Dr. Craig Keener, Romans, Lecture 1, Introduction

this is dr. Craig keener in his teaching on the book of Romans this is session number one introduction Paul's letter to the Romans has had a major impact through history in 2nd Timothy 1:15 we read that all those who are in Asia turned away from Paul kind of the sad ending you might think for for Jeremiah the Prophet in the Old Testament like Jeremiah Paul's teachings lived on after him in the next generation and succeeding generations these changed the course of history in the case of Paul's letter to the Romans we see that throughout history that it had it had a major impact we see Origen writing a very valuable commentary on Romans and and and others we come to more recent times certainly Martin Luther it was it was Romans that revolutionized his view of depending on on what Christ had done for salvation John Wesley hearing Luther's preface to Roman's being read in the oldest gate chapel felt his heart strangely warmed and Romans continues to speak to Christians today Christian scholars Catholic Orthodox Protestant all across the board we approach Romans as a magnificent masterpiece that pulls together a lot of Paul's teaching now it wasn't meant to be a systematic theology the way it's often treated but certainly it has implications for for what we do when we systematize our theology because it touches on a number of major points we need to look first at the genre letters versus epistles that was an earlier distinction it was based in the papyri some people said well you know you have literary epistles like those of Seneca and so on they also had ordinary letters like Seneca Cicero and plenty wrote ordinary letters too but sometimes you had letter essays like Senecas letter on consolation to Marcela or other other kinds of works but when people discovered the papyri they got very excited and scholars like EF Diceman said well you know Paul's letters are more like the papyri they are not on this elite level actually though when you compare the papyri they don't look like the average papyrus documents vocabulary is is often coin a it's it's the kind of ordinary vocabulary that ordinary people used but most of the pop I write the averaged about 87 words well somewhere around the length of Philemon a bit longer or third John or something like that Cicero's average was about 295 words could go as high as 2530 words Senecas usually averaged around 995 words up to four thousand one hundred thirty-four words but Paul's averaged around two thousand four hundred ninety five words and his longest excellent letter is Romans 7114 words depending on the textual variants so quite different than what we find in the papyrus letters indeed Paul uses not just what you find in ordinary letters I mean he's got a an epistolary frame opening and conclusion like you have in letters but in some letters including Romans he's also got argumentation which was not what we find normally in ordinary business documents or letters of greeting or invitation to parties and so on that we find usually in the papyri but argumentation is what we find more often in speeches or letter essays that were making a case now today rhetorical critics have pointed out Paul's letters are not elite they're not like sir over plenty or or some of the others but neither are they off the top of his head these were these were carefully constructed and we need to take into account the commitment that this required this project they didn't have shorthand available there was some shorthand but probably not very much it was just coming into vogue and dictation tutor sheis who was the scribe who wrote down Romans according to Rome in 1622 he sends his own greetings probably a believer himself probably given ordinary dictation and taking it down it may have taken Paul over 11 hours to dictate Romans even though we can read it much faster probably he went through at least two drafts given the the length of the document and what we know about those things the papyrus and possibly the labor if if tercius was paid for this would come out to about twenty point six eight denarii I Randy Richards's has given us this estimate in today's currency in the u.s. that would be similar around two thousand two hundred seventy five dollars so so we need to take those things into account this wasn't just written off the top of his head hi Bob how you doing I'm doing great hope to see you soon this was something into which he put a lot of thought because he really wanted to put the best communication possible into this letter to reach the church or the church as the Saints in Rome the set of part ones in Rome how do we read letters well between rhetorical criticism and epistolary criticism that's helped us with Paul's letters we're leaving aside technical distinctions between letters and epistles which actually weren't often followed in practice except for letter essays but ancient rhetorical handbooks provides different subgenres of letters letters of reproof like Galatians letters were recommendation like Philemon there were rules for how to write the various kinds of letters and the parts of letters however these appear in rhetorical handbooks much later than Paul's day in fact rhetorical handbooks don't actually deal with letters until much later than Paul's day but but there are some things that are in common that we can we can learn from from these parts of letters well not surprisingly you have introduction and body in conclusion if something's well written that's not really a big surprise but anyway we'll look at the way the introductions were written because this does fit what we know of ancient letters from the author in this case Paul an apostle and then he can go on to describe himself as wishes to the audience so today in English you might say dear so-and-so and emails we often say hi so-and-so or just skip all the technical language and just jump right into it but in his day name of the author then you would say to whom you were writing in this case to the saints or the consecrated ones the set of heart wins in Rome and then greetings the typical greeting in Greek was sky rain which means greetings however it's adopted in Paul's letters and then some of the other letters in the New Testament you still have KY rain in acts 15 we still have car rain in James 1 1 or 1/2 but but you have in some other letters you have Paul's letters you have first Peter 2nd Peter in a