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Because Romans is the first Pauline letter in our NT canon, I begin with an introduction that may shed some light on the letters in general, although it is designed with Romans particularly in mind.

Reading Letters

In the past, some scholars made much of the difference between “letters” and “epistles,” placing Paul’s in the former category to show their proximity to most surviving ancient letters (from Egyptian papyri) rather than literary letters. While Paul did not belong to the elite circles of leisured letter writers like Cicero or Pliny, he did not simply compose his major letters, like Romans, off the top of his head. Given the time necessary to take normal dictation in antiquity (shorthand being unavailable), Paul may have taken over eleven hours to dictate this letter to Tertius, its scribe (Rom 16:22).1 Since such a major undertaking probably involved more than one draft (and Paul could draw on his preaching experience), the final draft may have taken less than this estimate, but the total time invested in the letter was probably greater. Given the cost of papyrus and of the labor required (though Tertius, a believer, might have donated his services), one scholar estimates the cost of Romans at 20.68 denarii, which he calculates as roughly $2275 in recent US currency.2 In other words, Paul did not simply offer this project as an afterthought; Romans is a carefully premeditated work.

As we shall note below, Romans is no ordinary letter; it is a sophisticated argument. The average ancient papyrus letter was 87 words; the orator Cicero was more long-winded, averaging 295 words (with as many as 2530 words); and the philosopher Seneca averaged 995 words (with as many as 4134). The extant letters attributed to Paul average 2495 words, while Romans, his longest, has 7114 words.3 Because ancient urban argumentation typically involved rhetoric, we shall explore possible connections with rhetoric below.

One characteristic of letters that is surely relevant here is that authors expected the specified audience of their letters to understand them. Whether authors always communicated adequately or readers always understood adequately is another question, but most authors at least tried to communicate so as to be clearly understood. Paul thus writes to his audience in Greek. (Greek was the first language of many non-Italians in Rome, including the majority of Jews and of Christian ministers who had come from the east; only in the second century is it clear that many lower-class, Latin-speaking Romans joined the church.) Paul also apparently writes with what he assumes will be shared cultural assumptions regarding language and concepts that he uses without detailed explanation. Informing ourselves about these shared cultural assumptions will help us understand his language; this objective is one of the primary purposes of this commentary (like many others). Better understanding the local situation in Rome does not mean that Paul would expect the principles he articulates there to be applicable there only; he does, after all, apply many of the same principles to other situations in other congregations. But noting these situations will help us better understand his argument and better identify the principles he is applying.

Paul and Rhetoric

Scholars today often read Paul’s letters in light of ancient rhetoric, a mostly positive development. Although some scholars have carried rhetorical analysis too far, as we shall observe, the development is mostly positive because ancient rhetoric offers a much more concrete basis for analyzing Paul’s arguments than modern guesses would.

Two forms of advanced education existed in the Greco-Roman world: philosophy and rhetoric. The former concerned itself especially with truth and reality, and the latter with communication and persuasion. Despite traditional, stereotypical hostility between the two disciplines, most educated people recognized the value in and made use of both. Nevertheless, rhetoric was the dominant discipline, being considered more practical for public life (politics, speeches in the courts, and so forth). Although only a small minority of people had advanced training of any kind, rhetoric pervaded society and shaped the way urban people thought and argued. Not only could passersby listen to speakers practicing in the marketplace, but oratory dominated civic assemblies and was even the subject of some public competitions.

Because such oratorical training became even more dominant in the second century, church fathers often read Paul in light of rhetoric, and Renaissance and Reformation interpreters like Melanchthon continued this practice. By the higher rhetorical standards of the second century, Paul was not an expert rhetorician, but he probably fared better by the standards of his era. Despite objections to his delivery (cf. 1 Cor 2:3; 2 Cor 10:10; 11:6), Paul’s letters include numerous rhetorical devices that would have been familiar to his contemporaries. In fact, Paul might have overcompensated to silence his critics; rhetoricians (such as Cicero) tended to limit rhetorical devices in letters, which were intended to be more like conversation than public speech.

Where scholars have overplayed rhetoric is in seeking to structure Paul’s letters as if they were speeches. Rhetorical handbooks in this period do not address letters, but when they later do, they do not treat them like speeches. Most genuine speeches do not fit the precise outlines we find in rhetorical handbooks, and we should expect such outlines to prove even less relevant to letters. They do not even fit the letters of rhetorically sophisticated letter writers like Cicero, Pliny, or Fronto.

