitable treatment.
(4) Was it not with this position before him, known to him through the many means of communication between Rome and Corinth, that Paul cast his letter into this form? And did not the realization of the central greatness of Rome suggest its ample scale? The result was a writing which shows everywhere his sense of the presence of the Judaic problem. Here he meets it by a statement, massive and tender, of ?heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan? of redemption, grace, and glory, a plan which on its other side is the very mystery of the love of God, which statement is now and forever a primary treasure of the Christian faith. And then again he lays down for the too eager champions of the new ?liberty? a law of loving tolerance toward slower and narrower views which is equally our permanent spiritual possession, bearing a significance far-reaching and benign.
(5) It has been held by some great students, notably Lightfoot and Hort, that the main purpose of Romans was to reconcile the opposing ?schools? in the church, and that its exposition of the salvation of the individual is secondary only. The present writer cannot take this view. Read the Epistle from its spiritual center, so to speak, and is not the perspective very different? The apostle is always conscious of the collective aspect of the Christian life, an aspect vital to its full health. But is he not giving his deepest thought, animated by his own experience of conviction and conversion, to the sinful man's relation to eternal law, to redeeming grace, and to a coming glory? It is the question of personal salvation which with Paul seems to us to live and move always in the depth of his argument, even when Christian polity and policy is the immediate theme.

8. Some Characteristics:
Excepting only Ephesians (the problem of the authorship of which is insoluble, and we put that great document here aside), Romans is, of all Paul has written, least a letter and most a treatise. He is seen, as we read, to approach religious problems of the highest order in a free but reasoned succession; problems of the darkness and of the light, of sin and grace, fall and restoration, doom and remission, faith and obedience, suffering and glory, transcendent hope and humblest duty, now in their relation to the soul, now so as to develop the holy collectivity of the common life. The Roman converts are always first in view, but such is the writer, such his handling, that the results are for the universal church and for every believer of all time. Yet all the while (and it is in this a splendid example of that epistolary method of revelation which is one of the glories of the New Testament) it is never for a moment the mere treatise, however great. The writer is always vividly personal, and conscious of persons. The Epistle is indeed a masterpiece of doctrine, but also always ?the unforced, unartificial utterance of a friend to friends.?

9. Main Teachings of the Epistle:
Approaching the Epistle as a treatise rather than a letter (with the considerable reserves just stated), we indicate briefly some of its main doctrinal deliverances. Obviously, in limine, it is not set before us as a complete system either of theology or of morals; to obtain a full view of a Pauline dogma and ethics we must certainly place Ephesians and Colossians, not to speak of passages from Thessalonians, beside Romans. But it makes by far the nearest approach to doctrinal completeness among the Epistles.

(1) Doctrine of Man.
In great measure this resolves itself into the doctrine of man as a sinner, as being guilty in face of an absolutely holy and absolutely imperative law, whether announced by abnormal revelation, as to the Jew, or through nature and conscience only, as to the Gentile. At the back of this presentation lies the full recognition that man is cognizant, as a spiritual being, of the eternal difference of right and wrong, and of the witness of creation to personal ?eternal power and Godhead? as its cause, and that he is responsible in an awe-inspiring way for his unfaithfulness to such cognitions. He is a being great enough to be in personal moral relation with God, and able to realize his ideal only in true relation with Him; therefore a being whose sin and guilt have an unfathomable evil in them. So is he bound by his own failure that he cannot restore himself; God alone, in sovereign mercy, provides for his pardon by the propitiation of Christ, and for his restoration by union with Christ in the life given by the Holy Spirit. Such is man, once restored, once become ?a saint? (a being hallowed), a ?son of God? by adoption and grace, that his final glorification will be the signal (in some sense the cause?) of a transfiguration of the whole finite universe. Meanwhile, man is a being actually in the midst of a life of duty and trial, a member of civil society, with obligations to its order. He lives not in a God-forsaken world, belonging only to another and evil power. His new life, the ?mind of the Spirit? in him, is to show itself in a conduct and character good for the state and for society at large, as well as for the ?brotherhood.?

(2) Doctrine of God.
True to the revelation of the Old Testament, Paul presents God as absolute in will and power, so that He is not only the sole author of nature but the eternal and ultimately sole cause of goodness in man. To Him in the last resort all is due, not only the provision of atonement but the power and will to embrace it. The great passages which set before us a ?fore-defining? (προόρισις, proórisis, ?predestination?) and election of the saints are all evidently inspired by this motive, the jealous resolve to trace to the one true Cause all motions and actions of good. The apostle seems e.g. almost to risk affirming a sovereign causation of the opposite, of unbelief and its sequel. But patient study will find that it is not so. God is not said to ?fit for ruin? the ?vessels of wrath.? Their woeful end is overruled to His glory, but nowhere is it taken to be caused by Him. All along the writer's intense purpose is to constrain the actual believer to see the whole causation of his salvation in the will and power of Him whose inmost character is revealed in the supreme fact that, ?for us all,? ?he spared not his Son.?

(3) Doctrine of Son of God - Redemption; Justification.
The Epistle affords materials for a magnificently large Christology. The relation of the Son to creation is indeed not expounded in terms (as in Col), but it is implied in the language of Romans 8, where the interrelation of our redemption and the transfiguration of Nature is dealt with. We have the Lord's manhood fully recognized, while His Godhead (as we read in Rom_9:5; so too Robertson, ut supra) is stated in terms, and it is most certainly implied in the language and tone of e.g. the close of Romans 8. Who but a bearer of the Supreme Nature could satisfy the conception indicated in such words as those of Rom_8:32, Rom_8:35-39, coming as they do from a Hebrew monotheist of intense convictions? Meantime this transcendent Person has so put Himself in relation with us, as the willing worker of the Father's purpose of love, that He is the sacrifice of peace for us (Romans 3), our ?propitiatory? One (ἱλαστήριον, hilastḗrion, is now known to be an adjective), such that (whatever the mystery, which leaves the fact no less certain) the man who believes on Him, i.e. (as Romans 4 fully demonstrates) relies on Him, gives himself over to His mercy, is not only forgiven but ?justified,? ?justified by faith.? And ?justification? is more than forgiveness; it is not merely the remission of a penalty but a welcome to the offender, pronounced to be lawfully at peace with the eternal holiness and love. See JUSTIFICATION; PROPITIATION.
In closest connection with this message of justification is the teaching regarding union with the Christ who has procured the justification. This is rather assumed than expounded in Romans (we have the exposition more explicitly in Eph, Col, and Gal), but the assumption is present wherever the pregnant phrase ?in Christ? is used. Union is, for Paul, the central doctrine of all, giving life and relation to the whole range. As Lightfoot has well said (Sermons in Paul's, number 16), he is the apostle not primarily of justification, or of liberty, great as these truths are with him, but of union with Christ. It is through union that justification is ours; the merits of the Head are for the member. It is through union that spiritual liberty and power are ours; the Spirit of life is from the Head to the member. Held by grace in this profound and multiplex connection, where life, love and law are interlaced, the Christian is entitled to an assurance full of joy that nothing shall separate him, soul and (ultimately) body, from his once sacrificed and now risen and triumphant Lord.

(4) Doctrine of the Spirit of God.
No writing of the New Testament but John's Gospel is so full upon this great theme as Romans 8 may be said to be the locus classicus in the Epistles for the work of the Holy Ghost in the believer. By implication it reveals personality as well as power (see especially Rom_8:26). Note particularly the place of this great passage, in which revelation and profoundest conditions run continually into each other. It follows Romans 7, in which the apostle depicts, in terms of his own profound and typical experience, the struggles of conscience and will over the awful problem of the ?bondage? of indwelling sin. If we interpret the passage aright, the case supposed is that of a regenerate man, who, however, attempts the struggle against inward evil armed, as to consciousness, with his own faculties merely, and finds the struggle insupportable. Then comes in the divine solution, the promised Spirit of life and liberty, welcomed and put into use by the man who has found his own resources yam. ?In Christ Jesus,? in union with Him, he ?by the Spirit does to death the practices of the body,? and rises through conscious liberty into an exulting hope of ?the liberty of the glory of the sons of God? - not so, however as to know nothing of ?groaning within himself,? while yet in the body; but it is a groan which leaves intact the sense of sonship and divine love, and the expectation of a final completeness of redemption.

(5) Doctrine of Duty.
