Paul sends greetings to the Roman church from a remarkably long list of contacts. One is Erastos, whom he describes as a high-ranking official -- the oikonomos of Corinth. Translators struggle with the term, usually coming up with something like "city treasurer", but the Greek word literally mans "Law of the Household". This may well of been a semi-obsolescent term in Paul's time -- we use an equally odd and rather similar term "Speaker of the House" -- but it has survived to this day as the word "economist". An inscription excavated in Corinth confirms the existence of Erastos, and describes him as the "aedile".

Once again, Paul quotes scripture out of context, using a despairing Psalm by David to make a point about Jesus. The verse does not make his point in context, strengthening our suspicion that Paul traveled with something like a booklet of useful quotations, rather than complete set of Jewish writings such as the Septuagint.

Paul is eager to journey to Jerusalem to hand over the collection for the poor, and then use Rome as a staging post on his way to Spain. Things turned out very differently, attacked by the Jerusalem church itself, by orthodox Jews in the courts of the temple, and arrested by a Roman snatch team, he found himself entering Rome at last, but under military escort, with little prospect of reaching Spain, though early church fathers such as Clement maintained a tradition that Paul survived his trial and eventually took the Word to the Western limits of the Empire.

41 (Claudius Emperor) Agrippa King of Judaea   
42     
43     
44  "Agrippa dies
Fadus Procurator"   
45     
46  Tiberius Alexander Procurator   
47     
48  Cumanus procurator   
49     
50  Agrippa II Tetrarch   
51     
52  Felix Procurator   
53    3rd Missionary journey begins 
54 Nero Emperor   Paul in Ephesus 
55     
56     
57    Paul leaves Ephesus Romans
58     
59    Paul in Jerusalem        Paul in Caesarea 
60  Festus Procurator   
61     
62    Paul arrives in Rome 
63  Albinus Procurator  Death of James 
64     
65     
66     
67     
68 "Galba Vitellius Otho
Vespasian"    
69     
70  Fall of Jerusalem   

Paul emphasises the requirement that Christians obey the secular authorities. This is a little surprising, since it was presumably written at a time when resistance to Roman rule in Judaea was increasing. For that matter the civil authority that Paul cites is that of the Emperor Nero. We also discussed the possible response to this chapter from figures like George Washington and Oliver Cromwell.

Were there Jews who were vegetarians? It seems unlikely, yet Paul discusses the Christian attitudes to vegetarianism. Some claim that this is a translation problem, and Paul is actually discussing whether Christians should eat non-kosher meat.

Chapter 11 closes Paul's long discussion of the roles of Jewish and Gentile Christians, comparing Gentile Christians with a new olive branch grafted onto the old tree of Judaism. All Israel would eventually be saved.

We looked at some translation issues in Romans 11 -- the good News Bible appeared to add extra explanation by appending the words "the false god" to the word "Baal", though the original Greek does not support this. The imagery of the "table" that as a "snare" and a "trap" was lost in this translation, though it was the only translation to hand that noted that Paul's concept of "hospitality" may well have been wider than the idea of entertaining fellow-Christians.

It has been suggested that the New Testament is good theology but poor farming -- the parable of the Sower -- in which the sower recklessly misuses priceless see corn -- has been thought of as a parable that would amuse an agricultural audience, whicle explaining the complex theology that the response to the Word depends on the listener. Paul appears to have the theory of grafting backwards; usually one grafts a new branch onto an less advanced tree, whereas Paul's image does the opposite when explaining how Christianity will be a "wild branch" grafted onto the rich tree of Judaism.

 

 

 

 

Romans 7-8  January 4, 2009

 

 

Paul continued his line of complex reasoning, developing the thought that he might be controlled by sin, so that he did not do what he wanted, but what sin wanted.  Some of the class compared this to the role of the Devil in some of Luther’s writings, others to Flip Wilson’s famous line “The Devil made me do it”.

 

We looked briefly at how Paul describes the Devil as “Lord of this World”, and discussed how this might answer the question “Why does God let bad things happen to good people”.  Paul, indeed, does not expect Christians to have a comfortable life, but warns them to expect suffering.

 

Paul describes how the Law could suggest sinful actions, and thus be counter-productive.  Paul suggests that Jesus can be the solution to these dilemmas, and concludes chapter 8 with the famous statement “I am persuaded that neither death not life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, no any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord."

 

A discussion we had on whether any scripture was written by women is posted separately.

 

We made a little headway with the heavy-duty theology of Romans 5-6, looking at Paul's development of his thesis that as creation had begun, and been corrupted by one man, Adam, so it would be restored by one man, Jesus.  In Romans, Paul talks of Christians participating in Jesus' death, with resurrection as a future event.  In Colossians, he talks of Christians already participating in Jesus' resurrection.  Some scholars (e.g. Ehrmann) take this as evidence that Colossians was not written by Paul, but the class was more open to the idea of a preacher developing his ideas, or for that matter, using different analogies and explanations of complex concepts.

We talked a little of the paucity of archeological evidence for Paul, and, for that matter, Jesus, and wondered if current excavations in, say, Capernaum, might in the future provide some documentary evidence.

Some of us can remember when executives had secretaries to whom they could dictate letters.  Usually, this worked well, but occasionally things could go wrong, as when the executive digressed into conversation, which the secretary included as part of the letter, or when the secretary, at the executive's request, included a well-used paragraph, but without making a clear transition.

 

Possibly we see some such phenomena in the epistles, as in chapter 2, when Paul goes into a long digression about the activities of some sinners, which does not further his argument, or later, when a dissertation on civil authority seems to have little to do with the particular problems of the church in Rome.

 

In Chapters 3 and 4, Paul recovers from his digression, and again puts forward his hypothesis that Christian Gentiles were "children of Abraham" -- the idea that we saw earlier in I Corinthians.  This time, however, Jews are not excluded, and a two-track theory is proposed "the circumcised shall be justified by faith and the uncircumcised by faith".   What then is the advantage of being a Jew?  Well......

 

Paul has been accused of many things, and he repeats some of the accusations.  Was he preaching the idea, that since forgiveness of sins involved the grace of God, we should sin more so that grace might abound?  This is the heresy of antinomianism, and is, in fact not confined to Christianity.  Paul strongly repudiates the idea.

 

To buttress his case, Paul uses long excerpts from Scripture.  On examination, they turn out to be a collection of somewhat out-of-context verses, taken from the Septuagint translation of several Psalms and a couple of sections of Isaiah.  One wonders what literature Paul carried with him, and it is tempting to believe that he carried "Verse of The Day" selections, particularly for the use of his Gentile converts, who might find wading through the whole of the Law and the Prophets rather heavy going, even if they had access to them.