different way you have it in Revelation chapter 1 so it's it's a number of different early Christians Paul may have been the first one to do this we don't know but instead of having high rain greetings we have Paris grace term sounds similar to some extent but he has grace adapting the typical Greek reading and piece adapting the the standard Jewish greeting which was Shalom in Hebrew Shalom Aleichem peace to you all Shalom the Kaw peace to you but in Romans and and elsewhere in Paul's writings he's writing in Greek so it's a rainy piece in Greek grace and peace to you combining Greek and Jewish greetings Paul was not the first to do that Christians were not the first to do that we find some others who combine these in in some some Jewish sources where they'd say something like mercy and peace be with you or so on but in in this diaspora context the Christians are especially doing this what is more significant is how these terms functioned grace to you or peace to you these were blessings they were what some scholars have called wish prayers if I say God bless you I'm addressing you but I'm implicitly also addressing God praying that God will bless you as I'm saying God bless you just like when Isaac blessed Jacob he may be speaking to Jacob thinking he's speaking to Esau but he's invoking God he's expecting God to do this for him and you know as we have blessings in the Old Testament also this this continues peace be with you peace not meaning just may you not be in a war although that may be included but Grace and peace be with you mate may everything be well with you I pray that the things are good for you it was common to have an opening prayer in ancient letters often a prayer for a person's health may you may you prosper and be in health as your soul prospers as in third John that was common in ancient letters but what significance here he also the Thanksgiving for them which is common in Paul's letters often summarizes this theme often has a separate prayer for them as well like you find here starting in verse 8 of Romans 1 but what's most significant is that this now becomes Grace and peace a blessing not not just from God the Father or not great to you from the Lord Cerebus as some Gentiles would say they would send letters giving blessings from their gods but this is Grace and peace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ you gave a blessing from deity and so right here right up front in Paul's letters he is indicating the the knowledge that he shares in common with his congregation that Jesus is divine well you have that the introduction to the letter and we'll come back and look at Paul's introduction to Romans 1 in somewhat more detail you also have the body of the letter it's different parts for different kinds of letters some were common than many kinds of letters now what we have here is when you have argumentation this is rhetorical criticism where some kinds of speeches and therefore some kinds of argumentation you have narrative or an errata oh the events leading up to the situation you have that in galatians chapter 1 he narrates the events leading up to his his writing sometimes you would have a thesis statement thesis is the Greek name proposición a proposition in in Latin stating the case we probably have that in Romans in Romans chapter 1 verses 16 and 17 and then you would often again not usually in letters but in speeches you would have an argument sometimes with proofs certain kinds of speeches you would have an argument and proofs probity Oh in Latin for example in Paul's case scripture quotations well there's been a debate about how much rhetoric Paul uses in his letters we'll talk about that a little while yeah we'll talk about that a little while probably does not arrange them like speeches although that's also a matter of debate but he certainly uses rhetorical devices the hermeneutic how to understand letters letters were intended as communications letter essays may have been more general general epistles but but most letters were intended to communicate something to a particular audience well when you have secondary communication something that was communicated to an audience other than yourself it helps you to find out something about that audience so that you'll better understand what was being communicated relevance theory suggests that we often communicate in ways that by themselves will be incomplete words have meanings and social contexts if I say coffee please well coffee please is shorthand for would you please give me coffee but if I say would you please give me coffee to a waiter or waitress and I spell it out the whole way that may seem strange if they're used to coffee please if I speak of 911 in the United States since 2001 everybody knows what we mean when we say mine eleven but if somebody in the future is is writing sometime after the power grid goes down and everything except paper copies have been lost you know and they and they they have to do research a century or two from now to figure out what 911 means in a u.s. context they're not going to know without doing background research on 911 well Paul writes letters to individual congregations and therefore will understand those letters better if we if we get the background for myself when I was I just been a Christian for a few years converted from a non-christian unchurched background but I was reading like 40 chapters of the Bible a day and I began to see well the background makes a difference because it was actually in Romans Romans 1:7 Paul says that he's writing these things to the to the believers in Rome and I was like okay well I'm memorizing this verse over here in this verse over here but I'm ignoring some of these verses in between like if Paul says he's writing this to the church in Rome chances are the believers in Rome know some of the issues that he's addressing they know why he was addressing this they know what he means sometimes by these things some things he doesn't have to explain that are just part of the general shared culture but I don't know them and it was because of that that I began digging into ancient culture is because of that I wrote the background commentary the the IVP Bible background commentary it's because of that that I eventually went on became a biblical scholar because otherwise I was just gonna read the Bible on my own and preach it but for the background I need you to do more research and try to