While the Epistle is eminently a message of salvation, it is also, in vital connection with this, a treasury of principle and precept for the life of duty. It does indeed lay down the sovereign freedom of our acceptance for Christ's sake alone, and so absolutely that (Rom_6:1, Rom_6:2, Rom_6:15) the writer anticipates the inference (by foes, or by mistaken friends), ?Let us continue in sin.? But the answer comes instantly, and mainly through the doctrine of union. Our pardon is not an isolated fact. Secured only by Christ's sacrifice, received only by the faith which receives Him as our all, it is ipso facto never received alone but with all His other gifts, for it becomes ours as we receive, not merely one truth about Him, but Him. Therefore, we receive His Life as our true life; and it is morally unthinkable that we can receive this and express it in sin. This assumed, the Epistle (Romans 12 and onward) lays down with much detail and in admirable application large ranges of the law of duty, civil, social, personal, embracing duties to the state, loyalty to its laws, payment of its taxes, recognition of the sacredness of political order, even ministered by pagans; and also duties to society and the church, including a large and loving tolerance even in religious matters, and a response to every call of the law of unselfish love. However we can or cannot adjust mentally the two sides, that of a supremely free salvation and that of an inexorable responsibility, there the two sides are, in the Pauline message. And reason and faith combine to assure us that both sides are eternally true, ?antinomies? whose harmony will be explained hereafter in a higher life, but which are to be lived out here concurrently by the true disciple, assured of their ultimate oneness of source in the eternal love.

(6) Doctrine of Israel.
Very briefly we touch on this department of the message of Romans, mainly to point out that the problem of Israel's unbelief nowhere else in Paul appears as so heavy a load on his heart, and that on the other hand we nowhere else have anything like the light he claims to throw (Romans 11) on Israel's future. Here, if anywhere, he appears as the predictive prophet, charged with the statement of a ?mystery,? and with the announcement of its issues. The promises to Israel have never failed, nor are they canceled. At the worst, they have always been inherited by a chosen remnant, Israel within Israel. And a time is coming when, in a profound connection with Messianic blessing on the Gentiles, ?all Israel shall be saved,? with a salvation which shall in turn be new life to the world outside Israel. Throughout the passage Paul speaks, not as one who ?will not give up a hope,? but as having had revealed to him a vast and definite prospect, in the divine purpose.
It is not possible in our present space to work out other lines of the message of Romans. Perhaps enough has been done to stimulate the reader's own inquiries.

Literature.
Of the Fathers, Chrysostom and Augustine are pre-eminent as interpreters of Romans: Chrysostom in his expository Homilies, models of eloquent and illuminating discourse, full of ?sanctified common sense,? while not perfectly appreciative of the inmost doctrinal characteristics; Augustine, not in any continuous comm., but in his anti-Pelagian writings, which show the sympathetic intensity of his study of the doctrine of the Epistle, not so much on justification as on grace and the will. Of the Reformers, Calvin is eminently the great commentator, almost modern in his constant aim to ascertain the sacred writer's meaning by open-eyed inference direct from the words. On Romans he is at his best; and it is remarkable that on certain leading passages where grace is theme he is much less rigidly ?Calvinistic? than some of his followers. In modern times, the not learned but masterly exposition of Robert Haldane (circa 1830) claims mention, and the eloquent and highly suggestive expository lectures (about the same date) of Thomas Chalmers. H. A. W. Meyer (5th edition, 1872, English translation 1873-1874) among the Germans is excellent for carefulness and insight; Godet (1879, English translation 1881) equally so among French-writing divines; of late English interpreters I. A. Beet (1877, many revisions), Sanday and Headlam (1895, in the? International? series) and E. H. Gifford (admirable for scholarship and exposition; his work was printed first in the Speaker's (Bible) Comm., 1881, now separately) claim particular mention. J. Denney writes on Romans in The Expositor's Greek Test. (1900).
Luther's lectures on Romans, delivered in 1516-1517 and long supposed lost, have been recovered and were published by J. Ficker in 1908. Among modern German commentators, the most important is B. Weiss in the later revisions of the Meyer series (9th edition, 1899), while a very elaborate commentary has been produced by Zahn in his own series (1910). Briefer are the works of Lipsius (Hand-Kommentar, 2nd edition, 1892, very scholarly and suggestive); Lietzmann (Handbuch zum NT, interest chiefly linguistic), and Julicher (in J. Weiss, Schriften des NTs, 2nd edition, 1908, an intensely able piece of popular exposition).
A. E. Garvie has written a brilliant little commentary in the ?(New) Century? series (no date); that of R. John Parry in the Cambridge Greek Testament, 1913, is more popular, despite its use of the Greek text. F. B. Westcott's Paul and Justification, 1913, contains a close grammatical study with an excellent paraphrase.
The writer may be allowed to name his short commentary (1879) in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and a fuller one, in a more homiletic style, in the Expositor's Bible, 1894.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Romans, Epistle To The
This is naturally placed first among the epistles in the New Test., both on account of its comparative length and its importance. It claims our interest more than the other didactic epistles of Paul, because it is more systematic, and because it explains especially that truth which subsequently became the principle of the Reformation, viz. righteousness through faith. It has, however, been greatly misunderstood in modern times, as it seems to have been very early ( 2Pe_3:15-16).
I. Authorship. — Internal evidence is so strongly in favor of the genuineness of the Epistle to the Romans that it has never been seriously questioned. Even the sweeping criticism of Baur did not go beyond condemning the last two chapters as spurious. But while the epistle bears in itself the strongest proofs of its Pauline authorship, the external testimony in its favor is not inconsiderable. The reference to Rom_2:4 in 2Pe_3:15 is indeed more than doubtful. In the Epistle of James, again (Jam_2:14), there is an allusion to perversions of Paul's language and doctrine which has several points of contact with the Epistle to the Romans; but this may perhaps be explained by the oral rather than the written teaching of the apostle, as the dates seem to require. It is not the practice of the apostolic fathers to cite the New Test. writers by name, but marked passages from the Romans are found imbedded in the epistles of Clement and Polycarp (Rom_1:29-32 in Clem. Corinthians 35, and Rom_14:10; Rom_14:12, in Polyc. Phil. 6). It seems also to have been directly cited by the elder quoted in Irenaeus (4, 27, 2, “ideo Paulum dixisse;” comp. Rom_11:21; Rom_11:17), and is alluded to by the writer of the Epistle to Diognetus (c. 9; comp. Rom_3:21 fol.; 5:20), and by Justin Martyr (Dial. c. 23; comp. Rom_4:10-11, and in other passages). The title of Melito's treatise On the Hearing of Faith seems to be an allusion to this epistle (see, however, Gal_3:2-3). It has a place, moreover, in the Muratorian Canon and in the Syriac and Old Latin versions. Nor have we the testimony of orthodox writers alone. The epistle was commonly quoted as an authority by the heretics of the subapostolic age: by the Ophites (Hippol. Adv. Hoer. p. 99; comp. Rom_1:20-26), by Basilides (ibid. p. 238; comp. Rom_8:19; Rom_8:22; Rom_5:13-14), by Valentinus (ibid. p. 195; comp. Rom_8:11), by the Valentinians Heracleon and Ptolemaeus (Westcott, On the Canon, p. 335, 340), and perhaps also by Tatian (Orat. c. 4; comp. Rom_1:20), besides being included in Marcion's Canon. In the latter part of the 2d century the evidence in its favor is still fuller. It is obviously alluded to in the letter of the churches of Vienne and Lyons (Euseb. H.E. 5, 1; comp. Rom_8:18), and by Athenagoras (p. 13; comp. Rom_12:1; p. 37; comp. Romans 1, 24) and Theophilus of Antioch (Ad Autol. p. 79; comp. Rom_2:6 fol.; p. 126; comp. Rom_13:7-8); and is quoted frequently and by name by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria (see Kirchhofer, Quellen, p. 198, and especially Westcott, On the Canon, passim).
II. Integrity. — This has not been so unanimously admitted as the genuineness. With the exception of Marcion's authorities, indeed, who probably tampered with the manuscripts of the epistles as he did with those of the gospels, and who considered the last two chapters of this epistle spurious, all the manuscripts and versions contain the epistle as we have it: it is in modern times that doubts have been thrown upon the authenticity of the concluding portion. By Heumann the epistle was considered to have originally ended with ch. 11; ch. 12-15 being a distinct production, though likewise addressed to the Romans, and ch. 16 a sort of postscript to the two. Semler (1762) confined his doubts to ch. 15 and 16, the former of which he regarded as a private encyclical for the use of the brethren whom the bearers of the larger epistle should meet on their way to Rome, the latter as a catalogue of persons to be saluted on the same journey. Schulz (1829) supposed that ch. 16 was addressed to the Ephesians from Rome, and Schott that it is made up of fragments from a short epistle written by Paul when at Corinth to an Asiatic Church. Baur has more recently (1836) followed on the same side; but, as usual, on merely internal grounds, and in favor of his peculiar theory of the relation of the parties of Paul and Peter in the apostolic age. These various hypotheses have long passed into oblivion; and by all recent critics of note the last two chapters have been restored to their place as an integral part of the epistle.
