Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 33

The recipients/audience of Paul’s letter are identifiable by certain explicit internal factors. These appear in 1:5–7; 1:13–15; 11:13; and 15:15–16. According to ancient epistolary practices, the recipient of a letter is addressed in the dative case. In 1:7 Paul addresses ‘all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints’ (πᾶσιν τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Ῥώμῃ ἀγαπητοῖς θεοῦ, κλητοῖς ἁγίοις), in the dative case. Thus, Paul identifies the religious and social affiliation of the addressees, but not their ethnicity. However, he does that in the preceding verses (1:5–6). The readers (who are God’s beloved and saints) already know that they should count themselves among ‘all the Gentiles’ (ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν), because Paul writes ἐν οἷς ἐστε καὶ ὑμεῖς (among whom also you are). All God’s beloved in Rome, including themselves, are among the Gentiles (to whom Paul was appointed apostle). Thus, right from the outset, Paul is explicit about the ethnic identity of the encoded audience and addressees.

The relative clause in 1:6 (ἐν οἷς...) is not parenthetical,1 but programmatic. Paul was appointed apostle to the Gentiles (1:5). That is why they were subject to Paul’s apostleship, also in Rome. The Gentiles were the object of Paul’s missionary work, a fact he does not omit in the opening, and to which he returns in 1:13–15. Paul declares the explicitly stated purpose of the letter to be the specific obligation ‘to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome’ (1:15). Preceding this proposition is 1:13, where Paul declares that he often intended to come to them (but was thus far prevented) to reap some harvest among them ‘as well as among the rest of the Gentiles’ (καὶ ἐν τοῖς λοιποῖς ἔθνεσιν). Here, Paul directly addresses the encoded audience as Gentiles. He addresses them as Gentiles, because as appointed apostle to the Gentiles, Paul also has some authority over the Roman church. Additionally, in 15:15ff. Paul states that he has been bold in writing to the Roman Gentiles because of his calling as Christ’s minister to the Gentiles (εἰς τὸ εἶναί με λειτουργὸν Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, 15:16); 15:15–16 follows shortly after the direct address to the audience in 15:10, where the Gentiles are encouraged to rejoice in the Lord together with his people (εὐφράνθητε, ἔθνη, μετὰ τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ).

Several scholars have observed that 1:5–15 constitute an inclusio, together with 15:14–32.2 This supports the observation that the encoded audience was Gentile, because these two sections constitute the framework of the letter. Paul grounds his relationship to the Roman congregation in the fact that he is apostle to the Gentiles, and this claim serves as the virtual parenthesis bracketing the entire discourse. Thus, 15:15–16 must be interpreted in a parallel fashion to 1:5–6, 13–15: If Paul is grounding his relations with the Romans in his apostolic commission to the Gentiles in chapter 1, he is most likely doing the same in chapter 15. In both instances, Paul mentions the Roman Gentiles in the context of his apostolic mission to the Gentiles. Hence, Romans is addressed exclusively to Gentiles, because Paul was commissioned as apostle to the Gentiles.

In 11:13, Paul addresses his audience directly. He emphasizes his calling as apostle to the Gentiles (ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος): ‘But to you Gentiles I say…’ (ὑμῖν δὲ λέγω τοῖς ἔθνεσιν). The only time Paul uses the phrase ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος in any of his letters is here, in Romans. If there were Jews in the audience – which we do not know – these were not those Paul addressed or identified as the encoded audience; the Gentiles were.3 In these verses, Paul does not shift his address from Jews to Gentiles, as some scholars have suggested. As Stanley Stowers points out, the Greek does not justify the idea of ‘now at this point in the discourse’,4 that is, ‘earlier on I spoke to the Jews, but now I say to you Gentiles’.5 In 11:13, Paul shifts from the third person to the second, and the stress is on ὑμῖν, not δὲ. The third-person address Paul initiates in 9:1 concerns the Jews who do not believe in Christ. In 11:13, Paul turns directly to the encoded audience, and explains their relation to these non-Christ-believing Jews. He addresses them as Gentiles, because as ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος, they are subordinate to him, and because he wants them to be cautious about their position towards God’s chosen people (the historical-ethnic Jews). The purpose of Paul’s address to the Gentiles in 11:13 is to reaffirm his authority as apostle to the Gentiles, and to situate them specifically as Gentiles within the narrative of Israel, where the Jews have centre stage. The identification of the audience of the letter as Gentiles is the most distinct identification of the encoded audience in any of Paul’s letters. Therefore, it bears on the identification of the encoded reader/audience, but it should also bear on the identification of the actual, historical addressees.

Throughout Paul’s letter there is additional evidence that supports the provisional conclusion concerning the identity of the audience as Gentile. I will note a few instances: In 5:1–10, Paul uses three designations that imply that he addresses Gentiles, and specifically not Jews: In 5:6, he speaks to those who were ungodly (ἀσεβῶν) before Christ died for them; in 5:8 he speaks to those who were sinners (ἁμαρτωλῶν) before Christ died for them; and in 5:10 he speaks to those who were enemies of God (ἐχθροί) before they were reconciled with God through his son. These designations do not match a Jewish perception of Jews at the time of Paul; on the contrary, they specifically match a Jewish perception of Gentiles at the time of Paul. This is clearly described in 1:18–32 and in contemporary Jewish literature. I will return to this point below.

In 6:19, Paul also describes the encoded audience in language more appropriate to Gentiles than to Jews. ‘For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity (δοῦλα τῇ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ καὶ τῇ ἀνομίᾳ εἰς τὴν ἀνομίαν), so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification’. The reasoning seems obvious: Once, the audience lived an impious life as seen from a Jewish perspective, but now that the Jewish Messiah has come, they should live a life according to that truth. This sort of reasoning perfectly matches a Jewish perception of Gentiles living impiously – because they do not live in a Jewish way – but it does not match a Jewish perception of Jews living impiously within the covenant. Hence, it makes more sense to understand Paul as addressing Gentiles, rather than Jews.

In 13:11–14, Paul exhorts his audience to ‘lay aside the works of darkness’ that formerly characterized them, and to instead put on an armour of light. Paul explains that to live honourably as in the day entails avoiding revelry (κώμοις), drunkenness (μέθαις), sexual excess (κοίταις), licentiousness (ἀσελγείαις), quarrelling (ἔριδι), and jealousy (ζήλῳ). This list of vices is reminiscent of the list in Rom 1:18–32, which typifies a stock Jewish polemic against Gentiles. Even though only one of the vices in 13:11–14 overlaps the list in 1:18–32 (ἔρις), both are lists of vices, and, insofar as the passages parallel each other, Rom 13:11–14 may offer some evidence that the audience is Gentile.

Finally, 5:1–10, 6:19, and 13:11–14 do not exhaust the evidence of a Gentile audience. In 8:15, Paul claims that his readers have received the ‘spirit of adoption’ (πνεῦμα υἱοθεσίας). Such a designation better befits a Gentile audience than a Jewish one. The Jews had already received that privilege centuries before (9:4). Thus, it makes more sense to assume that this privilege had now been extended to include the Gentiles, rather than argue that Paul grants fellow Jews the spirit of adoption that had been a Jewish privilege for centuries. Other evidence may be produced, but for now it suffices to state that cumulatively, all these instances suggest the direct identification of the audience as Gentile recipients of Paul’s gospel, with the explicit address to the audience as Gentiles in the framework of the letter. Consequently, the strength of the evidence for an exclusively Gentile audience demands more attention than it previously has been given.