Nevertheless, Paul’s extant letters are not normal letters (though they are comparable in some ways to some letter-essays, e.g., by Seneca).4 While Paul often includes conversational elements, many of his letters include substantial argumentation—which was characteristically the domain of rhetoric rather than of letters. While rhetoric may rarely provide us detailed outlines for his letters, therefore, it does provide abundant insights into how Paul argues his case.5

Scholars differ as to whether Paul had any rhetorical training or simply absorbed practices dominant in his environment.6 Certainly Paul did not have advanced (tertiary) training in a Greek rhetorical school with the goal of becoming a Greek orator; orators exhibited their skills by lavishly citing classical Greek texts, which appear in Paul only very rarely. By contrast, many of Paul’s letters (notably including Romans) lavishly display the Jewish Scriptures, typically in the forms dominant in the Greek Diaspora. Paul’s display of biblical knowledge suggests the combination of a brilliant mind with the best of training in the Scriptures, probably in the ancient world’s best center for such training, namely Jerusalem. If Paul, presumably from a well-off family who could afford such training, studied with Gamaliel in Greek (as suggested in Acts 22:3; cf. t. Sotah 15:8), he probably also had some additional training in delivering sermons in acceptable Greek style. Today’s equivalent might be advanced study in Bible with a few homiletics courses. If so, Paul masterfully developed the basic skills he received at this level of training.

If Paul used Greek techniques because they were a part of the milieu in which he and Diaspora Judaism (and to a somewhat reduced extent, Palestinian Judaism) moved, Paul’s more specifically “Jewish” context informs what he would have viewed as the core of his cultural identity (cf. Rom 9:1–5; 11:1).

Paul, Judaism, and the Law

When we speak of Paul and “Judaism,” we are usually thinking in anachronistic terms. Paul, like most of the earliest Christian movement even in the Diaspora, was Jewish. Modern Western readers distinguish “Judaism” and “Christianity” as distinct religions, but the Christian movement, as it came to be called, viewed itself as carrying on the biblical faith of patriarchs and prophets in view of end-time fulfillment in Christ, demonstrated by the eschatological gift of the Spirit.

As scholars today emphasize, first-century Judaism was itself highly diverse; some even speak of “Judaisms” (though emphasizing the wide variation in Jewish practice should make the point sufficiently). Its rabbinic form (which evolved into traditional Orthodox Judaism as we know it today) evolved from Pharisaism, but that evolution postdates Paul’s ministry. Paul’s faith is, in a sense, an earlier development of Pharisaism (albeit a minority one) than rabbinic Judaism is, as some Jewish scholars have recently pointed out. Jews as a people affirmed circumcision, the temple, the Torah, and other traits (many of these, like distinctive food customs, highlighted over the previous two centuries as costly marks of distinctive Jewish identity). Yet some (more often in the Holy Land) expected the imminent end of the age, whereas others denied it. The degree of Jewish Diaspora assimilation to the surrounding culture varied from one place to another and according to the attitudes of their host cultures.7 Views about messianic figures varied more widely than we have space to narrate here. Paul has been compared to apocalyptic, mystic, and Pharisaic streams of Judaism, among others.

E. P. Sanders on “the Law”

The dominant current arguments surrounding Paul’s relationship with his Jewish context most relevant to Romans, however, involve his own approach to the law versus that of his contemporaries. Views of Paul’s relationship to what we call Judaism have varied widely over the centuries, from Marcion’s proto-gnostic Paul (who rejected anything Jewish) to W. D. Davies’ Paul (who was a Pharisee who believed that the messianic era had dawned). Most scholars today would agree more with Davies than Marcion, but some aspects of Paul’s relation to Judaism—and the character of ancient Judaism—remain debated.

E. P. Sanders’s work Paul and Palestinian Judaism, published in 1977, shook New Testament scholarship in general and Pauline studies in particular. Many New Testament scholars (particularly in the German scholarly tradition—at least according to Anglophone scholars), depicted Judaism as legalistic and seeking to be justified by works. (This grid for reading the sources persisted from debates at the time of the Reformation.) Scholars of Judaism had long challenged the sufficiency of such a paradigm (which pervaded works like Strack-Billerbeck’s widely-used rabbinic commentary on the New Testament),8 but it was Sanders’s forceful polemic that shook the old paradigm. He argued that nearly all of ancient Judaism affirmed that Israelites as a whole were graciously chosen as part of the covenant, and remained members of the covenant unless cutting themselves off through apostasy. Judaism was thus a religion of grace, and works confirmed rather than earned a place in the covenant.

