Serora might rise and fall, but the Empire itself id not perish when emperors rose and fell no moie It was not military: generals might blunder, but nearly to the end no enemy could face a Roman legion in the shock of liuttlo. It was partly economic, in slavery and bad taxation ; partly educational, in the lielplcss hark back to the mere words of the past ; partly also admini- Btrativo. Christian thought is even now pro- tonndly influenced by the fact that the Empire htA no good police. Rrigands were iilenty in
Judiea {X-Qo-Tris 15 times in NT, of which 2 Co il^ may refer to Gentile regions), and, though other provinces were better off, the evil increased as time went on, and the emperor lost control of the administration. Hence arbitrary seVirities and laws of atrocious cruelty against such offenders as were unlucky enougn to be caught. The Empire was by far the worthiest image of tlie kingdom of God vet seen on earth, but its imper- fections are writ large on every form of Christian thought which looks on power as the central attribute of deity. After all, the Empire was the passing of the ancient world. With all their grandeur, its rulers were only the Karapyoiuevoi (1 Co 2").
LiTHRATCRB. — See Roman : and add Boissier, Religion romaiiie ; Westcotl'8 Comm. OH St. John's Epp. ('The Two Empires'); I.ightfoot, IrjnatiM, iii. 404 ; .ind authorities :;uotDd by tlieni, to which add Kustel de Coulaiiges, La Gaule roinuine ; and K. O. Hardy, 'The Provincial Councils from Aug. to Diocl.,' In Ely. met. Rev. v. 2'21. fj. M. GWATKIN.
ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE.—
i. I'lace of tlie Epistle in tradition. Genuineness, ii. Tinie and Place of writing.
Iii. Occ;ision and Purpose : (1) Jews in Rome ; (2)Christian« tn Rome : (3) Apostolic foundation ; (4) Jewish or Gentile readers? (5) Letter or Treatise? (li) Relation to other letters of the (jiruup. Iv. SkeU-h of main arguments, and Analytical Table. T. Importance of the Epistle.
tL Theology and characteristic ideas : (1) God, Attributes and Will— Law, Christ; {'2) Man under sin; (3) Jlaii under law and under grace, the Spirit ; (4) Man's admission to grace, faith, justification ; ^5) Grace and the moral life ; (6) The Christian community and its Institutions. viL Materials for personal history of St. Paul, viii. Transmission of the Text. Integrity. Literature.
i. Place of the Epistle in Tradition. — What has been remarked of 1 Corinthians applies equally to tliis Epistle. But definite traces of its language occur already in 1 Peter, fainter l>ut still distinct traces in Hebrews, and juobahlo distinct traces in James, though here the case is less clear, and M.ayor, in his edition oiJnmcs, con- tends for the priority of the latter (see for details, and traces in Jude, Sanday-IIeadlam, Ixxill'.j. The Epistle was well known to (^'lem. Uom. (nine passages are distinctlj' traceable), Ignatius (twelve), Polycarp (six), Justin Martyr (seven), and appar- ently to Gnostic writers (Na.assenes, Valentinian.s, and Rasilides) quoted by Hijipolytus. Kor details, see Sanday-Headlam, who add some very instruc- tive quotations (thirteen, of which seven seem indisputable) from Test, of xii. Patriarclt.'s. The lirst reference to our I'^iistle by name is that bj' Marcion, who included Konians in his collection of Pauline Epistles (see below, § viii. ). We may safely repeat here what was said on 1 Corinthians (which see), that the Epistle to the Romans has been recognized in the Christian Church as long as any collection of St. Paul's Epistles h.as been extant. In the Muratorian and other early lists our Epistle stands seventh among the Pauline Epistles, i.e. last among the Epi.stles addressed to Churches as distinct from individuals. Its present position ut the head of the list appears first in the 4th cent, (see on 1 Cor., is 1, and Sanday-Hcacilam, Ixxxiv 11'.). Another im])ortant direct quotation is in Irena-us, Hier. III. xvi. 3, and in IV. xxvii. 3, an 'elder,' the pupil of men who had seen the apostles, is repre- sented as quoting Ro H"'" (' Paulum dixisso') and 3^. ^Iarcion, it is true, omitted chs. 15. 16, and certain other passages ; but neither he nor any other heretic impugned the authority of the Ejjistle, which is included in all the ancient versions. But no weight of external attesfAtion could be more eloquent than the style and char- acter of the Ejiistle itself. Its very diflicultT is of a nature which raises it above the plane of arti-
296 ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
ficiality. For this difficulty springs from no clumsiness of expression or confusion of thought, but from the depth of the questions liiuulled and the originality of their treatment. It is the most • Pauline' of all the A\Titings which bear St. Paul's name. Accordingly, critics who have set down almost every other writing of the NT as anonymous, have allowed that this Epistle, along with those to the Corinthians and Galatians, is really from the hand of St. Paul. The somewhat reckless criticism of Bruno Bauer produced little or no efl'ect upon the body of critical opinion in Germany. In more recent times the hypercriticism of the Dutch school of Loman and others, and the extreme theories of Steck (on these see 1 Corinthians, § 4 ; also Sanday-Headlam, pp. Ixxxvi-lxxxviii), have failed to shake the main body of representa- tive critics in their estimate of our Epistle.