With greater semblance of reason has the genuineness of the doxology at the end of the epistle been questioned. Schmidt and Reiche consider it not to be genuine. In this doxology the anacolouthical and unconnected style causes some surprise, and the whole has been deemed to be out of its place (Rom_16:26-27). The arguments against its genuineness on the ground of style, advanced by Reiche, are met and refuted by Fritzsche (Romans vol. 1, p. 35). Such defects of style may easily be explained from the circumstance that the apostle hastened to the conclusion, but would be quite inexplicable in additions of a copyist who had time for calm consideration. The same words occur in different passages of the epistle, and it must be granted that such a fluctuation sometimes indicates an interpolation. In the Codex I, in most of the Codices Minusculi, as well as in Chrysostom, the words occur at the conclusion of ch. 14. In the codices B, C, D, E, and in the Syrian translation, this doxology occurs at the conclusion of ch. 16. In Codex A it occurs in both places; while in Codex D** the words are wanting entirely, and they seem not to fit into either of the two places. If the doxology be put at the conclusion of ch. 14, Paul seems to promise to those Christians weak in faith, of whom he had spoken, a confirmation of their belief. But it seems unfit in this connection to call the Gospel an eternal mystery, and the doxology seems here to interrupt the connection between ch. 14 and 15; and at the conclusion of ch. 16 it seems to be superfluous, since the blessing had been pronounced already in Rom_16:24. We, however, say that this latter circumstance need not have prevented the apostle from allowing his animated feelings to burst forth in a doxology, especially at the conclusion of an epistle which treated amply on the mystery of redemption. We find an analogous instance in Eph. 23:27, where a doxology occurs after the mystery of salvation had been mentioned. We are therefore of opinion that the doxology is rightly placed at the conclusion of ch. 16, and that it was in some codices erroneously transposed to the conclusion of ch. 14, because the copyist considered the blessing in 16:24 to be the real conclusion of the epistle. In confirmation of this remark, we observe that the same codices in which the doxology occurs in ch. 16 either omit the blessing altogether or place it after the doxology. (See § 4:7 below.)
III. Time and Place of Writing. — The date of this epistle is fixed with more absolute certainty and within narrower limits than that of any other of Paul's epistles. The following considerations determine the time of writing. First. Certain names in the salutations point to Corinth as the place from which the letter was sent.
(1.) Phoebe, a deaconess of Cenchreae, one of the port towns of Corinth, is commended to the Romans (Rom_16:1-2).
(2.) Gaius, in whose house Paul was lodged at the time (Rom_16:23), is probably the person mentioned as one of the chief members of the Corinthian Church in 1Co_1:14, though the name was very common.
(3.) Erastus, here designated “the treasurer of the city” (οἰκονόμος, 1Co_1:23, A.V. “chamberlain”), is elsewhere mentioned in connection with Corinth (2Ti_4:20; see also Act_19:22).
Secondly. Having thus determined the place of writing to be Corinth, we have no hesitation in fixing upon the visit recorded in Act_20:3, during the winter and spring following the apostle's long residence at Ephesus, as the occasion on which the epistle was written. For Paul, when he wrote the letter, was on the point of carrying the contributions of Macedonia and Achaia to Jerusalem (15:25-27), and a comparison with Act_20:22; Act_24:17; and also 1Co_16:4; 2Co_8:1-2; 2Co_9:1 sq., shows that he was so engaged at this period of his life. (See Paley, Horoe Paulinoe, ch. 2, § 1.) Moreover, in this epistle he declares his intention of visiting the Romans after he has been at Jerusalem (1Co_15:23-25), and that such was his design at this particular time appears from a casual notice in Act_19:21.
The epistle, then, was written from Corinth during Paul's third missionary journey, on the occasion of the second of the two visits recorded in the Acts. On this occasion he remained three months in Greece (Act_20:3). When he left, the sea was already navigable, for he was on the point of sailing for Jerusalem when he was obliged to change his plans. On the other hand, it cannot have been late in the spring, because, after passing through Macedonia and visiting several places on the coast of Asia Minor, he still hoped to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost (Act_20:16). It was therefore in the winter or early spring of the year that the Epistle to the Romans was written. According to the most probable system of chronology, this would be the winter of A.D. 54-55.
The Epistle to the Romans is thus placed in chronological connection with the epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, which appear to have been written within the twelve months preceding. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was written before Paul left Ephesus, the Second from Macedonia when he was on his way to Corinth, and the Epistle to the Galatians most probably either in Macedonia or after his arrival at Corinth, i.e. after the epistles to the Corinthians, though the date of the Galatian epistle is not absolutely certain. SEE GALATIANS, EPISTLE TO THE. We shall have to notice the relations existing between these contemporaneous epistles hereafter. At present it will be sufficient to say that they present a remarkable resemblance to each other in style and matter — a much greater resemblance than can be traced to any other of Paul's epistles. They are at once the most intense and most varied in feeling and expression — if we may so say, the most Pauline of all Paul's epistles. When Baur excepts these four epistles alone from his sweeping condemnation of the genuineness of all the letters bearing Paul's name (Paulus, der Apostel), this is a mere caricature of sober criticism; but underlying this erroneous exaggeration is the fact that the epistles of this period — Paul's third missionary journey — have a character and an intensity peculiarly their own, corresponding to the circumstances of the apostle's outward and inward life at the time when they were written. For the special characteristics of this group of epistles, see a paper on the Epistle to the Galatians in the Journal of Class. and Sacr. Phil. 3, 289.
IV. Occasion and Object of Writing. — These evidently grew out of the position and character of the persons addressed, and therefore involve a consideration of the Church at Rome and of the apostle's purposes with relation to it.
1. The opinions concerning the general design of this letter differ according to the various suppositions of those who think that the object of the letter was supplied by the occasion, or the supposition that the apostle selected his subject only after an opportunity for writing was offered. In earlier times the latter opinion prevailed, as, for instance, in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin. In more recent times the other opinion has generally been advocated, as, for instance, by Hug, Eichhorn, and Flatt. Many writers suppose that the debates mentioned in ch. 14 and 15 called forth this epistle. Hug, therefore, is of opinion that the object of the whole epistle was to set forth the following proposition: Jews and Gentiles have equal claim to the kingdom of God. According to Eichhorn, the Roman Jews, being exasperated against the disciples of Paul, endeavored to demonstrate that Judaism was sufficient for the salvation of mankind; consequently Eichhorn supposes that the polemics of Paul were not directed against Judaizing converts to Christianity, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, but rather against Judaism itself. This opinion is also maintained by De Wette (Einleitung ins Neue Testament, 4th ed. § 138). According to Credner (Einleitung, § 141), the intention of the apostle was to render the Roman congregation favorably disposed before his arrival in the chief metropolis, and he therefore endeavored to show that the evil reports spread concerning himself by zealously Judaizing Christians were erroneous. This opinion is nearly related to that of Baur, who supposes that the real object of this letter is mentioned only in ch. 9-11. According to Baur, the Judaizing zealots were displeased that by the instrumentality of Paul such numbers of Gentiles entered the kingdom of God that the Jews ceased to appear as the Messianic people. Baur supposes that these Judaizers are more especially refuted in ch. 9-11, after it has been shown in the first eight chapters that it was in general incorrect to consider one people better than another, and that all had equal claims to be justified by faith. Against the opinion that the apostle, in writing the Epistle to the Romans, had this particular polemical aim, it has been justly observed by Ruckert (in the 2d ed. of his Commentar), Olshausen, and De Wette that the apostle himself states that his epistle had a general scope. Paul says in the introduction that he had long entertained the wish of visiting the metropolis, in order to confirm the faith of the Church, and to be himself comforted by that faith (Rom_1:12). He adds (Rom_1:16) that he was prevented from preaching in the chief city by external obstacles only. He says that he had written to the Roman Christians in fulfilment of his vocation as apostle to the Gentiles. The journey of Phoebe to Rome seems to have been the external occasion of the epistle. Paul made use of this opportunity by sending the sum and substance of the Christian doctrine in writing, having been prevented from preaching in Rome. Paul had many friends in Rome who communicated with him; consequently he was the more induced to address the Romans, although he manifested some hesitation in doing so (Rom_15:15). These circumstances exercised some influence as well on the form as on the contents of the letter; so that, for instance, its contents differ considerably from the Epistle to the Ephesians, although this also has a general scope.
