If Paul wrote the Epistle in Rome, it was written between 62 and 64 [Turner, 59 and 61]; or if Har- nack’s chronology be adopted, between 57 and 59. The probability is that it is the last of the Epistles of the cop ity and that it belongs to its closing period. (Bleek, Lightfoot, Sanday, Hort, et al. would place it fi st among the Epistles of the captivity; the view ady ,cated in this art. is that of Zahn, Gwynn, Ramsay, et al.). A good deal had happened in Rome since Paul’sarrival. If we accept Mommsen’s view (see above), he had already appeared before his judges; and he was looking forward to a speedy settlement of his case (2%). The assump- tion of Zahn (Einl. in d. NT), that when the apostle wrote, the period of libera custodia had ended, and that he was in strict durance, rests upon a slender foundation, and is hardly consistent with the free intercourse with his friends implied in 2¥.
St. Paul’s Roman life, as mirrored in the Epistle to the Philippians, presents that aren | of ἰὸν and sorrow, of unexpected triumphs and bafiled nope so familiar to the reader of the Book of Acts and of the Pauline Epistles. For years he had danged to see Rome that he might preach the gospel in that great gathering-place of the nations, and communicate some spiritual gift to the Church of the metropolis of the world. He entered Rome, however, in a guise that seemed to mock all his hopes of fruitfel apostolic labour ; but he was able to assure the Philippians that the frustration was only in appearance ; for his bonds in Christ had become manifest in a manner which had spread to wide circles the knowledge of Christ (118); and his presence as a captive for Christ’s sake had
uickened evangelistic zeal within the Roman Church (14), But an element of personal bitter- ness mingled with his joy at the success of the preaching of the gospel. Some of the preachers whom his inspiring eae had sent forth to preach were animated by feelings of animosity towards himself, and preached Christ ‘of faction,’ hoping, as the apostle expresses it, to add afflic- tion to his bonds (117. This can hardly mean that they hoped to increase the rigour of his cap- tivity, for if they had irritated the authorities by their preaching, they would themselves have been the first sufferers ; they rather wished to make him feel more acutely the limitations of his cap- tive condition as compared with the unfettered
PHILIPPIANS, EPISTLE TO THE 84)
freedom enjoyed by his rivals. It is the opinion of some critics (e.g. E. Haupt) that the cause of the hostility of those preachers was simply jealousy of the masterful alien who had become the leader of the Christian community in Rome. Had they been Judaizers, it is urged, Paul could not have rejoiced in their preaching, after his emphatic condemnation of dilferent gospels in the Ep. to the Galatians (1° 5"). It is true that there do not seem to have been in Rome, when Paul wrote to the Romans, Judaizers of the extreme Galatian type. The Roman Church appears to have contained a majority of Gentile Chuistians, but there must have been in it a considerable minority of Jewish Christians, some of whom were anxious to preserve certain Jewish rites and customs. These may have taken alarm at the immense accession to the strength of the other party by the arrival in their midst of the great representative of anti- a i Christianity. It seems therefore not improb- able, and it is certainly more charitable to assume it, that those who preached Christ ‘of faction’ were under the influence of a more respectable motive than personal jealousy of the apostle. St. Paul might rejoice in their preaching, because through it men heard of Christ who would other- wise not have heard the gospel at all. It was otherwise when, as in the case of the Galatian Judaizers, an attempt was made to substitute a gospel trammelled by legal conditions for the free pospel of the grace of God, which the Galatians nad already received.
During his Roman captivity St. Paul was solaced by the society of a number of friends. Timothy, Luke, Epaphroditus, Aristarchus, Epaphras, Tychi- cus, John Mark, Demas, Jesus Justus, and Onesi- mus [see separate articles on these names) were all more or less frequent visitors in the hired house (μίσθωμα, Ac 28”) in Rome, and not improbably often lodged under its roof. To aman like Paul, who possessed a genius for friendship, the pre- sence of his friends must have been a source of unfailing joy and comfort ; and he owed to their ministrations not only the personal comfort which he enjoyed, but his opportunities of missionary effort in Rome and elsewhere; for he frequently sent them out on apostolic missions, But one ex- pression in the Ep. to the Philippians shows that the element of disappointment was not altogether absent even when he was in the society of his chosen friends, and that they did not always come up to the apostle’s high standard of self-forgetful- ness in the service of Christ. He writes (2% ™), *T hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly. For I have no man likeminded who will care genuinely for ΝΣ state. For they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.’ It has been said that if these words are to be taken seriously, they show that Paul, like Luther in his old age, fell into a mood of morose complaining, which made him unjust towards his fellow-workers. But we need not apply them to all the friends of whom mention has been made above, only to those, and perhaps few, who happened to be present with him at the time he was writing ; some of these appear to have pleaded private business, and to have ex-