One complication of revisiting ancient Judaism’s approach to works and grace is that one must then revisit Paul’s approach to the views of his contemporaries on these matters. Paul does in fact sound like he regards his contemporaries’ approach as based on human effort rather than grace, so New Testament scholars set out to reinterpret Paul based on this new interpretation of ancient Judaism. Many found Sanders’s reconstruction of ancient Judaism more plausible than his interpretation of Paul, but James D. G. Dunn, Hans Hübner, Heikki Räisänen, Francis Watson, N. T. Wright, and others also offered new readings of Paul in his Jewish setting.9 Some of these new interpretations became known as the “New Perspective,” but the new perspectives are in fact so diverse on various points of detail that the main characteristic of their newness is that they reject the older caricature of Judaism.

While Sanders’s challenge to caricatures of Judaism proved to be an important watershed, many of the details of his approach have come under increasing challenge. Sanders’s primary thesis, the prevalence of grace in Judaism (and perhaps especially rabbinic Judaism, where it was often least appreciated), won the day, and there is little likelihood, barring a nuclear holocaust or other cataclysmic event that wipes out the current generation of scholars and our work, that the bulk of nt scholarship will backtrack on that point. Yet scholars have increasingly noticed that another side of the picture, “works righteousness,” remains in the Jewish sources. A number of scholars argue that Sanders’s way of framing the questions (in response to more traditional ways of framing them) and arranging the data downplayed the sources’ emphasis on earning merit or even eschatological salvation.10

Synthesizing Various Factors

Part of the debate depends on the meaning of “legalism” and “works righteousness.” Thus, Sanders would point out that the nt sources themselves often speak of reward and even eternal salvation on the basis of works, yet in the larger context of God’s covenant grace. With some critics, one helpful approach to the varied evidence of Jewish sources is to recognize that diverse approaches existed, a variety that many teachers never sought to harmonize and Judaism as a whole certainly could not harmonize. It is indeed hard to imagine otherwise. For example, despite the heavy teaching on grace in the New Testament, many Christians today are what other Christians would consider “legalistic.”11 Ancient Judaism surely included its share of this sort of “legalism,” too, whatever the approach of those who most emphasized grace. (We did, after all, open this section by affirming the diversity of ancient Judaism in many other respects.)

Aside from this question, we should also allow for some other factors when hearing Paul. First, Paul is ready to use reductio ad absurdum where necessary (cf. e.g., Rom 2:17–24); ancient polemic could focus on a weakness in an opposing position that its supporters might not regard as fundamental to or characteristic of the position. Moreover, the center of Paul’s argument is not simply any gracious act, but God’s grace specifically in Christ, which was for Paul (and for other Christians) the climax of salvific history. This specific understanding of grace informs the distinction of his position from that of contemporaries who rejected his understanding of Christ. Finally, Paul is often addressing not Judaism as a whole, but (especially in Galatians) the demands of some fellow Jewish Christians who sought to accommodate the strictest Jewish expectations for full converts to Judaism. It was the status of Gentile converts that generated the conflict most starkly (hence the increased prominence of righteousness by faith in letters addressing Gentile believers’ relation to Judaism).12

Thus, most Jews welcomed Gentile interest in Judaism and even affirmed the future “salvation” of monotheistic, sexually pure Gentiles, yet believed that sharing in Israel’s covenant required circumcision and acceptance of the law, including those parts specific to Israel. Jews could keep the law as a natural part of their culture regardless of the question of salvation. By contrast, for Gentiles to keep it as a condition for belonging to the covenant, and still more (on some particularly strict views) for salvation,13 was to demand new “works” as a condition for inclusion rather than simply a sign of inner transformation. (One might compare Western missionaries one or two centuries ago obligating new believers in some parts of the world to adopt Western names and dress to confirm their conversion to Christianity.) Although ethnically distinctive markers in the law are not the only ones Paul addresses (his language is too broad for that), these are the features that provoked the most complaint in Rome and that seem a central problem in the practical relation of Roman believers addressed in Romans 14.

For Paul, to insist on maintaining literally all the distinctives mandated specifically for ancient Israel was to ignore the climax of salvation history, what God had accomplished in Christ. He treated outward circumcision as secondary to the spiritual covenant commitment it signified, and insisted that the new covenant in the heart obviated the details of the earlier covenant that merely prepared the way for it. From Paul’s perspective, this was simply following his own biblical Jewish faith to its logical conclusion, in light of the coming of Christ and the Spirit. Many of his contemporaries understandably disagreed, and their debates (albeit usually from the Pauline side) surface repeatedly in the nt texts.