make that research available to others to put it at their fingertips Paul applies some of the same principles of the applies and Romans you apply some of the same principles elsewhere but the particular situation in Rome makes those general principles concrete for this letter and that also gives us a model for how we need to concretely apply Paul's principles in our settings today as well we need to take into account when we look at letters or other things from antiquity I mean this would this could also apply to to some extent to agent philosophers and and other sages but but here all the more for those of us who are Christians who hear the Bible is God's Word we want to distinguish between moral issues and what are just cultural issues sometimes we have transcultural moral norms for instance Paul has vice lists in Romans 1 28 to 31 1st Corinthians 6 9 and 10 Galatians 5:19 to 21 these are things that are pretty much condemned across the board and he condemns him regularly many of them in his letters sexual sins slander and gossip and and greed and so on transcultural moral norms now when I say that some things reflect a particular cultural situation I'm not saying that things in the Bible are not for all time I'm just saying that not all things in the Bible are for all circumstances if we want to apply them rightly we need to make sure we apply them to analogous circumstances and so it's important to look at the culture to see what the trans cultural norms are and also to see how he applies them concretely so we can reapply them concretely in different cultural settings Paul didn't tell us what to do about nuclear weapons Paul didn't tell he didn't address some very crucial ethical issues today the do-dah case speaks about abortion but Paul doesn't specifically name it in his letters it seems kind of surprising that he doesn't but but but there are issues today we want to address we have to look for the principles in these letters well you have transcultural moral norms but chances are it's not transcultural if Paul allows different practices in different passages and for the whole Bible for biblical theology if we have different passages that allow different practices 1st Timothy chapter 5 and verse 14 women are secluded in the home and that was considered the appropriate role for for matrons in Ephesus where where Paul was where first Timothy is is address addressing in first Timothy 5:14 women working outside the home well we have that in Proverbs 31 16 Genesis 29 9 Song of Solomon 1:6 it's a different culture I would also apply that to some other gender issues like comparing 1st Timothy 2:12 with judges 4:4 and so on not everybody agrees with me on that that there's there's a lot of difference of opinion on how how we apply cultural background in certain details but on most issues in Romans we'll find a consensus there will be some issues that where there are some major debates going on today and I will at least try to make those known to you one of those what we need to understand the cultural options available to the writer for example if they wrote in an era when nobody was trying to abolish all of slavery that they don't it's explicitly address an issue that nobody was raising doesn't mean that they would have sided with slavery supporters if somebody had raised the issue I think I can make a pretty strong argument from Ephesians that the abolitionists who were against slavery were understanding the spirit of Paul whole lot more correctly than those who were trying to use Paul and supportive slavery he addresses a situation that exists but in terms of what he should he thought should have existed when he speaks if you masters do the same things to them Ephesians six nine and says we have the same master in heaven well I think that kind of suggests that Paul was more radical than most of his contemporaries and I've argued that in print elsewhere but many different things are controversial not only that but even the authorship of Ephesians although that yeah I agree with those who argue that it's Pauline but by contrast what while you have different things in different parts of the Bible that seem to point in different directions suggesting that cultural issues are at play the Bible sometimes speaks with a unanimous voice against some elements of culture Greeks in Paul's day held various views regarding premarital sex and homosexual intercourse but the Bible condemns all sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual marriage in every passage that mentions them that suggests that it's something that reflects all a biblical theology rather than merely a particular cultural situation that like everything else is debated by some people so I'll explore some of that in more detail but this is the direction that I believe that it does point rhetoric was pervasive in antiquity and it was the dominant discipline that the two forms of tertiary training the two forms of advanced training were philosophy and rhetoric and rhetoric was more more valued often by speakers in the marketplace and civic Assemblies than philosophy was more people went into rhetoric speakers would be be heard speaking using rhetorical principles in the marketplace certainly in civic assemblies public competitions so you didn't actually have to be trained in rhetoric to be accustomed to hearing people using rhetorical devices or customed to hearing people following the certain structure in their argument it was just part of literate communication back then different genres used different structures of course I don't agree with those who try to arrange the Gospel of Mark or something like that as if it were a speech I don't think that makes any sense ancient biographies were not arranged that way but but argumentation did follow certain principles of rhetoric and this became so much the case that in the second century in the heyday of the the second sophistic some of the New Testament and certainly the Greek translation of the Old Testament became embarrassing to Christians who were trying to defend it is inspired because by these later standards people were looking back on these earlier documents and saying no it should have been written this way with with precise attic Athenian or the old classical Athenian way of using rhetoric well that that's kind of a knack mystic because that wasn't the dominant way of communicating in the times and places where these documents were