CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 33
Paul and Roman Christianity
1. Jews and Christians in Rome
“The romans had embraced the faith of christ, albeit according to the Jewish rite, although they saw no sign of mighty works nor any of the apostles.”1 So wrote the anonymous fourth-century Latin commentator on Paul, whom by tradition and for convenience we call Ambrosiaster, in the preface to his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. By his time2 the Romans as a whole had “embraced the faith of Christ”, but when the faith of Christ was first embraced in Rome those who professed it formed a tiny minority of the city’s population. Even so, the preface as a whole suggests that Ambrosiaster had access to a reliable tradition about the origin of Roman Christianity and more particularly about the Jewish milieu in which it arose. The tradition of the Roman church claims the apostles Peter and Paul as joint-founders,3 but the scanty evidence that we have confirms Ambrosiaster’s testimony that Christianity came to Rome before any apostle was seen in the city.
The beginnings of the Jewish community in Rome should probably be dated not long after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Rome and the Hasmonaean regime in Judaea about the middle of the second century B.C.4 Its numbers were greatly augmented after the incorporation of Judaea in the Roman Empire in 63 B.C. and Pompey’s triumph two years later. When Cicero, in 59 B.C., was defending Lucius Valerius Flaccus in Rome against the charge of having hindered the conveyance of the temple-tax to Jerusalem during his proconsulship of Asia, he lowered his voice dramatically at one point so as not to be overheard by the Jews outside the court-room, “for you know”, he explained confidentially to the jury, “how numerous they are and how clannish, and how they can make their influence felt”.5 This was rhetorical exaggeration, but it exaggerated a situation with which his hearers were acquainted. By the beginning of the Christian era, it is estimated, the Jews of Rome numbered between 40,000 and 60,000.6
Our knowledge of the Jews of Rome is derived not only from contemporary literary sources but also from the study of six Jewish catacombs, three of which—one on the Via Portuensis (the Monteverde catacomb), one on the Via Appia, and one on the Via Nomentana—have supplied specially valuable information.7 No Jewish synagogue from the imperial period has yet been excavated in Rome, but the names of eleven are known from inscriptions.8 Apart from the synagogue of the Olive Tree, which has already been mentioned,9 some took their names from the districts where they were situated (like the synagogues of the Campenses and Suburrenses),10 from the places from which their members originally came (like that of the Tripolitani),11 or from patrons (like those of the Augustenses and Agrippenses).12 The synagogue of the Hebrews, in Rome as in Corinth,13 may have been so called because the services were conducted in Hebrew.
A public scandal within the Jewish community in A.D. 19 brought about its expulsion from Rome by decree of the Emperor Tiberius.14 Four Jews persuaded a wealthy Roman proselyte, Fulvia by name, to make a munificent gift to the Jerusalem temple but they misappropriated it. This was the kind of scandal that Paul had in mind when he said that the name of the God of Israel was blasphemed among the pagans because of his worshippers’ behaviour.15 But in a few years the Jews of Rome were as numerous as ever.
Claudius, at the beginning of his principate, found the imperial peace troubled by disturbances in Jewish communities here and there throughout the empire—pre-eminently in Egypt but also, it appears, in Rome. He tried to deal with the troubles in Rome by placing restrictions on Jewish communal activities16 but eight years later17 took the drastic step of expelling the Jews from Rome—an expulsion which had repercussions, as we have seen, on Paul’s missionary activity at the time in Macedonia and Achaia, especially in his forming a lifelong friendship with two of the refugees, Priscilla and Aquila.18
According to Suetonius, writing seventy years after the event, the reason for this expulsion was the persistent rioting in which the Roman Jews were involved “at the instigation of Chrestus” (impulsore Chresto).19
This is usually (and probably rightly) interpreted as the earliest indication we have of the arrival of Christianity in Rome. It is not a certain interpretation: Chrestus was a common enough slave-name. But if the reference were to an otherwise unknown Chrestus, Suetonius would probably have said impulsore Chresto quodam (“at the instigation of one Chrestus”). The form of words he uses points to a well-known bearer of the name, and the common confusion between Christus and Chrestus (which by this time were homophones in Greek) makes it easy to suppose that Christ is meant. We cannot readily think that “Christ” is here used in the sense of “Messiah”, as though the reference were to some kind of messianic dispute in the Jewish community, with no necessary involvement of Jesus of Nazareth: Christus (or Chrestus) was not current in Latin paganism in that sense. This in itself would rule out Robert Eisler’s fantasy that Simon Magus is meant,20 quite apart from the absence of evidence that Simon made messianic claims. It is most likely that Suetonius had in mind the well-known Christus (or Chrestus)—well-known, that is, as the founder of the Christiani (or Chrestiani).21 True, the natural implication of his words is that this man was actually in Rome during the principate of Claudius, stirring up disorders within the Jewish community.22 Perhaps Suetonius understood his source in this sense; he did not take as much trouble to verify his chronology as did his contemporary Tacitus, who knew that Christ was executed in the principate of Tiberius.23 The disorders may have arisen in the Jewish community because of the recent arrival in its midst of disciples of Jesus.