Paul, Judaism, and Rhetoric

Our problems reconciling what we know of ancient Judaism with Paul’s arguments stem not only from the diversity of ancient Judaism but from our unfamiliarity with ancient rhetoric. Polemic regularly caricatured opponents, sometimes using hyperbole to reduce their position to the absurd (see e.g., Matt 23:24). An ancient audience could recognize and appreciate such strategies (except when recycling the language polemically themselves).

Most scholars today recognize that Paul sometimes employs ad hoc arguments (e.g., in 1 Cor 11:3–16).14 Some such arguments appear in Romans, where, for example, his caricature of a distinctly unreliable Jewish teacher (2:17–24) and his recycling of several more general texts to regard all Jews as sinful (the Psalm texts in 3:10–20) would not actually condemn every individual Jewish person. To notice this apparent anomaly is not to suggest that Paul would have relinquished his view that all people were sinners (a view that most Jews shared anyway), but to suggest that if had he written for a modern audience he sometimes would have used a different style of argumentation. His rhetoric, no less than his use of Greek language, is constructed to appeal specifically within a particular cultural setting. Such polemical rhetoric was expected and necessary for successful debate in Paul’s day. Indeed, Paul fashions his polemic in such a way that even his detractors would have been forced to condemn the figure he caricatures. Today we can learn from Paul’s message while aesthetically appreciating his plethora of figures of speech and rhetorical devices that displayed his brilliance while holding his original audience’s attention.

Some of Paul’s arguments reflect earlier Christian tradition, and some may have generated such tradition. For example, the polemic regarding true children of Abraham (4:11–17; cf. 9:6–13) reflects a debate already found in the early Palestinian gospel tradition (Matt 3:9/Luke 3:8; cf. John 8:39–41). Likewise, Paul’s treatment of faith and works (here or more generally) seems to have been caricatured (either to exploit it or to denigrate it; cf. 3:8), inviting a rejoinder to that caricature in Jas 2:18–24.15

The Setting of the Church in Rome

Even letter-essays sometimes addressed the receiver’s situation or interests (e.g., the need for consolation), and other sorts of letters did so even more regularly. Ancient orators and writers tried to be sensitive to the settings they were addressing, and (contrary to what some scholars argue in the case of Romans) Paul is no exception. Paul writes this letter from Corinth (cf. Rom 16:1; Acts 20:2–3), a colony closely tied with Rome (e.g., merchants regularly traveled between them). Given the list of people Paul knew in Rome (see Rom 16:3–15), he was undoubtedly well-informed about issues there. This does not mean that Paul lacks interest in larger principles (he does in fact work from a larger argument that resembles some of his preaching elsewhere); rather, he brings those principles to bear pastorally on a local situation.

Jews in Rome16

Estimates of Rome’s Jewish population tend to run between about twenty thousand and fifty thousand; such estimates are at best educated guesses, but they probably suggest the right order of magnitude.17 Estimates of Rome’s population also vary, from perhaps a quarter of a million (extrapolated from water supplies) to over a million for its metropolitan area (extrapolated, in my opinion more reliably, from concrete census figures from ancient historians).18 It is at any rate clear that the Jewish community was a small minority, though significant among the Greek-speaking minority immigrant populations from the eastern Roman Empire.

Jewish people lived together in several suburbs of the city, generally in mostly ethnically segregated neighborhoods. The majority remained in their original area, Transtiberinum (what is today Trastevere), across the Tiber from the city’s center. Archaeology indicates that most Jews there were poor; many probably worked at the Tiber’s docks.19 Nevertheless, there were well-to-do members. We know the names of three to five Roman synagogues from this period, which appear to have been connected only loosely, since Rome did not allow any unifying leadership as, e.g., in Alexandria. Archaeological evidence suggests that many had settled from various parts of the Diaspora and were thus fairly diverse. This loose structure may have helped facilitate the free spread of the message about Jesus in some of the synagogues.

Over half of Rome’s Jews have Latin names.20 A large number probably descended from Jewish slaves originally brought to Rome by Pompey over a century earlier, then bought and freed by Jews already living in Rome (Philo Embassy 155). Although many remained predominantly Greek speaking even by this period (over three quarters of their inscriptions are in Greek, and not quite a quarter are in Latin),21 many were Roman citizens (Philo Embassy 155). When Roman citizens freed their slaves under particular conditions, those freed became Roman citizens; Paul himself may have descended from Jewish slaves freed in Rome (cf. Acts 6:9; 16:37; 22:28). Certain features made this community ripe for the spread of the message about Jesus: they were apparently open to the dominant culture, providing tolerance for new ideas, while their distinctive ethnic status also connected them with other Judeans who followed Jesus.