written although we have a few addis isms in the new testament but the church fathers had had to address this and the church fathers often used rhetorical criticism because many of them were trained in rhetoric and so they used that in understanding the letters Melanchthon who was Luther successor successor was trained as a as a humanist and so he also practiced rhetorical criticism it came again into into use in the late 20th century and early 21st century expectations were not as high in paul circle as they would have been for orator but paul still uses some rhetorical devices now the problem is that paul is not writing speeches he's writing letters and so here there's been criticism of rhetorical critics rhetorical handbooks in this period omit letters lady rhetorical handbooks do not treat them as speeches and the speech outlines that we have in rhetorical handbooks don't even fit most speeches because once or tours were trained in them once they learned how to do it they felt free to adapt them as needed so you find a lot of differences with actual speeches which is why it's good not to read just rhetorical handbooks but also to read ancient speeches or chose letters and this is perhaps the most important observation in this case orders letters like the letters of Cicero plenty or Fratto in the second century yeah Cicero is is pre-christian plenty is early second century fronto as mid-second century their letters were not like speeches in fact I find more rhetorical devices in Romans first Corinthians and much of second Corinthians then I find in the letters of Cicero and plenty because they weren't giving speeches and you weren't supposed to write letters the way you wrote speeches so how can ancient rhetoric help us understand Paul's letters if at all well we do have some rhetoric in Paul because Paul's letters most of Paul's letters at least are not normal letters most opposed letters that have been preserved for us include substantial argumentation such as you would find in a letter essay and and therefore even though we're not going to expect these letters to be outlined just like speeches at least most of them we are going to find we're going to find the value of rhetorical devices sometimes Paul will will end successive clauses with the same the same phrase or the same sound or who begin successive clauses with the same the same wording that was that was those were standard rhetorical devices and they actually once you start looking for them you find a lot of them in Paul's letters and and some others who who haven't explored it in terms of of ancient rhetorician still find these figures of speech in these ways of speaking as what they call oral communication in Paul's letters what we've done by drawing on ancient rhetoric is just to say well Paul wasn't the only one who did this let's look at how some other people also use these rhetorical devices not just in speeches but in in some other settings as well although Paul Paul does it more and letters than you would expect because he's also good argumentation education in Tarsus where Paul was from according to the book of Acts it was some thought the greatest philosophic center in antiquity others would have said that it was Alexandria but both had surpassed Athens by this period there were a lot of Stoics stoic was the stoicism was the prevailing when I say prevailing the predominant philosophic orientation among philosophers in this period was the most popular philosophic orientations more than Epicureanism more than platonism which became dominant again later and we find a number of points of contact between Paul and stoicism in his letters as well as between Paulin and sometimes Platonism but I think stoicism more often I would not argue that Paul had any training as a stoic but I think Abraham Malheur B who used to be a professor at Yale Divinity School I think no Herbie put it well in one of his books where he speaks of Paul in the popular philosophers he he knew the language of popular philosophy he'd been ministering for a long time we've been dialoguing with people for a long time he knew the language that they could relate to and he knew how to articulate things in the language of his day how to contextualise for his audience and we'll see a few examples of that so taking that into account rhetoric was also an advanced discipline in Tarsus Tarkan's often did their advanced the discipline abroad and of course if you were Jewish you would want to do your advanced discipline probably in the Torah and what better place than Jerusalem but acts 20 to 3 seems to suggest that Paul actually went abroad before the advanced level before the tertiary level that his probably from other things we see in acts which I do take very seriously I wrote a four-volume commentary on acts acts suggests that probably his family moved to Jerusalem when he was still fairly young so he's got he's got the best of both worlds in a sense and in Jerusalem if he studied with Gamaliel as acts 22 3 says probably comes from a family of means he got a good education Gamaliel according to Jewish tradition you could be educated not only in the Tora but you could also be educated in some things related to Greek Paul doesn't seem to have a great knowledge of Greek classics he cites them very rarely and where where where he cites them it's the kind of thing that was very commonly known from just manuals of quotations and so on but he cites the Septuagint the Greek translation of the Old Testament all over the place and that's undoubtedly what he did is his advanced training in but just like a preacher today who may have advanced training in Bible but you know at least at least a course or two in homiletics in in in preaching well Paul probably had some training and speaking at a lower level and whatever training you had he certainly had opportunity to develop over the years as he was often doing it Paul would have had the best of both worlds as a Greek speaking Jew in Jerusalem in terms of his education no studying with Gamaliel at the feet of Gamaliel he in Galatians 1:14 Paul says that he was advancing beyond his contemporaries so he's trained in Scripture he is probably at least exposed to some rhetoric he he learns about some philosophy he has facility in Greek intellectual discourse in Judea that was available only in Jerusalem wealthy people sent their children to Alexandria Athens Ephesus or Tarsus but for Torah