In any case, there is not the smallest evidence in the Epistle that St. Paul apprehended hostility on the part of his readers (see 6" 16"). He writes as a Jew to Jewish, but not to inveterately prejudiced readers. The Judaism of the Dispersion was, in many places {e.g. Beroea), milder and less prati- quant tnan that of Palestine. The Jewish Chri<i- tianity of the Diaspora may well have stood, in many cases, in an analogous relation to that of tlie TTTuxol &.yLoi (Ac 21='"). Evidently, the Jewish in- fluence which had moulded the religious temper of the Roman Church was not, as in Galatia and Corinth, of a recently imported or aggressive type.
How, then, are we to combine the two classes of evidence? Partly we might explain their diverg- ence by St. Paul's habit of treating one portion of a Church as if it represented the whole ; e.g. at Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus there were numerous Jewish Christians, but St. Paul addresses the Churches, especially the first and last named, as wholly Gentile.
But the mere a.ssumption of a mixed composition does not quite account for the phenomena. The readers are treated by St. Paul as a homogeneous body. Even in ch. 14 the distinction between the strong and the weak is not to be simply identified with that between Gentile and Jew. The Roman community as a whole is treated as Gentile in its elements, but Jewish in its ideas and feeling. Now, a class of men corresponding to this description existed all over the Hellenistic Jewish world in the Proselytes, the o-e/SiMfoi of Acts, who, without as a rule accepting circumcision, frequented the
synagogues, observed the moral law, worshipped the God of Israel, and were instructed in the Scriptures. It was among these, according to Acts, that the gospel tverywliere made its first heathen conquests. Probably the Roman Church was no exception. If so, there would of coarse be, as at Corinth, etc., a nucleus of Christian .Jews, and, by the time when our Epistle was written, numberf of heathen mi^ht well have become proselyte." directly to the Christian body without previously passing through the intermediate stage of Jewisu j)roselytism. Still it was the proselytes who gave tlie tone to the community, and they owed tlieii all, as Christians, to the influence and training of Christian Jews. We are compelled to form hypo- theses in this matter, and it is this hypothesis ^^•llich best satisfies the conditions of our problem. The old Tiibingen alternative of anti - Pauline Jewish, or anti-Jewish Pauline Christianity, is not imposed upon us either by the facts of history or by the internal evidence of the letter itself. (Oo this subject see also Hort, Roinan.'s and Ephesians, pp. 19-33 ; Beyschlag in SK, 1867 ; Schiirer'a art. on 'Romans' in Encijc. Brit.").
5. Letter or Treatise f — This being assumed, we may approach the question of the writer's purpose. St. Paul would not fail to see that the future ol Gentile Christianitj' in the Roman world depended to no small extent upon the future of the Christian body in the imperial city. \\"e accept the sugges- tion of Ramsay, that St. Paul had early grasped the importance of the Roman empire as a vehicle for the dissemination of the gospel. To commend his own gospel — the gospel of the Gentiles — to a community like that at Rome, was no hopeless task. To this end a personal visit to Rome was the obWous means, and this he had long resolved to pay (P'). But a letter such as this would pave the way for a successful visit, and ineanwhile it would accomplish much. Hence its reasoning con- ciliatory tone (12' IS"- etc.), specially characteristic of a period of reaction from a critical contest, when the apostle's own desire for peace was, more- over, finding concrete expression in the great "Koryla (15^- *•"•)• It was, then, no mere arbitrary choice which led St. Paul to address this, his greatest letter, to Rome. The Epistle is not a systematic treatise which might with equal appropriateness have been addressed to any Church. It has, primarily at least, in view the idiosyncrasy of the Christian community at Rome (see below, § v.).
6. Relation to other Epistles of the group. — Our Epistle comes at the close of a period of deep agi- tation, reflected in the Epp. to the Corinthians and Galatians, and summed up in 2 Co 1" iiuiBev fidxak, laaBiv (pb^oL. Referring for details to the articles on those Epistles, it will suffice to say that many of ' the circumcision ' had never in their hearts acquiesced in the recognition (Ac 15, Gal 2') of a Christianity emancipated from the Law, or frankly recognized the apostleship of St. Paul. At Corinth the Tatter question had been brought into promi- nence, in Galatia the former and deeper question. The Epistle to the Galatians stands in the closest relation to our Epistle, and its main ideas must be grasped as a preliminary to the understanding of Romans (see below, § v.). 'To the Galatians, the apostle flashes out in indignant remonstrance tlit first eager thoughts kindled by his zeal for tha gospel, striking suddenly agains* a stubborn rem- nant of Judaism. To the Romans he writes at leisure, under no pressure of circumstances, in the face of no direct antagonism, explaining, complet- ing, extending the teachin" of the earlier Epistle, by giving it a double edge directed against Jew and Gentile alike' (Lightfoot). The agitators of Gal- atia had insisted upon the Law as a necessary and permanent scheme of righteousness and salvatiow