Nevertheless, Jews often faced prejudice from the larger Roman society.22 Rome was tolerant of many cultures in its empire, but many Romans guarded more jealously their own city’s traditions, and particularly resented Jewish success at winning converts and sympathizers (especially among Roman matrons). Roman sources explicitly condemn Jews for circumcision (cf. Rom 2:25–29; 4:9–12), which they viewed as a form of mutilation; the Sabbath (cf. Rom 14:5-6), which they viewed as an excuse for laziness (in contrast to Roman market days); and their food customs (cf. Rom 14:2–23). Under extreme circumstances, the Jewish community could even face banishment from Rome (see discussion below).

Jewish and Gentile Elements in the Church

The church’s origins in Rome probably stemmed from Jewish believers there (cf. Acts 2:10),23 but clearly it spread beyond them. Paul’s audience was “among the Gentiles” (Rom 1:5); they were least partly Gentile (11:13) and probably mostly Gentile (1:13; cf. 16:4). Many contend that Jewish believers and God-fearing Gentiles24 remained in the synagogues in Rome for some time, explaining why Paul can presuppose so much knowledge of Scripture and Jewish perspective in the letter (cf. 7:1). At some point in the 40s CE the Jewish community in Rome was apparently divided over questions of the identity of the Messiah, probably Jesus. As a result, the emperor Claudius followed the precedent of the earlier emperor Tiberius and banished the Jews from Rome (cf. the garbled account in Suetonius Claud. 25.4). Given the context in our sources, this may have happened in about the year 49 CE.

Scholars debate whether the entire Jewish community actually left; it would be difficult to reclaim property, hence difficult to imagine generations of Jewish occupation coming to a complete end, then resuming their lives in Rome after Claudius’s edict was repealed (on his death in 54 CE). Certainly the many Jews who were Roman citizens would not have been expelled. Nevertheless, Luke, like Suetonius, speaks of Jews being expelled (Acts 18:2, though prudently omitting the cause). Whether all were expelled (and whether all who were officially expelled actually left), at least those visible in the original conflict must have left. Luke indicates that Priscilla and Aquila, Jews in Rome who were apparently already believers (and possibly church leaders) when Paul met them, had left. It is likely that a substantial number of Jewish Christians, and perhaps all their leaders, left Rome at this point. This means that Gentile Christians had probably constituted the bulk of the Roman church and its leadership for at least five years, and may represent a number of the house churches greeted in Romans 16. (Those with Jewish leaders, as in 16:5, 7, may have organized after many Jews returned.)

Given the different cultural orientation of congregations in the same city, probably at least as loosely connected as the different synagogues, it is not surprising that misunderstandings would arise between groups with a predominantly Jewish ethos. Some Gentiles (especially former adherents of the synagogue) may have held the “Jewish” position, and some especially culturally sensitive Jews (probably including Aquila and Priscilla) may not have insisted on Gentiles observing the whole law, but at least two basic “sides” seem to have existed nonetheless.

Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s Letter

Committed to building up the believers in Rome (Rom 1:11), Paul naturally targets a key issue among them. His letter addresses the relationship between Jewish and Gentile believers (1:16; 2:9-10; 3:9; 9:24; 10:12).25 In Romans 1–3, he establishes everyone’s equal need before God: not only Gentiles (1:18–32) but also Jews (2:1—3:20) are damned. He shows how the law itself need not make Jews better than Gentiles (e.g., 2:14). He shows how the law itself establishes righteousness by faith (3:21, 27, 31), focusing on the example of Abraham (ch. 4). Against Jewish dependence on their corporate chosenness in Abraham, Paul shows that it is those who are of faith who are Abraham’s spiritual heirs (4:11–16), and reminds those inclined to depend on genetic ancestry that all are descended from Adam (5:12–21). The way of faith makes people more righteous, not less (6:1—8:13). Possessing the law does not make Jewish people righteous (ch. 7), and all believers share in a new experience of redemption akin to the promised new exodus (ch. 8). Jewish people believed that they were chosen in Abraham, but Paul shows that God’s sovereignty means that chosenness for salvation need not rest on ethnicity (ch. 9, especially vv. 6–13).