especially in Greek Jerusalem was the place to go and some some could teach in Jerusalem Josephus was fluent his his bleak is very fluent he says he had the style editor to help him because of his language probably that means his coin egg had very much semitic influences well let me not get into the debates about where kwaini comes from but in case josephus probably had a style editor to help us Greek but Josephus clearly knew Greek we see him in settings where he's speaking with people in Greek so Josephus was fluent in Greek cameelious household apparently was fluent in Greek and the aspera immigrants certainly would would know Greek as well studying with professors as great thing professors are always normal people as you can tell by by looking at me but in any case Paul's letters provide evidence that in fact he was pretty well educated I mean he wasn't part of the elite he wasn't as Cicero he wasn't a Seneca he wasn't a plenty in rhetoric although in content he has very high-level argumentation but if you compare him with the papyri ordinary business documents Paul Paul didn't have just a grammatical education the lowest level of education Paul had clearly more education than that the content of his letters differs from that though of highly respected Greek orators we have as I mentioned earlier we don't have a lot of classical quotations that was how educated people showed off back then their education was by inappropriate moments including quips from previous writers instead it's full of Septuagint quotes Paul wasn't a professor of rhetoric he wasn't a professional rhetorician he wasn't an orator I like to compare him to a seminarian who had some homiletic courses it was a Bible major that may reflect my own bias because guess what I was a Bible major but in any case some portraits of Paul in the past century of scholarship about a century ago there were some people arguing the Paul was a Hellenistic Jew unfamiliar with Jerusalem didn't really know much about Jerusalem Mont Montefiore who had who had a lot of good information a lot of things suggested that but he underestimates the hellenization of Judea and Galilee as as a number of scholars have shown starting with some Jewish scholars in the 1960s and actually earlier saw Lieberman though in that period other other scholars cherrick over and and others but especially established by Martin Hengel in the 1970s that hellenization had gone very far by the first century and that was true in Judea and lower Galilee as well as many other places not to say the same as in the Diaspora outside of Judea and Galilee but there was a lot of colonization already there so Paul could could still be somebody who thrived in Judea who thrived in in Jerusalem also Paul's own writings Philippians 3:5 Paul tells us that he he was a Pharisee a Pharisee of Pharisees well when we read about Pharisees elsewhere in ancient literature we read about them in Jerusalem he was a Hebrew of Hebrews so a same passage Paul Paul tells us that he he had this kind of training he also tells us that he had an advanced Jewish education in Galatians 1 13 and 14 he also tells us that he persecuted the church in Judea Galatians 1 22 to 23 he didn't just come from the Diaspora and just show up in Jerusalem to persecute the church in Judea without having another reason to be in Judea he already had been in Judea before this happened another approach was to view Paul as a Palestinian Jew as a number of people put it a rabbinic pharisaic portrait of Paul with W D Davies and others W D Davies argued that Paul was a Messianic Pharisee a Pharisee who believed that the Messiah had come and EP Sanders who was one of my own professors one of my own mentors in my doctoral work EP Sanders argues that you know he has a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism and places Paul in that context now even though that's even though that's ed Sanders expertise Paul and Palestinian Judaism or Jesus and Palestinian Judaism he would not limit that to the full background of the New Testament what what he told me was one time you know originally when he started what he wanted to do was do a comparison of Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism but life is only so long and he didn't get around to all of it but he says you know I really respect what Abraham Ellerbe is done with the cynic epistles and so on so these are not mutually exclusive options Paul did have Hellenistic Jewish background he also had Palestinian Jewish backgrounds and also something that that prevailed out of the Yale School I had EP Sanders at Duke the cosmopolitan greco-roman background that was argued earlier by Edwin judge who was a classicist teaching in Australia from from New Zealand I had the privilege of talking with him several years ago in Australia and Abraham my Herbie who picked up some of that from him and Wayne Meeks at Yale there's also a a widespread focus on rhetoric for instance Ronald Hawke Ben Witherington and others and philosophy for example trolls and burg Patterson who is a classicist who's a scholar of stoic philosophy some have argued that some have well nobody agrees with everything that everybody else says but there's something that we can learn from from many of these others also Jeff why my Stanley Porter on epistolary background the way epistles were written back then we can learn from many of these different scholars and many other scholars the danger of me starting to list some is that I'm leaving out a lot of them including some of my good friends Linda Belleville and others but Paul blend all of these backgrounds I mean all of these are part of his background he uses what he has which is considerable to reach his culture just like we should try to take into account the cultures that were reaching be culturally sensitive without compromising at all God's true message that's been given to us in the scriptures apollon Torah he was devoted to the Torah to the law before his calling but he discovered that such Leo zeal had led him not to God but actually to rebel against what God was doing I guess I can identify with this because I was an atheist before my conversion and I was so arrogant about my intellect and I eventually discovered that my intellect had led me just in exactly the wrong way and I realized that the smartest thing in the world is to trust the God is infinitely smarter than we are doesn't mean I don't keep trying to figure