2. The immediate circumstances under which the epistle was written were these. Paul had long purposed visiting Rome, and still retained this purpose, wishing also to extend his journey to Spain (Rom_1:9-13; Rom_15:22-29). For the time, however, he was prevented from carrying out his design, as he was bound for Jerusalem with the alms of the Gentile Christians, and meanwhile he addressed this letter to the Romans, to supply the lack of his personal teaching. Phoebe, a deaconess of the neighboring Church of Cenchrese, was on the point of starting for Rome (Rom_16:1-2), and probably conveyed the letter. The body of the epistle was written at the apostle's dictation by Tertius (Rom_16:22); but perhaps we may infer from the abruptness of the final doxology that it was added by the apostle himself, more especially as we gather from other epistles that it was his practice to conclude with a few striking words in his own handwriting, to vouch for the authorship of the letter, and frequently also to impress some important truth more strongly on his readers.
3. The Origin of the Roman Church is involved in obscurity (see Mangold, Die Anfange der romischen Gemeinde [Marb. 1866]). If it had been founded by Peter, according to a later tradition, the absence of any allusion to him both in this epistle and in the letters written by Paul from Rome would admit of no explanation. It is equally clear that no other apostle was the founder. In this very epistle, and in close connection with the mention of his proposed visit to Rome, the apostle declares that it was his rule not to build on another man's foundation (Rom_15:20), and we cannot suppose that he violated it in this instance. Again, he speaks of the Romans as especially falling to his share as the apostle of the Gentiles (Rom_1:13), with an evident reference to the partition of the field of labor between himself and Peter, mentioned in Gal_2:7-9. Moreover, when he declares his wish to impart some spiritual gift (χάρισμα) to them, “that they might be established” (Rom_1:11), this implies that they had not yet been visited by an apostle, and that Paul contemplated supplying the defect, as was done by Peter and John in the analogous case of the churches founded by Philip in Samaria (Act_8:14-17). SEE PETER (the Apostle).
The statement in the Clementines (Horn. 1, § 6) that the first tidings of the Gospel reached Rome during the lifetime of our Lord is evidently a fiction for the purposes of the romance. On the other hand, it is clear that the foundation of this Church dates very far back. Paul in this epistle salutes certain believers resident in Rome — Andronicus and Junia (or Junianus?) — adding that they were distinguished among the apostles, and that they were converted to Christ before himself (Rom_16:7), for such seems to be the meaning of the passage, rendered somewhat ambiguous by the position of the relative pronouns. It may be that some of those Romans, “both Jews and proselytes,” present on the day of Pentecost (οἱ ἐπιδημοῦντες ῾Ρωμαῖοι, Ι᾿ουδαῖοί τε καὶ προσήλυτοι, Act_2:10), carried back the earliest tidings of the new doctrine, or the Gospel may have first reached the imperial city through those who were scattered abroad to escape the persecution which followed on the death of Stephen (Act_8:4; Act_11:19). At all events, a close and constant communication was kept up between the Jewish residents in Rome and their fellow countrymen in Palestine by the exigencies of commerce, in which they became more and more engrossed as their national hopes declined, and by the custom of repairing regularly to their sacred festivals at Jerusalem. Again, the imperial edicts alternately banishing and recalling the Jews (comp. e.g. in the case of Claudius, Josephus, Ant. 19, 5, 3, with Suetonius, Claud. 25) must have kept up a constant ebb and flow of migration between Rome and the East, and the case of Aquila and Priscilla (Act_18:2; see Paley, Hor. Paul. c. 2, § 2) probably represents a numerous class through whose means the opinions and doctrines promulgated in Palestine might reach the metropolis. At first we may suppose that the Gospel was preached there in a confused and imperfect form, scarcely more than a phase of Judaism, as in the case of Apollos at Corinth (Act_18:25), or the disciples at Ephesus (Act_19:1-3). As time advanced and better instructed teachers arrived, the clouds would gradually clear away, till at length the appearance of the great apostle himself at Rome dispersed the mists of Judaism which still hung about the Roman Church. Long after Christianity had taken up a position of direct antagonism to Judaism in Rome, heathen statesmen and writers still persisted in confounding the one with the other (see Merivale, Hist. of Rome, 6, 278, etc.).
4. A question next arises as to the composition of the Roman Church at the time when Paul wrote. Did the apostle address a Jewish or a Gentile community, or, if the two elements were combined, was one or other predominant so as to give a character to the whole Church? Either extreme has been vigorously maintained, Baur, for instance, asserting that Paul was writing to Jewish Christians, Olshausen arguing that the Roman Church consisted almost solely of Gentiles. We are naturally led to seek the truth in some intermediate position. Jowett finds a solution of the difficulty in the supposition that the members of the Roman Church, though Gentiles, had passed through a phase of Jewish proselytism. This will explain some of the phenomena of the epistle, but not all. It is more probable that Paul addressed a mixed Church of Jews and Gentiles, the latter perhaps being the more numerous.
There are certainly passages which imply the presence of a large number of Jewish converts to Christianity. The use of the second person in addressing the Jews (ch. 2 and 3) is clearly not assumed merely for argumentative purposes, but applies to a portion at least of those into whose hands the letter would fall. The constant appeals to the authority of “the law” may in many cases be accounted for by the Jewish education of the Gentile believers (so Jowett, 2, 22), but sometimes they seem too direct and positive to admit of this explanation (Rom_3:19; Rom_7:1). In ch. 7 Paul appears to be addressing Jews, as those who, like himself, had once been under the dominion of the law, but had been delivered from it in Christ (see especially Rom_7:4; Rom_7:6). And when in Rom_11:13 he says, “I am speaking to you — the Gentiles,” this very limiting expression “the Gentiles” implies that the letter was addressed to not a few to whom the term would not apply. Again, if we analyze the list of names in ch. 16, and assume that this list approximately represents the proportion of Jew and Gentile in the Roman Church (an assumption at least not improbable), we arrive at the same result. It is true that Mary, or rather Mariam (Rom_16:6), is the only strictly Jewish name. But this fact is not worth the stress apparently laid on it by Mr. Jowett (2:27); for Aquila and Priscilla (Rom_16:3) were Jews (Act_18:2; Act_18:26), and the Church which met in their house was probably of the same nation. Andronicus and Junia (or Junias? Act_18:7) are called Paul's kinsmen. The same term is applied to Herodion (Act_18:11). These persons, then, must have been Jews, whether “kinsmen” is taken in the wider or the more restricted sense. The name Apelles (Act_18:10), though a heathen name also, was most commonly borne by Jews, as appears from Horace (Sat. 1, 5, 100). If the Aristobulus of Act_18:10 was one of the princes of the Herodian house, as seems probable, we have also in “the household of Aristobulus” several Jewish converts. Altogether it appears that a very large fraction of the Christian believers mentioned in these salutations were Jews, even supposing that the others, bearing Greek and Latin names, of whom we know nothing, were heathens.
Nor does the existence of a large Jewish element in the Roman Church present any difficulty. The captives carried to Rome by Pompey formed the nucleus of the Jewish population in the metropolis. SEE ROME. Since that time they had largely increased. During the reign of Augustus we hear of above 8000 resident Jews attaching themselves to a Jewish embassy which appealed to this emperor (Josephus, Ant. 17, 11, 1). The same emperor gave them a quarter beyond the Tiber, and allowed them the free exercise of their religion (Philo, Leg. ad Catium, p. 568 M.). About the time when Paul wrote, Seneca, speaking of the influence of Judaism, echoes the famous expression of Horace (Ep. 2, 1, 156) respecting the Greeks — “Victi victoribus leges dederunt” (Seneca, in Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 6, 11). The bitter satire of Juvenal and indignant complaints of Tacitus of the spread of the infection through Roman society are well known (Tacitus, Ann. 15, 44; Juvenal, Sat. 14, 96). These converts to Judaism were mostly women. Such proselytes formed at that period the point of coalescence for the conversion of the Gentiles.