Having established that Gentiles and those who do not observe ancient Israel’s law need not view themselves as inferior, he quickly challenges their inclination to view themselves as superior. God has not abandoned his plan for the Jewish people, and uses Gentile converts as part of that plan; they must not look down on Jewish people who do not follow Jesus (ch. 11). Believers must serve one another (12:1–13) and love one another (the heart of the law, 13:8–10). Those not attached to kosher laws must stop looking down on believers who keep them (14:1—15:7). Framing his concern with division over food and holy days in 14:1–23, he calls believers to welcome one another (14:1–2; 15:7), then biblically grounds his exhortation to Jews and Gentiles uniting for God (15:8–12). Paul offers both Jesus (15:7–12) and himself (15:16–29) as examples of Jews who ministered to Gentiles, and speaks of Gentile believers’ extraordinary debt to Jewish believers (15:26–27). His likely final closing exhortation warns against those who cause division (16:17).

The Roman situation invited Paul to articulate the sort of message he often preached that was relevant for Jew and Gentile alike (1:16; 10:12), and hence invited unity in Christ’s church.26 (Paul’s own setting suggests that such implications were on his mind for additional reasons; see 15:25–27, 31.) In practical terms (highlighted in ch. 14), such unity would require a common understanding of the law that provided obedience to its spirit without constraining Gentiles to adopt its Israelite-specific details (cf. 2:14, 29; 3:27, 31; 8:2–4; 13:8–10).

Indeed, Paul clinches this point toward the conclusion of his argument in the letter body. After using Scripture to argue his case throughout the body of the letter, he concludes that Scripture was meant to sustain hope through “endurance” (nrsv “steadfastness”) and “encouragement” (15:4). Based on what he has sought to provide them from Scripture, Paul prays that God will give them the same mind toward one another (15:5). That is, Paul’s exhortations from Scripture throughout this letter have been to bring them to unity.

An inductive reading of the situation that Romans seems to address thus fits well with what we independently know of the situation. Modern scholars are not the first to notice this situation; Origen, for example, recalls that Priscilla and Aquila left due to the decree and presumably returned in its aftermath,27 and explicitly recognizes that in this letter Paul arbitrates between Jewish and Gentile believers.28 Later, when Paul visits Rome, believers do welcome him, probably without being divided in factions (we cannot be sure whether the two delegations in Acts 28:15 reflect different house churches or perhaps simply different work schedules). So far as one might gather from our limited reports of Nero’s persecution (from a decade after Jewish believers returned and perhaps six years after Paul composed this letter), Christians may have been at that time united as a movement.29 The church must have been massive by that point; Nero seems to have killed hundreds (or possibly thousands) of suspected Christians (Tacitus Ann. 15.44), yet the church continued to flourish after his death a few years later.

Because Roman historians concentrated on Rome, their information provides us more of an external framework for understanding this church’s situation than we have for most of Paul’s letters. Depending on one’s chronology of later events in Paul’s life, Paul writes between 55 and 58 CE (I incline toward the latter end of that spectrum)—hence one to four years after some of the Jewish believers expelled from Rome have begun to return and six to nine years before Nero began slaughtering Christians.

Other possible reasons for Paul writing Romans, not inherently incompatible with this one, include building a relationship with this Christian community that will provide the base for his planned mission to Roman Spain (15:24, 28; emphasized, e.g., by Jewett). Paul’s failure to visit them already is due to the very urgency of his mission to the unreached (15:20–22), which will compel him to move beyond them to the west (15:23–24; cf. 1:13–14). Nevertheless, his Spanish mission and his collection from Diaspora churches both relate to his ministry of building a church that brings together Jew and Gentile, examples relevant to the Roman church.

Paul certainly also summarizes his gospel, as many scholars point out; nevertheless, as we have noted above, he is not simply giving a random audience a random overview of it. It has practical implications for their situation, and the fact that half of the explicit biblical citations found in all his writings appear in this one letter suggests that this presentation of the gospel is directed toward a situation concerned with the status of Gentile believers vis-à-vis the law (likely a major point of division in a conflict between Jewish and Gentile factions).

Romans and Pauline Theology

Whereas Paul’s rhetoric in addressing the law is combative and hyperbolic in Galatians, it seems more nuanced in Romans, where he writes to persuade rather than to rebuke. (Both kinds of letter and rhetoric are known in antiquity, and Paul shows skill in writing in both styles where necessary.) He addresses a setting less polemical than in Galatians (although he is still ready to address opponents on the issue polemically in Philippians [3:2, 18–19], which in my view was written after Romans). Paul may have critics in Rome (perhaps those mentioned in 3:8), but it seems less likely that he has actual opponents (unlike he did in Galatia), despite those he denounces in 16:17–18. Here he deploys some arguments familiar to us from the earlier letter, while he avoids leaving misimpressions on the many believers in Rome who (in contrast to those in Galatia) lack fuller acquaintance with his teaching. Still, even in Romans Paul can presuppose familiarity with common early Christian teaching, explanations if necessary by colleagues who know him (such as Priscilla and Aquila), and more detailed explanations from the letter bearer, Phoebe.

