difficulty that none of all these people are mentioned in the letters the Apostle afterwards wrote from Rome (see Col. iv. 10 f.), scholars like Lightfoot, Gifford and Sanday find no reason to give up the historical tradition which makes this chapter an integral part of the epistle addressed to Rome. There is really more reason to question verses 17-20 than any other part of the chapter. Words like those in verse 19---ἐφ᾽ ὑμῖν οὖν χαίρω. θέλω δὲ Spas x.7.A.—certainly strike one as in better keeping if addressed to a Church with which Paul had had such previous relations as entitled him to take a per- sonal tone than if addressed to strangers. But we cannot tell a priort how the consciousness of an Apostle towards a Christian community he had never yet seen was determined ; it may, with all the disclaiming of titles to interfere, have involved precisely that authoritativeness and sense of responsibility to and for the Church which is expressed in this passage.
As for the doxology, it stands by itself. Lightfoot thought it no part of the original epistle. Neither did Alford. “ Probably,” says the latter, “‘on reperusing his work either at the time, or, as the altered style seems to import, in after years at Rome, he subjoins the fervid and characteristic doxology with which it closes.” Opinions on the genuineness of the doxology vary in part (but not exclusively) as opinions vary on the genuineness of the pastoral epistles. In spite of the vindication of the style word by word, the impression it leaves on the mind is hardly Pauline. It seems artificial rather than inspired. It is defended by Gifford, Hort, and Sanday and Headlam ; by Weiss (who thinks Paul may have added it with his own hand), Godet, and many others: rejected by Delitzsch, Pfleiderer, Schultz and Lipsius. In substance it recapitulates the main ideas of the epistle.