Among the converts from Judaism to Christianity there existed in the days of Paul two parties. The congregated apostles had decreed, according to Acts 15 that the converts from paganism were not bound to keep the ritual laws of Moses. There were, however, many converts from Judaism who were disinclined to renounce the authority of the Mosaic law, and appealed erroneously to the authority of James (Gal_2:9; comp. Act_21:25); they claimed also the authority of Peter in their favor. Such converts from Judaism, mentioned in the other epistles, who continued to observe the ritual laws of Moses were not prevalent in Rome. Baur, however, supposes that this Ebionitic tendency prevailed at that time in all Christian congregations, Rome not excepted. He thinks that the converts from Judaism were then so numerous that all were compelled to submit to the Judaizing opinions of the majority (comp. Baur, Abhandlung uber Zweck und Veranlassung des Romerbriefs, in the Tubinger Zeitschrift, 1836). However, Neander has also shown that the Judaizing tendency did not prevail in the Roman Church (comp. Neander, Panzung der christlichen Kirche [3d ed.], p. 388). This opinion is confirmed by the circumstance that, according to ch. 16 Paul had many friends at Rome. Baur removes this objection only by declaring ch. 16 to be spurious. He appeals to ch. xiv in order to prove that there were Ebionitic Christians at Rome: it appears, however, that the persons mentioned in ch. 14 were by no means strictly Judaizing zealots, wishing to overrule the Church, but, on the contrary, some scrupulous converts from Judaism, upon whom the others looked down contemptuously. There were, indeed, some disagreements between the Christians in Rome. This is evident from Rom_15:6-9, and Rom_11:17-18, these debates, however, were not of so obstinate a kind as among the Galatians; otherwise the apostle could scarcely have praised the congregation at Rome as he does in ch. Rom_1:8; Rom_1:12, and Rom_15:14. From ch. Rom_16:17-20 we infer that the Judaizers had endeavored to find admittance, but with little success.
On the other hand, situated in the metropolis of the great empire of heathendom, the Roman Church must necessarily have been in great measure a Gentile Church; and the language of the epistle bears out this supposition. It is professedly as the apostle of the Gentiles that Paul writes to the Romans (Rom_1:5). He hopes to have some fruit among them, as he had among the other Gentiles (Rom_1:13). Later on in the epistle he speaks of the Jews in the third person, as if addressing Gentiles: “I could wish that myself were accursed for my brethren, my kinsmen after the flesh, who are Israelites, “etc. (Rom_9:3-4). Again: “my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved” (Rom_10:1; the right reading is ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, not ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ι᾿σραήλ, as in the Received Text). Comp. also Rom_11:23; Rom_11:25, and especially Rom_11:30, “For as ye in times past did not believe God,... so did these also (i.e. the Jews) now not believe,” etc. In all these passages Paul clearly addresses himself to Gentile readers.
These Gentile converts, however, were not, for the most part, native Romans. Strange as the paradox appears, nothing is more certain than that the Church of Rome was at this time a Greek, and not a Latin, Church. It is clearly established that the early Latin versions of the New Test. were made not for the use of Rome, but for the provinces, especially Africa (Westcott, Canon, p. 269). All the literature of the early Roman Church was written in the Greek tongue. The names of the bishops of Rome during the first two centuries are, with but few exceptions, Greek (see Milman, Latin Christianity, 1, 27). In accordance with these facts, we find that a very large proportion of the names in the salutations of this epistle are Greek names; while of the exceptions, Priscilla, Aquila, and Junia (or Junias), were certainly Jews; and the same is true of Rufus, if, as is not improbable, he is the same mentioned in Mar_15:21. Julia was probably a dependent of the imperial household, and derived her name accordingly. The only Roman names remaining are Amplias (i.e. Ampliatus) and Urbanus, of whom nothing is known, but their names are of late growth, and certainly do not point to an old Roman stock. It was therefore from the Greek population of Rome, pure or mixed, that the Gentile portion of the Church was almost entirely drawn. The Greeks formed a very considerable fraction of the whole people of Rome. They were the most busy and adventurous, and also the most intelligent of the middle and lower classes of society. The influence which they were acquiring by their numbers and versatility is a constant theme of reproach in the Roman philosopher and satirist (Juvenal, 3, 60-80; 6, 184; Tacitus, De Orat. 29). They complain that the national character is undermined, that the whole city has become Greek, Speaking the language of international intercourse, and brought by their restless habits into contact with foreign religions, the Greeks had larger opportunities than others of acquainting themselves with the truths of the Gospel; while, at the same time, holding more loosely to traditional beliefs, and with minds naturally more inquiring, they would be more ready to welcome these truths when they came in their way. At all events, for whatever reason, the Gentile converts at Rome were Greeks, not Romans; and it was an unfortunate conjecture on the part of the transcriber of the Syriac Peshito that this letter was written “in the Latin tongue” (רומאית). Every line in the epistle bespeaks an original.
When we inquire into the probable rank and station of the Roman believers, an analysis of the names in the list of salutations again gives an approximate answer. These names belong for the most part to the middle and lower grades of society. Many of them are found in the columbaria of the freedmen and slaves of the early Roman emperors (see Journal of Class. and Sacr. Phil. 4, 57). It would be too much to assume that they were the same persons; but, at all events, the identity of names points to the same social rank. Among the less wealthy merchants and tradesmen, among the petty officers of the army, among the slaves and freedmen of the imperial palace, whether Jews or Greeks, the Gospel would first find a firm footing. To this last class allusion is made in Php_4:22, “they that are of Caesar's household.” From these it would gradually work upwards and downwards; but we may be sure that in respect of rank the Church of Rome was no exception to the general rule, that “not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble,” were called (1Co_1:26).
It seems probable, from what has been said above, that the Roman Church at this time was composed of Jews and Gentiles in nearly equal portions. This fact finds expression in the account, whether true or false, which represents Peter and Paul as presiding at the same time over the Church at Rome (Dionys. Cor. ap. Euseb. H.E. 2, 25; Irenaeus, 3, 3). Possibly, also, the discrepancies in the lists of the early bishops of Rome may find a solution (Pearson, Minor Theol. Works, 2, 449; Bunsen, Hippolytus, 1, 44) in the joint episcopate of Linus and Cletus — the one ruling over the Jewish, the other over the Gentile, congregation of the metropolis. If this conjecture be accepted, it is an important testimony to the view here maintained, though we cannot suppose that in Paul's time the two elements of the Roman Church had distinct organizations.
5. The heterogeneous composition of this Church explains the general character of the Epistle to the Romans. In an assemblage so various, we should expect to find not the exclusive predominance of a single form of error, but the coincidence of different and opposing forms. The Gospel had here to contend not specially with Judaism, nor specially with heathenism, but with both together. It was therefore the business of the Christian teacher to reconcile the opposing difficulties and to hold out a meeting point in the Gospel. This is exactly what Paul does in the Epistle to the Romans, and what, from the circumstances of the case, he was well enabled to do. He was addressing a large and varied community which had not been founded by himself, and with which he had had no direct intercourse. Again, it does not appear that the letter was specially written to answer any doubts, or settle any controversies, then rife in the Roman Church. There were therefore no disturbing influences, such as arise out of personal relations, or peculiar circumstances, to derange a general and systematic exposition of the nature and working of the Gospel. At the same time, the vast importance of the metropolitan Church, which could not have been overlooked even by an uninspired teacher, naturally pointed it out to the apostle as the fittest body to whom to address such an exposition. Thus the Epistle to the Romans is more of a treatise than of a letter. If we remove the personal allusions in the opening verses, and the salutations at the close, it seems not more particularly addressed to the Church of Rome than to any other Church of Christendom. In this respect it differs widely from the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians, with which, as being written about the same time, it may most fairly be compared, and which are full of personal and direct allusions. In one instance alone we seem to trace a special reference to the Church of the metropolis. The injunction of obedience to temporal rulers (Rom_13:1) would most fitly be addressed to a congregation brought face to face with the imperial government, and the more so as Rome had recently been the scene of frequent disturbances, on the part of either Jews or Christians, arising out of a feverish and restless anticipation of the Messiah's coming (Sueton. Claud. 25). Other apparent exceptions admit of a different explanation.
