Integrity, Literary History, And Text
INTEGRITY, LITERARY HISTORY, AND TEXT
Thus far we have been discussing Romans on the supposition that the letter Paul sent to the Roman Christians was composed of the entire sixteen chapters printed in our Bibles. But this supposition must now be examined, for a significant number of scholars doubt that this is the case. A few confine their argument to internal considerations. They claim that there are inconsistencies within the canonical Romans and that they can be explained only on the hypothesis that the letter is actually a combination of two or more original letters or that a redactor has inserted various interpolations into the text of Paul’s original letter. 15 Not only are such theories bereft of any textual evidence, their proponents have manufactured inconsistencies in a letter that has been lauded through the centuries for its logical rigor and clarity of argument.16
There are, however, a number of other theories about the original form and literary history of Romans that deserve more serious consideration, for they arise from difficulties within the text of the letter. Central to these theories is the place of the doxology that is included at the very end of the letter in most modern texts and translations (Rom. 16:25-27). It is omitted in some manuscripts and appears at different places in others. The following sequences are found in the Greek manuscript tradition:
1.
1:1-14:23; 15:1-16:23; 16:25-27
p61 (?), B, C, D, 1739, et al
2.
1:1-14:23; 16:25-27; 15:1-16:23; 16:25-27
A, P, 5, 33, 104
3.
1:1-14:23; 16:25-27; 15:1-16:24
Ψ, the “majority3’ text, syh
4.
1:1-14:23; 15:1-16:24
F, G, 629, [archetype of D?]
5.
1:1-15:33; 16:25-27; 16:1-23
p46
Since a doxology generally closes a letter, the presence of the doxology after Rom.
14 or chapter 15 could indicate that the letter at one time ended at one or the other of these points. And this possibility is increased by other evidence.
1. Several MSS of the Latin Vulgate omit Rom. 15:1-16:23 entirely.
2. Another codex of the Vulgate (Amiatinus), while containing 15:1-16:24, omits the section summaries from this section.
3. Tertullian, Ireneus, and Cyprian fail to refer to chapters 15 and 16 in places where they may have been expected to, if they had a sixteen-chapter form of the text.
These data suggest that a fourteen-chapter form of Romans was extant in the early church, which some scholars conclude was the original version. Noting that a few mSs (G and the OL g) omit reference to Rome in Rom. 1:7 and 1:15 (and Paul never mentions a particular destination elsewhere in chs. 1-14), they argue that Paul first wrote chapters 1-14 as a general doctrinal treatise and later added chapters 15-16 when he sent this treatise to Rome. 17 This reconstruction is unlikely. The close connection between chapters 14 and 15 makes it impossible to think that 14 ever existed without at least the first part of 15. 18 How, then, did the fourteen-chapter recension of Romans come into existence? Lightfoot suggests that Paul himself may have abbreviated his letter to the Romans in order to universalize the epistle. 19 But this still fails to explain the abrupt break between chapters 14 and 15. 20 The same objection applies to Gamble’s theory that the text was shortened after Paul’s time in order to make the letter more univerally applicable. 21 Perhaps the best explanation is also the earliest: that Marcion was responsible for cutting off the last two chapters of the letter. 22 Given his biases against the Old Testament, Marcion may been unhappy with the Old Testament quotations in 15:3 and 15:9-12 and considered that 15:1 was the most convenient place to make the break.
In recent decades, however, some scholars have thought that Paul’s letter to the Romans did not include Rom. 16. The placement of the doxology after chapter 15 in the early and important MS p 46 suggests that some form of the letter may have ended there, and the contents of chapter 16, it is alleged, make it unlikely that it could have been addressed to the church in Rome. Nothing in chapters 1-15 has prepared us for the warning about false teachers in 16:17-20. But more important is the fact that Paul in chapter 16 greets twenty-five individuals by name, two families, one house church and an unspecified number of "brothers” and "saints.” All this to a church he has never visited! Surely, it is argued, we must conclude that chapter 16 was originally an independent letter—perhaps a commendatory letter for Phoebe 23—or was tacked on when Paul sent his Romans letter to the church in Ephesus. 24
This thesis rests on rather shaky ground. There is no direct textual evidence at all for a fifteen-chapter form of the letter. Warnings about false teachers are by no means out of keeping with passages such as Rom. 3:8, and Paul often includes such a last-minute reminder in his letters. 25 Nor are the number of greetings in chapter 16 incompatible with a Roman destination. Many of those greeted may have been, like Priscilla and Aquila, Jewish Christians who had been forced to flee Rome and who met Paul in the course of his travels. What more natural than that believers from Rome would have spent their enforced exile in the kind of Roman-influenced cities of the East in which Paul was busy establishing churches?
We have, then, good grounds for concluding that Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians contained all sixteen chapters. 26 Whether the doxology should be included at the end of chapter 16 is another question. Although omitted entirely in only a few MSS, its varied placement suggests that it may have been added to round off one of the recensions of the letter in the early church. 26 Moreover, a concluding doxology is unparalleled in the letters of Paul, and the language of this one is said to be un-Pauline. But these arguments are not conclusive, 28 and we think it likely that Rom. 16:25-27 was Paul’s own conclusion to this letter.