things out I do my best scripture says the hidden things belong to God but it also says God hides things but Kings search out things I'm not a king but but he's given us the arena Lux for a reason we can we can search things we're gonna see a lot about the mind and Paul's letters to to Paul's letter to the Romans and some some Paul's other letters to Philippians first Corinthians chapter 2 and so forth but a mind informed by the spirit a mind that's led by God is the mind that's going to go in the best way because remember as proverbs says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge so Paul was devoted to the Torah he studied it but he had the wrong framework and we can intellect can sometimes solve details but if we've got the wrong overall framework we may miss the big picture which makes a whole lot more sense and then when we become believers anyway things make so much more sense now than they did when I was an atheist I was really so wrong but thanks be to God and thanks be to God in Paul's case he was devoted to the Torah before his calling he discovered such zeal had led him in the wrong way the problem he says though in his letters was not the Torah itself it was not the law it was not God's instruction in the scriptures the problem was flesh we are finite beings we are vulnerable and susceptible to temptation to pride to covetousness whatever the written Torah doesn't save us Paul came to to believe only God can make us righteous we need the Torah written in their hearts well how did this relate to what other Jewish people talk well it depended on what what segments of Judaism you're talking about I mean the Sadducees held quite different views from the Pharisees for example but Paul uses some ad-hoc arguments at times first corinthians 11 on the on the head coverings he uses a range of arguments there and finally his final argument is well if you don't accept any of my other arguments this is just the way it's done in the Church of the East or Mediterranean world Galatians 3:16 Paul makes an argument based in the fact that sperma seed is singular but Paul knows very well that it can be a collective singular that is it can refer to to more than one because later on in verse 29 in the Greek text of Galatians 3:29 Paul in fact uses it that way by saying in a week or Abraham's seed we are Abraham's children so Paul symptoms uses ad-hoc arguments in polemical context for example where he's addressing others who use arguments like that against him these were common in ancient ancient times it's not a model that that's how you argue in every situation but this is how Paul argued in the settings where that kind of argumentation was used and that doesn't change his theology his theology can be very well exegetically grounded but in persuading people he's using the kind of things that would persuade them chapter 11 of first Corinthians he one of his first arguments has to do with a play on words whereas using both the figurative and the literal sense of kapha lay head there's debate about what the figurative sense is that I won't get into but my point is that he uses a play on words with both the figurative sense and the the literal sense of the thing on top of your neck that was the kind of argument that people often used back then so sometimes he has a caricature romans chapter 2 verses 17 through 24 where he says you you who speak against adultery do you practice adultery you who who are against idolatry do you rob temples most Jewish people did not go around robbing temples most Jewish people did not commit adultery although some did Paul Paul is making a caricature he's doing what in argumentation of symptoms called reductio ad absurdum reducing your opponent's position to the absurd this doesn't literally apply to all Jewish people but it makes this case that you can't depend on Jewishness alone the Psalms texts that he cites in Romans 3:10 through 20 are too general to condemn every individual Jewish person now that doesn't change his ultimate point that all people have sinned some of the texts he uses do claim that but in fact he didn't really need to even argue that that everybody has sinned because Jewish people almost all acknowledged that everybody had sinned with the possible exception some said maybe Abraham didn't there but they all acknowledged that they had sinned but polemical rhetoric was that's argumentative very strong argumentative rhetoric that you use to refute somebody's position that was standard in debate settings you have the same kind of thing where John the Baptist speaks of God can raise up stones for these children for Abraham well Paul Paul speaks of of God raising up children for Abraham spiritual children from Abraham you have that also in John chapter 8 that was an issue that was that was being debated already but the time Paul comes along you know and Paul just argues that case in ways that here's in the greco-roman world could understand more fully Paul's own legacy was caricatured and contested Romans chapter 3 and verse 8 he says that there were some people who complained about him and and said that he taught let us sin that grace may abound which certainly was not what Paul was teaching although some people even today follow that teaching in the name of Paul James chapter 2 verses 18 through 24 many scholars think that James is refuting their misrepresentation of Paul's teaching so in in polemical context we have things represented in a certain way and Paul builds on solid teaching going back to Jesus solid teaching run back to the Old Testament but the way he frames it is sometimes the way it would be framed in his day apiece Andres has argued that the older anti-semitic approaches to to Judaism making it a foil for God's grace and early Christianity were unfounded and he tends to associate it with a certain denomination in a certain country German Lutheran's and that is not where all German Lutheran's would stand today and I'm not sure it's fair to all German scholar it's not fair to all German scholars it's not fair at all Lutheran's but remember EP Sanders is writing in a generation after the Holocaust and much of the church there was playing down the official Church especially wants to become the Reich Church was playing down the Jewishness of Jesus Gerhard Kittel if you've heard of the theological dictionary of the New Testament there's a reason why he only added did the the first two or three