6. This explanation is, in fact, to be sought in its relation to the contemporaneous epistles. The letter to the Romans closes the group of epistles written during the second missionary journey. This group contains, besides, as already mentioned, the letters to the Corinthians and Galatians, written probably within the few months preceding. At Corinth, the capital of Achaia and the stronghold of heathendom, the Gospel would encounter its severest struggle with Gentile vices and prejudices. In Galatia, which, either from natural sympathy or from close contact, seems to have been more exposed to Jewish influence than any other Church within Paul's sphere of labor, it had a sharp contest with Judaism. In the epistles to these two churches we study the attitude of the Gospel towards the Gentile and Jewish world respectively. These letters are direct and special. They are evoked by present emergencies, are directed against actual evils, are full of personal applications. The Epistle to the Romans is the summary of what he had written before, the result of his dealing with the two antagonistic forms of error, the gathering together of the fragmentary teaching in the Corinthian and Galatian letters. What is there immediate, irregular, and of partial application is here arranged and completed and thrown into a general form. Thus, on the one hand, his treatment of the Mosaic law points to the difficulties he encountered in dealing with the Galatian Church; while, on the other, his cautions against antinomian excesses (Rom_6:15, etc.), and his precepts against giving offense in the matter of meats and the observance of days (ch. 14), remind us of the errors which he had to correct in his Corinthian converts (comp. 1Co_6:12 sq.; 1Co_8:1 sq.). Those injunctions, then, which seem at first sight special, appear not to be directed against any actual known failings in the Roman Church, but to be suggested by the possibility of those irregularities occurring in Rome which he had already encountered elsewhere.
7. Viewing this epistle, then, rather in the light of a treatise than of a letter, we are enabled to explain certain phenomena in the text above alluded to (§ 2). In the received text a doxology stands at the close of the epistle (Rom_16:25-27). The preponderance of evidence is in favor of this position, but there is respectable authority for placing it at the end of ch. 14. In some texts, again, it is found in both places, while others omit it entirely. The phenomena of the MSS. seem best explained by supposing that the letter was circulated at an early date (whether during the apostle's lifetime or not it is idle to inquire) in two forms, both with and without the two last chapters. In the shorter form it was divested, as far as possible, of its epistolary character by abstracting the personal matter addressed especially to the Romans, the doxology being retained at the close. A still further attempt to strip this epistle of any special references is found in MS. G, which omits ἐν ῾Ρώμῃ (Rom_1:7) and τοῖς ἐν ῾Ρώμῃ (Rom_16:15) for it is to be observed, at the same time, that this MS. omits the doxology entirely, and leaves a space after ch. 14. This view is somewhat confirmed by the parallel case of the opening of the Ephesian epistle, in which there is very high authority for omitting the words ἐν Ε᾿φέσῳ, and which bears strong marks of having been intended for a circular letter.
V. Scope, Contents, and Characteristics. — The elaborate argument and logical order observed in this epistle give it a very systematic character. Nevertheless, the bearing of many of its parts has often been greatly obscured or imperfectly understood, especially under the influence of polemical bias. On this account, as well as because of the great interest always attached to the fundamental doctrines so formally treated in it, we give an unusually full outline of its contents, even at the risk of some repetition.
1. In describing the general purport of this epistle we may start from Paul's own words, which, standing at the beginning of the doctrinal portion, may be taken as giving a summary of the contents: “The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith” (Rom_1:16-17). Accordingly the epistle has been described as comprising “the religious philosophy of the world's history.” The world in its religious aspect is divided into Jew and Gentile. The different positions of the two, as regards their past and present relation to God and their future prospects, are explained. The atonement of Christ is the center of religious history. The doctrine of justification by faith is the key which unlocks the hidden mysteries of the divine dispensation.
It belongs to the characteristic type of Paul's teaching to exhibit the Gospel in its historical relation to the human race. In the Epistle to the Romans, also, we find that peculiar character of Paul's teaching which induced Schelling to call Paul's doctrine a philosophy of the history of man. The real purpose of the human race is in a sublime manner stated by Paul in his speech in Act_17:26-27; and he shows at the same time how God had, by various historical means, promoted the attainment of his purpose. Paul exhibits the Old Test. dispensation under the form of an institution for the education of the whole human race, which should enable men to terminate their spiritual minority and become truly of age (Gal_3:24; Gal_4:1-4). In the Epistle to the Romans, also, the apostle commences by describing the two great divisions of the human race, viz. those who underwent the preparatory spiritual education of the Jews. and those who did not undergo such a preparatory education. We find a similar division indicated by Christ himself (Joh_10:16), where he speaks of one flock separated by hurdles. The chief aim of all nations, according to Paul, should be the righteousness before the face of God, or absolute realization of the moral law. According to Paul the heathen also have their νόμος, law, as well religious as moral internal revelation (Rom_1:19; Rom_1:32; Rom_2:15). The heathen have, however, not fulfilled that law which they knew, and are in this respect like the Jews, who also disregarded their own law (ch. 2). Both Jews and Gentiles are transgressors, or, by the law, separated from the grace and sonship of God (Rom_2:12; Rom_3:20); consequently, if blessedness could only be obtained by fulfilling the demands of God, no man could be blessed. God, however, has gratuitously given righteousness and blessedness to all who believe in Christ (Rom_2:21-29). The Old Test. also recognizes the value of religious faith (ch. 4). Thus we freely attain to peace and sonship of God presently, and have before us still greater things, viz. the future development of the kingdom of God (Rom_5:1-11). The human race has gained in Christ much more than it lost in Adam (Rom_5:12; Rom_5:21). This doctrine by no means encourages sin (ch. 6); on the contrary, men who are conscious of divine grace fulfill the law much more energetically than they were able to do before having attained to this knowledge, because the law alone is even apt to sharpen the appetite for sin and leads finally to despair (ch. 7); but now we fulfill the law by means of that new spirit which is given unto us, and the full development of our salvation is still before us (Rom_8:1-27). The sufferings of the present time cannot prevent this development, and must rather work for good to those whom God from eternity has viewed as faithful believers; and nothing can separate such believers from the eternal love of God (Rom_8:28-39). It causes pain to behold the Israelites themselves shut out from salvation; but they themselves are the cause of this seclusion, because they wished to attain salvation by their own resources and exertions, by their descent from Abraham, and by their fulfilment of the law. Thus, however, the Jews have not obtained that salvation which God has freely offered under the sole condition of faith in Christ (ch. 9); the Jews have not entered upon the way of faith, therefore the Gentiles were preferred, which was predicted by the prophets. However, the Jewish race, as such, has not been rejected; some of them obtain salvation by a selection made not according to their works, but according to the grace of God. If some of the Jews are left to their own obduracy, even their temporary fall serves the plans of God, viz. the vocation of the Gentiles. After the mass of the Gentiles shall have entered in, the people of Israel, also, in their collective capacity, shall be received into the Church (ch. 11).
2. The following is a more detailed analysis of the epistle:
SALUTATION (Rom_1:1-7). The apostle at the outset strikes the keynote of the epistle in the expressions “called as an apostle, ““called as saints.” Divine grace is everything, human merit nothing.
I. PERSONAL explanations. Purposed visit to Rome (Rom_1:5-15).
II. DOCTRINAT, discussion (Rom_1:16; Rom_11:36).
The general proposition. The Gospel is the salvation of Jew and Gentile alike. This salvation comes by faith (Rom_1:16-17).
The rest of this section is taken up in establishing this thesis, and drawing deductions from it, or correcting misapprehensions.
(a.) All alike were under condemnation before the Gospel: The heathen (Rom_1:18-32). The Jew (Rom_2:1-29). Objections to this statement answered (Rom_3:1-8). The position itself established from Scripture (Rom_3:9-20).
(b.) A righteousness (justification) is revealed under the Gospel, which being of faith, not of law, is also universal (Rom_3:21-26).
Boasting is thereby excluded (Rom_3:27-31). Of this justification by faith Abraham is an example (Rom_4:1-25). Thus, then, we are justified in Christ, in whom alone we glory (Rom_5:1-11). This acceptance in Christ is as universal as was the condemnation in Adam (Rom_5:12-19).
(c.) The moral consequences of our deliverance.
The law was given to multiply sin (Rom_5:20-21). When we died to the law, we died to sin (Rom_6:1-14). The abolition of the law, however, is not a signal for moral license (Rom_6:15-23). On the contrary, as the law has passed away, so must sin, for sin and the law are correlative; at the same time, this is no disparagement of the law, but rather a proof of human weakness (Rom_7:1-25). So henceforth in Christ we are free from sin, we have the Spirit, and look forward in hope, triumphing over our present afflictions (Rom_8:1-39).
(d.) The rejection of the Jews is a matter of deep sorrow (Rom_9:1-5).
Yet we must remember
(1.) That the promise was not to the whole people, but only to a select seed (Rom_9:6-13). And the absolute purpose of God in so ordaining is not to be canvassed by man (Rom_9:14-19).
