Moore Perspective: Introducing the Letter to the Romans (Part 1 of 2)

Distinctive Features

1. Romans is the longest of Paul’s extant letters.

2. Romans is one of the few Pauline letters beginning with Paul’s name alone in the opening address. The others are Ephesians and the Pastorals.

3. Romans is the only letter wherein Paul’s amanuensis is explicitly identified: Tertius (16:22).¹

4. Romans is one of only two Pauline letters (the other being Colossians) that was written to a Christian community which Paul had no part in establishing (cf. Rom. 1:10, 13; 15:22.).

5. There are more scripture citations in Romans than in the rest of Paul’s writings: about sixty-eight quotations, mostly from the LXX, and even more allusions and verbal parallels.²

6. There are more explicit references to “God” [θεός] (over 150) in Romans than in any other Pauline document.³

7. Romans shares a literary affinity with Galatians and appears to be a further development of the themes introduced in that letter, while there are also themes in the Corinthian correspondence that recur in Romans.⁴

8. The most extensive opening address and prelude to Paul’s standard opening greeting is Rom. 1:1-7, probably because he had never been to Rome nor participated in planting the church there and needed to introduce himself and the gospel he preached.

Authorship

Labeled “the Gospel according to Paul,”⁵ there is no serious dispute over Paul’s authorship of Romans. In fact, it is considered even by the most liberal NT scholars “the preeminent Pauline document” among his “principal” letters. Other than secretarial assistance (16:22), there does not appear to have been any compositional collaboration in the writing of this letter.⁶

Provenance and Date

At the end of Paul’s third missionary tour, before heading back east with the collection for the poor saints of Judea, he spent the three winter months of 56-57 in Corinth (Acts 20:2-3; cf. 1 Cor. 4:18-19; 16:2-7). It was during this time the letter to the Romans was penned.⁷ Achaia’s contribution had been completed (Rom. 15:26; cf. 2 Cor. 8:10-11; 9:2, 5), Paul was staying with Gaius and mentions Erastus (Rom. 16:23; cf. 1 Cor. 1:14; 2 Tim. 4:20), he commends Phoebe from Corinth’s SE seaport, Cenchrea (Rom. 16:1; cf. Acts 18:18), and present with him were Timothy and Sopater (Rom. 16:23), who accompanied him on his way to Jerusalem (Acts 20:4).

Textual Issues

Manuscript evidence suggests that a fourteen-chapter form of Romans existed in the early church.⁸ However, this does not mean that chapters 15 and 16 were not original and were therefore added sometime later. The heretic Marcion (ca. 85-160) cut out the last two chapters in his abbreviated NT canon, allowing for the production of defective manuscripts thereafter. The best textual evidence leads to the confident conclusion that the original text of Romans consisted of all sixteen chapters.⁹

The doxology (16:25-27) is missing from some manuscripts and occurs at different places in others. The uncertainty of the placement of this passage is probably related to the defective manuscripts noted above. There is no substantial reason to doubt that 16:25-27 was Paul’s own conclusion to the letter.

The Western text omits the grace benediction in 16:20 and has an almost identical formula in v. 24, although the earliest and what many regard as the best witnesses omit v. 24 (cf. ASV, ESV). The omission of ἐν Ῥώμῃ (“in Rome”) at 1:7 and 15 also has scant manuscript support.

--Kevin L. Moore

Endnotes:

¹ “The reason in this case may have been that this scribe had a particular relationship with the addressees and recorded his name as a greeting. In other cases, this was not necessary. To mention a secretary by name was not customary unless there existed some legal matter which demanded such procedure” (A. Roon, Authenticity 92). Consider also 1 Pet. 5:12, another specific reference to a secretarial assistant at the conclusion of a letter. It is interesting that Tertius is named at the end of a letter that has no co-sender, whereas all of Paul’s apparent allusions to secretarial assistance (1 Cor. 16:21; Gal. 6:11; Col. 4:18; 2 Thess. 3:17; Philem. 19) appear in letters with other persons mentioned with him at the beginning (perhaps indicating a greater compositional role of the co-senders).

² See E. E. Ellis, Paul’s Use of the OT 150-85; C. G. Kruse, “Paul’s Use of Scripture in Romans,” in Paul and Scripture 10:77-92. “The Roman congregation was at home in the Old Testament Scriptures from the synagogue and from Christian worship. They were instructed in the traditions of their faith by Jewish-Christian missionaries” (P. Stuhlmacher, “Apostle Paul’s View of Righteousness” 83).

³ Textual variation notwithstanding, of the approx. 548 occurrences of θεός in the entire Pauline corpus, the word “God” appears in Romans 158 times in the NASB, compared to 102 in 1 Corinthians and 75 in 2 Corinthians. Paul wrote these letters in environments that were heavily polytheistic. This does not count the numerous other grammatical allusions to God, such as personal pronouns, participial constructions, various titles, and divine passive verbs. Of all the divine designations used by the apostle, the greatest number and variety are in Romans (see W. Y. Au, Paul’s Designations of God in Romans 17-248).

⁴ J. B. Lightfoot, Epistles of Paul: Galatians 45-49; F. F. Bruce, Romans 30.

⁵ F. F. Bruce, Romans 23; Q. McGhee, V. Johnson, et al., Romans and Galatians: The Gospel According to Paul 1-316; B. Utley, The Gospel According to Paul: Romans1-300.

⁶ “Romans is too carefully worded and its arguments too sophisticated to cause us to think that Paul had anything but a very direct involvement in shaping both the content and expression of the epistle” (Scott W. Hahn, Romans xvi).

⁷ Alternative proposals include 47 (C. H. Buck and G. Taylor, Saint Paul 170-71), 51/52 or 54/55 (G. Luedemann, Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles 263), 52-54 (J. R. Richards, “Romans and 1 Corinthians” 14-30), 55 from Thessalonica (A. Suhl, Paulus and seine Briefe 264-82), early 57 (F. F. Bruce, Romans 13-14), 58 (H. C. G. Moule, Romans 1), and 59 (C. H. Dodd, Romans xxvi); thus, most scholars understand that some leeway should be allowed (see D. J. Moo, Romans 3).

⁸ This is speaking accommodatively, since chapter divisions were not in place until Stephen Langton (ca. 1150-1228) and the printed Bible of John Wycliffe in 1382.

⁹ See J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans 55-65; D. A. Carson and D. J. Moo, An Introduction to the NT 400-401; D. Guthrie, NT Introduction 421-22; R. Jewett, Romans 7.