volumes of that because he spent the rest of his life under house arrest is Nazi war criminal some of the Nazi theologians were playing down the Jewishness of Jesus Kittel was a rabbinic expert but he also served the Nazi Party No so people who tried to play the Jewishness of Paul down and tried to also make Judaism as a foil for for how much better Christianity is often misrepresented to Judaism we even find some of that destructive allure back it wasn't the fault of their rabbinic sources so much of the rabbinic experts so much as the is the way it was applied to the New Testament so that Judaism becomes a very legalistic religion where you're always trying to achieve more merit before God and part of it even goes back to Luther treating you know seeing himself as like a Paul reacting against Judaism in his reaction against the medieval church so what we actually find when we go back to ancient Jewish sources we we do find some legalism more I think than that my mentor EP Sanders acknowledged initially others have pointed that out but even those who pointed that out have acknowledged that EP Sanders was right to critique the state of affairs that widely existed in his day which was just very anti-semitic very anti-jewish and what we see in Sanders work and others have qualified this that it's not across the board but but there was much more grace in early Judaism than has been acknowledged there was a recognition that Jewish people were were born as part of the covenant circumcised as part of the covenant and they would they remain part of the covenant people unless they were very bad well what happens though if you're a Gentile in your converting to Judaism well then you have a little bit more trouble because now you have to prove your your loyalty to the covenant is a proselyte also just because people are emphasizing grace in principle doesn't mean that they're never legalistic in practice I mean we've got a lot of churches today that talk grace but practice legalism meaning it's not an exclusively Jewish problem it's a religious problem interestingly enough in Luke's Gospel Jesus has to confront the Pharisees sometimes on legalistic type issues and you get to the book of Acts and guess who's echoing the Pharisees in Acts chapter 11 not you went in ate with sinners but you went and ate with Gentiles that the same kind of idea is carrying over so between the fact that Paul is going to use reductio ad absurdum he's going to take things to their utmost extent and between the and and also the fact that there is some legalism in practice and also the fact that people aren't always in principle what they are on paper I mean many of the things where Jesus argues with the Pharisees and the Gospels we know that the Pharisees actually agreed with them in principle in their ethics but it's one thing to agree with Jesus in principle it's another thing to live like Jesus says and it's another thing to to embody the spirit of Mercy and and the the kind of hermeneutic Jesus had towards the Torah that we find in the Gospels so all that to say that unlike some people I don't think we have to radically reinterpret Paul once we recognize that the result of grace and Judaism but we also need to recognize that the issue isn't an ethnic issue that the people the problem was that they were Jewish and that if we're Gentiles we don't face the same temptations because Paul deals with that issue in Romans chapter 11 the issue is that whatever our religious proclivities when we use religion in service of ourselves rather than accepting God's revelation in Christ that brings us into relationship with God we are missing what God has done for us because our hand is too short we can't save ourselves if the Lord who saves us the setting of Romans Paul writes from Corinth this letter and it's it's actually delivered by it's delivered by Phoebe who is diakonos we can talk about the leader the meaning of that but the diagnosis of the church at Kent Korea which is one of the port one of the two port cities of Corinth on the isthmus of corinth paul writes from corinth the chorion sends it by by Phoebe if she travels Romans 16:1 this would have been during his winter stay in the Chaya district counted in Acts chapter 20 verses two and three he's also got ties to Rome because many of the Jewish Christians who were expelled from Rome around the Year 49 under Claudius when Claudius died in the year 54 probably within a year or two years or so before Paul wrote Romans they returned and also Corinth had major ties with Rome plenty of trade going back and forth Corinth was a major Roman colony and it was the it was the major marine conduit between Italy and Asia Minor the southern coast of Akaya was very rugged and it was difficult to navigate there so people often would sail just into the where the Peloponnesus was they did sail to the Isthmus of Corinth and there was a means for transporting things from the inside of the Isthmus to the outside to the Aegean Sea they had not been successful yet in building a canal through the Isthmus but they had something called the D all costs and they could drag things across supplies to ships on the other side wellness population in this period some have estimated it as low as quarter million due to the water supply ancient census records actually suggest when you also account for those who aren't specifically named in the census aren't specifically mentioned in the census records the the families the slaves that the number of residents of Rome probably is closer in this period to about a million meaning it was by far the largest city of Mediterranean antiquity Alexandria maybe being second maybe some around half a million possibly Rome had a lot of tenements the rich lived on the bottom the poor lived in higher upper storeys and they often would have on the bottom for some times you had shops with mezzanine apartments as well as wealthier residents living on the bottom the bottom was valuable because you had running water only on the on the lower floor you'd have stairs leading up but sometimes the upper stories were very rickety you'd have small rooms just enough room to sleep and you might have a charcoal brazier in some places which is probably one reason why the reported fires taking place daily in Rome buildings burning down buildings collapsing someone joked about it I don't think it's very funny but juvenile was joking about how you had buildings