While the situation calls for a particular articulation of Paul’s message that is characteristic of Romans, as opposed to, say, First or Second Corinthians, its theme does reflect a broadly characteristic Pauline emphasis. The letter’s central theme is the gospel that is the same for Jew and Gentile alike, a gospel emphasizing dependence on God’s initiative rather than weak human power (1:16–17). In Romans, Paul argues that Jews cannot boast that their law keeping or election makes them superior to Gentile believers; God produces true righteousness not by ethnic identity or human observance of regulations, but by the transformed life of a new humanity empowered directly by him.

Scholars have sometimes been divided between those who think that Paul addresses a universal human problem and those who think he addresses a specific local one, but this dichotomy is unnecessary. Although Paul focuses much attention specifically on the law because of the Jewish-Gentile issue in Rome, the rest of his theology makes clear that the fundamental principle from which he reasons extends far beyond the law. He is clear that the problem is not with the content of the law, but with sin (2:14–16) and the flesh—weak humanity’s inability to reflect God’s righteousness (Rom 7:7–8, 13–14; 8:2–4; Gal 2:21; 3:3; 5:16–21). The new life of Christ and the Spirit should evidence a deeper and more complete righteousness, because God empowers it. Pauline theology involves dependence on God not only for forensic justification, but for new life (e.g., 8:2–17), gifting for ministry to one another (12:3–8), love (13:8–10), and everything else.

Useful Commentaries

A number of useful commentaries exist for English readers, each helpful in its own way. I offer here a mere sample of some of these commentaries below. (I have included here a few works that are not commentaries in the traditional sense, yet cover most of the text of Romans.) I have omitted some older works (though some, like Barrett 1956, Cranfield 1975, and Käsemann 1980, are particularly noteworthy) in order to emphasize more recent ones; I also omit useful and important reference works on Romans (e.g., Donfried 1991; Donfried and Richardson 1998; Haacker 2003; Das 2007). Among commentaries, the present commentary falls within the popular to midrange categories (more so the former, if one skips the notes).

Popular commentaries (or works covering many passages) include Grieb 2002; Hunter 1955; Robinson 1979; and Wright 2004. Midrange works include Byrne 1996; Johnson 2001; Stowers 1994; Stuhlmacher 1994; Talbert 2002; and Tobin 2004. Heavily academic works (all impressive) include Dunn 1988; Fitzmyer 1993; Jewett 2007; Moo 1996; and Schreiner 1998. I also cite some others later in the commentary itself. For a survey of early readings of Romans, see, e.g., Reasoner 2005; Gaca and Welborn 2005; and at greater length and reproducing many relevant texts (from which I have drawn most patristic opinions mentioned in this commentary), Bray 1998; for readings through history more broadly, Greenman and Larsen 2005; also ad loc. in Fitzmyer 1993.

1. Richards 2004: 165.

2. Richards 2004: 169.

3. Anderson 1999: 113, noting that Paul departed from conventional epistolary expectations here (cf. also Malherbe 1977: 16; Demetrius Eloc. 4.228).

4. The comparison is limited; see Elliott 2008: 17.

5. For some recent nuanced discussions of Paul and rhetoric, see e.g., Porter 1997: 561–67, 584–85; Reed 1997: 182–91; Anderson 1999: 114–26, 280–81; Bird 2008; Keener 2008b: 221.

6. For Paul having more training than many suppose, see Hock 2003.

7. For one typology regarding assimilation, accommodation, and acculturation, see Barclay 1995.

8. Earlier scholars with more nuanced views include Moore (1971) and Bonsirven (1964); in Pauline scholarship, Longenecker (1976) also showed analogies in a covenant nomist pattern in Paul’s and other early Jewish thought.

9. See e.g., Räisänen 1983; Hübner 1984; Dunn 1992; Watson 2007.

10. Among other works, see e.g., Gathercole 2002; Thielman 1987, 1994; Talbert 2001; Cairus 2004; Seifrid 1992: 78–135; Quarles 1996; Hagner 1993; Eskola 1998: 28–60; idem 2002; Carson, O’Brien, and Seifrid 2001; esp. Avemarie 1996 (particularly 36–43); see also discussion in Bird 2007. Sanders 2009 has forcefully reiterated and explained what he intended as the primary point of his argument; for the weighty intellectual history of his approach, see Sanders 2008: 18–25.