(2.) That the Jews did not seek justification aright, and so missed it. This justification was promised by faith, and is offered to all alike, the preaching to the Gentiles being implied therein. The character and results of the Gospel dispensation are foreshadowed in Scripture (Rom_10:1-21).
(3.) That the rejection of the Jews is not final. This rejection has been the means of gathering in the Gentiles, and through the Gentiles they themselves will ultimately be brought to Christ (Rom_11:1-36).
III. PRACTICAL exhortations (Rom_12:1; Rom_15:13).
(a.) To holiness of life and to charity in general, the duty of obedience to rulers being inculcated by the way (Rom_12:1; Rom_13:14).
(b.) More particularly against giving offense to weaker brethren (Rom_14:1; Rom_15:13).
IV. PERSONAL matters.
(a.) The apostle's motive in writing the letter, and his intention of visiting the Romans (Rom_15:14-33).
(b.) Greetings (Rom_16:1-23).
Conclusion. The letter ends with a benediction and doxology (Rom_16:24-27).
3. While this epistle contains the fullest and most systematic exposition of the apostle's teaching, it is at the same time a very striking expression of his character. Nowhere do his earnest and affectionate nature, and his tact and delicacy in handling unwelcome topics, appear more strongly than when he is dealing with the rejection of his fellow countrymen the Jews. SEE PAUL.
VI. The Commentaries on this epistle are very numerous, as might be expected from its importance. For convenience, we divide them chronologically into two classes.
1. Of the many patristic expositions, but few are now extant. The work of Origen is preserved entire only in a loose Latin translation of Rufinus (Orig. [ed. De la Rue] 4, 458); but some fragments of the original are found in the Philocalia, and more in Cramer's Catena. The commentary on Paul's epistles printed among the works of Ambrose (ed. Ben. 2, App. p. 21), and hence bearing the name Ambrosiaster. is probably to be attributed to Hilary the deacon. Chrysostom is the most important among the fathers who attempted to interpret this epistle. He enters deeply and with psychological acumen into the thoughts of the apostle, and expounds them with sublime animation (ed. Montf. 9, 425, edited separately by Field, and transl. in the Library of the Fathers [Oxf. 1841], vol. 7). Besides these are the expositions of Paul's epistles by Pelagius (printed among Jerome's works [ed. Vallarsi], vol. 11, pt. 3, p. 135), by Primasius (Magn. Bibl. Vet. Patr. vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 30), and by Theodoret (ed. Schulze, 3, 1). Augustine commenced a work, but broke off at 1, 4. It bears the name Inchoata Expositio Epistoloe ad Rom. (ed. Ben. 3, 925). Later he wrote Expositio quarundam Propositionum Epistoloe ad Rom., also extant (ed. Ben. 3, 903). To these should be added the later Catena of Ecumenius (10th century), and the notes of Theophylact (11th century), the former containing valuable extracts from Photius. Portions of a commentary of Cyril of Alexandria were published by Mai (Nov. Patr. Bibl. 3, 1). The Catena edited by Cramer (1844) comprises two collections of Variorum notes, the one extending from 1, 1 to 9, 1, the other from 7, 7 to the end. Besides passages from extant commentaries, they contain important extracts from Apollinarius, Theodorus of Mopsuestia, Severianus, Gennadius, Photius, and others. There are also the Greek Scholia, edited by Matthai, in his large Greek Test. (Riga, 1782), from Moscow MSS. The commentary of Euthymius Zigabenus (Tholuck, Einl. § 6) exists in MS., but has never been printed. Abelard wrote annotations on this epistle (in Opp. p. 489), likewise Hugo Victor (in Opp. 1), and Aquinas (in Opp. 6). SEE COMMENTARY.
2. Modern exegetical helps (from the Reformation to the present time) on the entire epistle separately are the following, of which we designate the most important by an asterisk prefixed: Titelmann, Collectiones (Antw. 1520, 8vo); Melancthon, Adnotationes (Vitemb. 1522, and often, 4to); Bugenhagen, Interpretatio (Hag. 1523, 1527, 8vo); OEcolampadius, Adnotationes (Basil. 1526, 8vo); Sadoleto [Rom. Cath.], Commentarii (Lugd. 1535, fol.); Haresche [Rom. Cath.], Commentarii (Par. 1536, 8vo); *Calvin, Commentarius (in Opp.; in English by Sihon, Lond. 1834, 8vo; by Rodsell and Beveridge, Edinb. 1844, 8vo; by Owen, ibid. 1849, 8vo; in German, Frankf. 1836-38, 2 vols. 8vo); Sarcer, Scholia (Francf. 1541, 8vo); Grandis [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Par. 1546, 8vo); Soto [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Antw. 1550; Salm. 1551, fol.); Hales, Disputationes (Vitemb. 1553, 8vo); Musculus, Commentarius (Basil. 1555, 1572, fol.); Valdes [Socinian], Commentaria (Ven. 1556, 8vo); Naclanti [Rom. Cath.], Enarrationes (ibid. 1557, 4to); Martyr, Commentarius (Basil. 1558, fol., and later; in English, Lond. 1568, fol.); Viguer [Rom. Cath.], Commentaria (Par. 1558, fol., and later); Ferus [Rom. Cath.], Exegesis (ibid. 1559, 8vo, and later); Bucer, Metaphrasis (Basil. 1562, fol.); Malthisius [Rom. Cath. ], Commentarius (Colon. 1562, fol.); Cruciger, Commentarius (Vitemb. 1567, 8vo); Brent, Commentarius (Tub. 1571, 8vo); Hesch, Commentarius (Jen. 1572, 8vo; also [with other epistles] Lips. 1605, fol.); Hemming, Commentarius (ibid. 1572, 8vo); Olevian, Notoe (Genev. 1579, 8vo); Wigand, Adnotationes (Francf. 1580, 8vo); Comer, Commentarius (Heidelb. 1583, 8vo); De la Cerda [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Mussi 1583. fol.); Mussi [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Ven. 1588, 4to); Pollock, Analysis (Edinb. 1594; Genev. 1596, 1608, 8vo); Pantusa [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Ven. 1596, 8vo); Hunn, Expositio (Marp. 1587; Francf. 1596; Vitemb. 1607, 8vo); Pasqual (R.) [Rom. Cath.], Commentaria (Barc. 1597, fol.); Chytraeus, Explicatio (s. l. 1599, 8vo); Feuardent [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Par. 1599, 8vo); Toletus [Rom. Cath.], Adnotationes (Rom. 1602, 4to, and later); Pererius, Disputationes (Ingolst. 1603, 4to); Rung, Disputationes [includ. 1 Cor.] (Vitemb. 1603, 4to); Fay, Commentarius (Genev. 1608, 8vo); Pareus, Commentarius (Francf. 1608, 4to, and later); Mann, Notationes (ibid. 1614, 8vo); Wilson, Commentary (Lond. 1614, 4to; 1627, 1653, fol.); *Willet, Commentaria (Lond. 1620, fol.); Coutzen [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (Colon. 1629, fol.); Parr, Exposition [on parts] (Lond. 1632, fol. ); Crell [Socinian], Commentarius (Racov. 