collapsing in Rome you'd hear them collapsing every day somewhere they were often owned by rich landlords sometimes who lived in the bottom floor but the further up they went the worse it was where could the churches have met there where they could meet on the lower floor they could meet on the on the hallway that connected the rooms and some of the higher floors so there were there were places that they could meet Jewish residents may have comprised as much as 5% of the population of Rome its Jewish population based on Tiberius expulsion has been estimated somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 residents often around 40 to 50,000 so as high as 5% of Rome's population the the setting for the Jewish community most Jewish people in Rome lived in the trance Tiber innum today it's called trust of era I can't speak Italian so I hope you'll forgive me for my pronunciation there especially if you're from Italy but across the the Tiber from the city centre is where the majority of the Jewish community lived most of the Jewish residents of Rome were poor many probably worked in the docks of the Tiber there were a number of synagogues obviously if you have that many people you had to have a lot of synagogues several synagogues are known to us by name from this period one of them is something like the olive tree which is perhaps relevant for Romans 11 although we don't usually know the dates when these particular synagogues started but unlike the synagogue community in Alexandria the synagogue community in Rome was not at all United and they couldn't be because Rome didn't want anybody being united in their City unless it was say the Praetorian Guard or local police force Greek speaking immigrants resident aliens were there in large numbers you hear maybe the saying that all roads lead to Rome was because the Romans built all the roads but people people would stream into Rome from all over the Empire from many parts of the of the Diaspora and the Jewish community also there was largely Greek speaking in fact the church was largely Greek speaking there until the second century first Clement a Jewish well a Christian document from the late 1st century is written in Greek for example Greek speaking immigrants from many parts of the Diaspora for the for the Jewish community there over half of them have Latin names so they were trying to identify with the culture even though Greek was the majority language among them many Roman citizens who were Jewish in Rome Philo of Alexandria tells us that explicitly in his embassy to Gaius and probably many of these citizens were descendants of those who had been slaved by Pompey Pompey not meaning the city that was buried along with Herculaneum at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius later in the century but Pompeii being the Roman general and the first century BCE pompeii and slaved many Judeans brought them to Rome Jewish people who were in Rome collected all the money they had they they bought the freedom of these other Jewish people and if you were a freed slave of a Roman citizen under usual circumstances you became a Roman citizen this is probably the background for Paul's own ancestry a long time earlier how Paul becomes a Roman citizen which we'll have to talk about later on but first noting Roman xenophobia Romans detested Sabbath's circumcision and food products actually some Romans really liked Jewish practices and we're dead adopting them but it created the backlash among other Romans especially among the elite especially among elite men who were upset that some of their wives were following some Jewish practices to this supreme god including Sabbath's and some food practices circumcision they considered a form of mutilation and and we read about this in various collections of Jewish literature from this period literature about like menachem Stern's work on Gentile writings about Jews in antiquity there were also banishment of the Jewish community under Tiberius and Claudius there's reason to believe that the banishment at least under Claudius wasn't a wholesale banishment or wasn't effective completely but in any case there had been banishment of the Jewish community so there was some prejudices against the Jewish community there Roman history and the church there Claudius expelled Jewish Christian leaders and probably a whole lot of other people we can talk about that more in a little while in the next session but Claudius expelled Jewish Christian leaders in the year 49 are most likely 49 some say 41 but there's better reason to think 49 it was automatically repealed as other edicts would be when he died in the year 54 so after five years some some Jewish believers in Jesus could return to Rome and other Jewish believers could could come to Rome Nero in the year 64 that's ten years after Jewish Christians can return to Rome and roughly fifteen years after Claudius expelled Jewish Christian leaders leaving a predominantly Gentile Church probably in the year 64 Nero massacred hundreds or thousands of Christians in in Rome and yet the church still seems to be strong at the time that first Clement is written in the late first century so there must have been a thriving Church in Rome at the time that Paul writes this letter even even though only recently have some Jewish Christians begun returning it's usually considered to be mostly Gentile Church seems to have a Jewish base or a Jewish foundation at the beginning where they were taught in Jewish ways and there are reasons for that again with Judaism being well known in Rome but in the next session we're going to do a survey of some of what we find in Romans again not every point will everybody agree on not everybody will agree even on every point that I just mentioned in the summary of the history of the church in Rome but at least you will get a good sense of the center of what of what Romans is about and what the history the cultural and historical and social context of the letter to the Romans was about this is dr. Craig keener in his teaching on the book of Romans this is session number one introduction

Channel: ted hildebrandt

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Keywords: Craig Keener, Romans, New Testament, Lecture 1, Introduction, Ted Hildebrandt, biblicalelearning.org

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Length: 64min 38sec (3878 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2016