2. The immediate circumstances under which the epis- tle was written were these. Paul had long purposed visiting Rome, and still retained this purpose, wishing also to extend his journey to Spain (i,9-I3; xv, 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 (ientile Christians, and meanwhile he ad- dressed this letter to the Romans, to supply the lack of his personal teaching. Phoebe, a deaconess of the neigh- boring Church of Cenchreag, was on the point of starting for Rome (xvi. 1-2), and probably conveyed the letter. The body of the epistle was written at the apostle's dic- tation by Tertius (ver. 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 hand- writing, to vouch for the authorship of the letter, and frequently also to impress some important truth more strongly on his readers.
3. Tlie Origin of the Roman Church is involved in obscurity (see Mangold, Die Anfdnge der i-omisch^n Ge- meinde [Alarb. 186(5]). If it had been founded by Pe- ter, 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 ailmit of no expla- nation. It Is equally clear that no other apostle was the founder. In this very epistle, and in close connec- tion with the mention of his proposed visit to Rome, the a|)ostle declares that it was his rule not to build on another man's foundation (xv, 20), and we cannot sup- pose that he violated it in this instance. Again, he speaks of the Romans as especially falling to his share as the apostle of the (ientiles (i, 13), with an evident reference to the partition of the field of labor between himself and Peter, mentioned in Gal. ii, 7-9. More-
ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE 104 ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE
over, when he declares his ^vish to impart some spiritual gift (xdpiff/^ia) to them, "that they might be estab- lished" (i, U), this implies that they had not yet been visited by an apostle, and that Paul contemplated sup- plying the defect, as was done by Peter and John in the analogous case of the churches founded by Philip in Samaria (Acts viii, 14-17). See Peter {the Apostle). The statement in the Clementines (Horn, i, § G) that the first tidings of the Gospel reached Rome during the lifetime of our Lord is evidently a fiction for the pur- poses 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 Kome— Andronicus and Junia (or Junianus?)— adding that they were distinguished among the apostles, and that they were converted to Christ before himself (xvi, 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 Ro- mans, "both Jews and proselytes," present on the day of Pentecost (oi iTrtSt]ixovvre(: 'Pwjumoi, 'lovSaloi re Kai Trpo(T)]KvToi, Acts ii, 10), carried back the earliest tidings of the new doctrine, or the (lospel may have first reached the imperial city through those who were scattered abroad to escape the persecution which fol- lowed on the death of Stephen (Acts viii. 4 ; xi, 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 en- grossed as their national hopes declined, and b}-^ the custom of repairing regularly to their sacred festivals at Jerusalem. Again, the imperial edicts alternately banishing and recalling the Jews (com p. e. g. in the case of Claudius, Josephus, Ant. xix, 5, 3, with Sueto- nius, 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 (Acts xviii, 2 ; see Paley, Hor. Paul. c. ii, § 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 (Acts xviii, 25), or the disciples at Ephesus (Acts xix, 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 him- self at Rome dispersed the mists of Judaism which still hung about the Roman Church. Long after Christian- ity had taken up a position of direct antagonism to Ju- daism in Rome, heathen statesmen and writers still persisted in confounding the one with the other (see Merivale, Hitst. of Rome, vi, 278, etc.).
4. A question next arises as to the composition of the Roman Church at tlie time when Paul wrote. Did the apostle address a Jewish or a Gentile communit)', or, if the two elements were combined, was one or other pre- domiuant 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 supposi- tion that the members of the Roman Church, though Gentiles, had passed through a phase of Jewish prose- lytism. This will explain some of the phenomena of the epistle, but not all. It is more probable tliat Paid addressetl a mixed Church of .lews and Gentiles, the latter perhaps being the more numerous.