1636, 8vo); Heger, Exegesis (Francf. 1645, 8vo; 1651, 4to); Cundis, Exercitationes (Jen. 1646, 4to), De Dieu, Animadversiones [includ. other epistles] (L.B. 1646, 4to); Rudbeck, Disputationes (Aros. 1648, 4to); Brown (Sr.), Explanation (Edinb. 1651, 1759, 4to); Ferma, Analysis (ibid. 1651, 12mo; in English, ibid. 1849, 8vo); Elton, Treatises [on portions] (Lond. 1653, fol.), Weller, Adnotationes (Brunsw. 1654, 4to); Wandalin (Sr.), Paraphrasis (Slesw. 1656, 4to); Feurborn, Commentarius (Giess. 1661, 4to); Hipsted, Collationes (Brem. 1665, 4to); Gerhard, Adnotationes (Jen. 1666, 1676, 4to); De Brais, Notoe (Salm. 1670; Lips. 1726, 4to); Groenwegen, Vytlegginge (Gor. 1671, 4to); Mommas, Meditationes [includ. Gal.] (Hag. 1678, 8vo); Wittich, Investigatio (L. B. 1685, 4to); Alting, Commentarius (in Opp. vol. 3, iv; Amst. 1686, fol.); Van Leeuwen, Verhandeling (ibid. 1688, 1699, 4to); Schmid, Paraphrasis [in portions] (Hamb. 1691-94, 4to); Van Peene, Nasporing (Leyd. 1695, 4to; in German, Fr.-a.-M. 1697, 4to); Varen, Exegesis (Hamb. 1696, 8vo); Possalt, Erklärung (Zittau, 1696, 4to); Fibus [Rom. Cath.], Interpretatio (Col. Ag. 1696, fol.); Zierold, Exegesis (Starg. 1701, 1719, 4to); Locke, Notes (Lond. 1707, 4to); Dannhauer, Disputationes (Gryph. 1708, 4to); Fischbeck, Explanatio (Goth. 1720, 8vo); Streso, Meditatien (Amst. 1721, 4to); Van Til, Verklaring [includ. Phil.] (Haarlem, 1721, 4to); Wirth, Erklärung (Nuremb. 1724, 8vo); Hasevoert, Verklaring (Leyd. 1725, 4to); Vitringa, Verklaringe (Franeck. 1729, 4to); Rambach, Erklärung (Brem. 1738, 4to); also Introductio (Hal. 1727, 8vo); Turretin, Proelectiones [on 1-11] (Lausan. 1741, 4to); Wandalin (Jr.), Proelectiones (Haf. 1744, 4to); Taylor [Unitarian], Notes (Load. 1745, 1747, 1754, 1769, 4to; in German, Zur. 1774, 4to); Anton, Anmerkungen (Frankf. 1746, 8vo); Baumgarten, Auslegung (Hal 1749, 4to ); Carpzov, Stricturoe (Helmst. 1750, 1758, 8vo); Edwards, Annotations [includ. Gal.] (Lond. 1752, 4to); Semler, Notoe (Hal. 1767, 8vo); Mosheim, Einleitung (ed. Boysen, Quedlinb. 1771, 4to); Moldenhauer, Erläuterung (Hamb. 1775, 8vo); Richter, Erklärung (Frankf. 1775, 8vo); Cramer, Auslegung (Leips. 1784, 8vo); Schoder, Anmerk. (Frankf. 1785, 4to); Fuchs, Erläuterung (Steud. 1789, 8vo); Herzog, Erläuterung (Halle, 1791, 8vo); Reuss, Anmerk. (Giess. 1792, 8vo); Wunibald, Annotationes (Heidelb. 1792, 8vo); Francke, Anmerk. (Gotha, 1793, 8vo); Morus, Proelectiones (Lips. 1794, 8vo); Jones [Unitarian], Analysis (Lond. 1801, 8vo); Mobius, Bemerk. (Jen. 1804, 8vo); Bohme, Commentarius (Lips. 1806, 8vo); Stock, Lectures (Dubl. 1806, 8vo); Weingart, Commentarius (Goth. 1816, 8vo); Fry, Lectures (Lond. 1816, 8vo); *Tholuck, Auslegung (Berl. 1824, 1828, 1831, 1836, 1856, 8vo; in English, Edinb. 1842, 2 vols. 8vo; Phila. 1844, 8vo); Horneman, Commentar (Copenh. 1824, 8vo); Cox, Notes (Lond. 1824, 8vo); Flat, Vorlesungen (Tub. 1825, 8vo); Bowles, Sermons (Bath, 1826, 12mo); Terrot, Notes (Lond. 1828, 8vo); Stenerson, Commentarius (Lips. 1829, 8vo); Klee [Rom. Cath.], Commentar (Mainz, 1830, 8vo); Maitland, Discourses (Lond. 1830, 8vo); Moysey, Lectures (ibid. 1830, 8vo); *Ruckert, Commentar (Leips. 1831, 1839, 2 vols. 8vo); Benecke, Erläuterung (Heidelb. 1831, 8vo; in English, Lond. 1854, 8vo); Paulus, Erläuterung (Heidelb. 1831, 8vo); Ritchie, Lectures (Edinb. 1831, 2 vols. 8vo); Geissler, Erläuterung (Nuremb. 1831-33, 2 vols. 8vo); *Stuart, Commentary (Andover, 1832, 1835; Lond. 1857, 8vo); Parry, Lectures (ibid. 1832, 12mo ); Reiche, Erklärung (Gott. 1833-34, 2 vols. 8vo); Glockler, Erklärung (Frankf. 1834, 8vo); Kollner, Commentar (Darmst. 1834, 8vo); *Hodge, Commentary (Phila. 1835, 1864, 8vo; also abridged, ibid. 1836); *De Wette, Erklärung (Leips. 1835, 1838, 1840, 1847, 8vo); Wirth, Erläuterung (Regensb. 1836, 8vo); Lossius, Erklärung (Hamb. 1836, 8vo); Stengel [Rom. Cath.], Commentar (Freib. 1836, 8vo); *Fritzsche, Commentarius (Hal. 1836-43, 3 vols. 8vo); Chalmers, Lectures (Glasg. 1837, 4 vols. 8vo, and later; N.Y. 1840, 8vo); Anderson, Exposition (Lond. 1837, 12mo); Bosanquet, Paraphrase (ibid. 1840, 8vo); Haldane, Exposition (ibid. 1842, 1852, 3 vols. 12mo; N.Y. 1857, 8vo; in German, Hamb. 1839-43, 3 vols. 8vo); Sumner, Exposition [includ. 1 Cor.] (Lond. 1843, 8vo); Allies, Sermons (Oxf. 1844, 8vo); Reithmayr [Rom. Cath.], Commentar (Regensb. 1845, 8vo); Walford, Notes (Lond. 1846, 8vo); *Philippi, Commentar (Frankf. 1848, 1852, 3 vols. 8vo; Erlang. 1855, 1867, 2 vols. 8vo); Vinke, Verklaring (Utr. 1848, 1860. 8vo); Whitwell, Notes (Lond. 1848, 8vo); Krehl. Auslegung (Leips. 1849, 8vo); Marriott, Reflections (Lond. 1849, 12mo); Ewbank, Commentary (ibid. 1850-51, 2 vols. 8vo); Steinhofer, Erklärung (Nördl. 1851, 8vo); Pridham, Notes (Bath, 1851, 12mo); *Turner, Commentary (N.Y. 1853, 8vo); Knight, Commentary (Lond. 1854, 8vo); Beelen [Rom. Cath.], Commentarius (ibid. 1854, 8vo); *Hengl, Interpretatio (Lips. 1854-59, 2 vols. 8vo); Jowett, Notes [includ. Gal. and Thess.] (Lond. 1855, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo); Livermore [Unitarian], Commentary (Bost. 1855, 12mo); Purdue, Commentary (Dubl. 1855, 8vo); Umbreit, Auslegung (Goth. 1856, 8vo); Ewald, Erläuterung (Gott. 1857, 8vo); Brown (J., Jr.), Exposition (Edinb. and N.Y. 1857, 8vo); Bromehead, Notes (Lond. 1857, 8vo); Stephen, Lectures (Aberdeen, 1857, 12mo); Five Clergymen, Revision (Lond. 1857, 8vo); Cumming, Readings (ibid. 1857, 12mo); Mehring, Erklärung (Stet. 1858-59, 2 vols. 8vo); Vaughan, Notes, (Lond. 1859, 1861, 8vo); Crawford, Translation (ibid. 1860. 4to); Brown (D.), Commentary (ibid. 1860, 8vo); Wardlaw, Lectures (ibid. 1861, 3 vols. 8vo); Colenso, Notes (ibid. 1861, 8vo); Ford, Illustration (ibid. 1862, 8vo); Hinton, Exposition (ibid. 1865, 8vo); Marsh, Exposition (ibid. 1865, 12mo); Wangemann, Erklärung (Berl. 1866, 8vo); Ortloph, Auslegung (Erlang. 1866, 8vo); Prichard, Commentary (Lond. 1866, 8vo); Forbes, Commentary [on parallelisms] (ibid. 1868, 8vo); Horton, Lectures (ibid. 1868 sq., 2 vols. 8vo); *Delitzsch, Erläuterung (Leips. 1870, 8vo); Chamberlain, Notes (Lond. 1870, 12mo); Plumer, Commentary (N.Y. and Edinb. 1871, 8vo); Best, Commentary (Lond. 1871, 8vo); O'Connor, Commentary (ibid. 1871, 8vo); Robinson, Notes (ibid. 1871, 2 vols. 8vo); Phallis, Notes (ibid. 1871, 8vo); Gartner, Erklärung (Stuttg. 1872, 8vo); Colet, Notes (Lond. 1873, 8vo); Strong, Analysis (N.Y. 1873, 8vo); Neil, Notes (Lond. 1877, 8vo). SEE EPISTLES.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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