11. Historically, cf. e.g., Vidler 1974: 279.

12. Many have noted this greater prominence in Romans and Galatians (cf. also Ephesians), especially since Stendahl 1976 (esp. 2–4).

13. In Galatia, Paul’s opponents possibly meant merely the former; if so, Paul prefers a rigorous consistency that identifies membership in the covenant with salvation.

14. See discussion in Keener 1992: 19–69; additional background in idem 2000a.

15. For the point-by-point, sequential comparison, see Dunn 1988: 1:197.

16. See Leon 1960; Lampe 2003a; essays in Donfried and Richardson 1998.

17. See Suetonius Tib. 36; Josephus Ant. 18.84; idem J.W. 2.80.

18. See Clarke 1994: 464–66; Garnsey and Saller 1987: 83; for estimates approaching a million, see Stambaugh 1988: 89; Packer 1967: 87; below a quarter million, Rohrbaugh 1991: 133. For earlier periods, with over one hundred thousand adult citizens (thus not counting children, slaves, and non-citizen residents), see e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 5.20.1; 5.75.3; 6.96.4; 9.15.2; 9.36.3; cf. Plutarch Caesar 55.3; Suetonius Jul. 41. Some estimates are much higher (e.g., Carcopino 1940: 20–21). Ancients could speak either of the area inside the city walls (e.g., Pliny the Elder Nat. 3.5.66) or of larger Rome (idem 3.5.67).

19. Jeffers 1998: 131. In Rome as a whole, rich and poor often lived side by side, the latter especially in crowded tenements, with the poorest tending to live higher up in the sometimes flimsy and flammable structures.

20. Mostly regular Gentile names, including many that recall names of deities (but without polytheistic intent; they likewise used some Roman decorations, but preferred distinctive Jewish symbols like the menorah to major Roman ones). Only about 15 percent have traditional Semitic names.

21. Leon 1960: 76.

22. See e.g., Juvenal Sat. 14.100–104; see especially Gager 1983; Sevenster 1975.

23. So also Ambrosiaster in the fourth century, who believed that the founders expected law observance (Lane 1998: 203). Paul assumes a high degree of biblical literacy and familiarity with Jewish tradition (though cf. also Galatians), and the many travelers to the capital carried new ideas there quickly.

24. Rome’s synagogues had many Godfearers to begin with; proselytism and attraction to Judaism constituted major causes of resentment among traditional Romans against Roman Judaism (see Parkes 1979: 25–26; Gager 1983: 55–56). For proselytes in Rome, see e.g., Leon 1960: 250–56. Nanos (1996) argues that the believers in Rome, who are Gentiles, remain in the synagogues, so that Paul encourages them to honor Jewish concerns.

25. Although views of Romans’ purpose diverge widely (see Donfried 1991), the apparent majority of contemporary scholars (e.g., Wiefel, Sanders, Stendahl, Dunn, Lung-Kwong) rightly recognize that Jewish-Gentile tensions are a factor in Romans. Even if the Roman church was completely Gentile by this period, its relationship to Judaism (as an intrinsic part of its heritage) remains key (cf. discussion in Das 2007). Some think that Jewish antipathy toward Gentile governments in Judea may also affect the situation (cf. Rom 13:1–7); most northern Mediterranean Jews, however, stayed clear of hints of resistance.

26. Because the Jewish-Gentile barrier was one established in Scripture itself, Paul’s emphasis on ethnic unity would have even greater implications for any other ethnic divisions (e.g., Keener 2003c: esp. 208–10); it has also been applied against nationalism (e.g., Schlatter 1995: 31, in the context of rising German nationalism) and ethnocentric imperialism (Jewett cites South African Bishop John William Colenso in 1863).

27. Origen Comm. Rom. on 16:3 (Bray 1998: 370).

28. See Reasoner 2005: xxv, and sources cited there. Other early readers recognized that Paul sought to reconcile discord in the church (Theodoret of Cyr Interp. Rom. on 15:33; Pelagius Comm. Rom. on 15:33; Bray 1998: 368) and that tensions over the law inform the differences between the groups in Rom 14 (Ambrosiaster Commentary on Paul’s Epistles on Rom 14:1; Theodoret of Cyr Interp. Rom. on 14:1; though contrast Pseudo-Constantius Holy Letter of St. Paul to the Romans on 14:1; Bray 1998: 337–38).

29. Tacitus Ann. 15.44; cf. also the lack of concern over local division in 2 Tim, 1 Pet, or Heb 13:23–24; and the interest of 1 Clem. (e.g., 46.5–9) in Corinthian believers’ unity. Persecution, of course, could have unified the church in any case.