point, though otherwise it is a very unnatural one, as the subject and sense of chap. xiv. run on unbroken to xv. 13. 2. There is at xv. 33 what has sometimes been taken as another ending: ‘‘ The God of peace be with you all. Amen.” 3, There is the benediction at xvi. 20: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you”. This is genuine, and is an ordinary Pauline formula at the close of a letter. 4. There is the benediction at xvi. 24: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” Most editors regard this as spurious ; it has been transferred in Western texts from verse 20 to this place, and finally established itself in both. Gifford, how- ever, regards it as genuine in both places. 5. There is the doxology at xvi. 25-27.
(d) In G all mention of Rome ‘s wanting: see critical note on i. 7, 15.
This complicated combination of facts has not yet been clearly explained, and perhaps never will be. Renan’s theory was that Romans is really a circular letter, and that it was sent in various directions, with different endings, which were afterwards combined. Lightfoot thought the facts adduced amounted to irresistible evidence that in early times shorter copies of the epistle existed, containing only chaps. i.-xiv., with or without the doxology ; and the theory by which he explained these facts was this, that “ St. Paul, at a later period of his life, reissued the epistle in a shorter form with a view to general circulation, omitting the last two chapters, obliterating the mention of Romans in the first chapter, and adding the doxology, which was no part of the original epistle”. This tempting theory was expounded in the Yournal of Philology, 1871, in a review of M Renan ; and this review, along with a minute criticism of Dr. Hort, and a reply by Lightfoot, can be studied in Lightfoot’s Biblical Essays, pp. 285-374. An acute statement of the objections to it is also given by Gifford in the introduction to his commentary (p. 23 f.); yet when all is said, it remains the most satisfying hypothesis that has yet been suggested for the colligation of the facts. Sanday and Headlam think that Paul could not possibly have made the break at xiv. 28—he must have been too conscious that the sense ran on unbroken to xv. 13; it was probably to Marcion, therefore, to whom the references to the Jews and the Old Testament in xv. 1-13 were objectionable, that the imperfect copies of the epistle owed their existence. This is hardly convincing. If there is not a break at xiv 23, there is at least a pause in the thought, and Paul may as easily have made a division there as the author of our present division into chapters. Besides, as Gifford points out (see above,