One thing seems clear from other evidence—that Roman Christianity was originally Jewish, and Jewish of a nonconformist stamp. As late as the first quarter of the third century, Christian practice in Rome, to judge by the manual of church order (the so-called Apostolic Tradition) associated with the name of Hippolytus, was characterized by features derived from Jewish nonconformity;24 hence Ambrosiaster’s qualification of primitive Roman Christianity as being “according to the Jewish rite”.
Who first brought Christianity to Rome is unknown. It has sometimes been thought that there is a special significance in Luke’s including among those who listened to Peter’s preaching in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost “visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes” (Acts 2:10); but nothing is said in that context which would help us to decide whether any of those believed his message or, if so, whether any of them took it back to Rome. In the normal course of travel, however, the gospel was bound to be carried to Rome sooner rather than later, and in the first instance by Jewish believers.
Another thing that seems clear is this: Priscilla and Aquila, who had left Italy because of Claudius’s edict of expulsion shortly before they met Paul in Corinth,25 appear to have been Christians already. Paul nowhere calls them his children in the Lord or implies in any way that they were converts of his.
It may be that the reminder to the recipients of the Epistle to the Hebrews of the “former days” when they were exposed to affliction and public abuse and “joyfully accepted” the plundering of their property (Hebrews 10:32–34) is an allusion to events in Rome in A. D. 49.26 But the Roman destination of this “epistle” is itself speculative (however reasonable)27 and should not be treated as though it provided evidence on which to base further speculations.
If there were Gentile Christians in Rome before A.D. 49, they would not be affected by the emperor’s edict, but we have no indication that there were any. Eight years later, however, the situation was quite different.
2. Gentile Christians in Rome
Too much weight should not be laid in this connexion on the interesting case of Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, conqueror of Britain. Tacitus reports that in A.D. 57 this lady was charged with “foreign superstition” and was brought, in accordance with Roman tradition, before a family court, over which her husband presided. She was acquitted of the charge.28 Nothing in this report suggests that the “foreign superstition” was Christianity. One commentator on Tacitus remarks, with reference to the statement that she wore mourning for forty years, that “the retirement and sobriety of a Christian might well appear a kind of ‘perpetual mourning’ to the dissolute society of the Neronian period”.29 But Tacitus says quite explicitly that this mourning was due to the murder, fourteen years previously, of her kinswoman Livia Julia, at the instigation of the Empress Messalina.30 If she wore mourning for forty years in all, she lived on into the principate of Domitian (A.D. 81–96).
A stronger reason for associating Pomponia with Christianity than Tacitus’s report about the “foreign superstition” is the evidence that, by the end of the second century, some members of her family (the gens Pomponia) were Christians. The Cemetery of Callistus by the Appian Way, one of the oldest Christian catacombs in Rome, contains inscriptions of this period commemorating members of that family, one of whom bore the name Pomponius Graecinus.31 But even from this we cannot infer with any assurance that Pomponia Graecina was a Christian four or five generations earlier.
For this same year (A.D. 57) we have, however, much more positive evidence for the state of Christianity in Rome, in Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. Paul makes it plain that Gentile as well as Jewish believers are included in “all God’s beloved ones in Rome, saints by calling”, to whom his letter is addressed (Romans 1:7). Whether by this time they outnumbered their Jewish brethren in the city is uncertain, but Paul finds it necessary to warn them not to give themselves airs as though it were due to some superior merit of theirs that they were enrolled among the people of God when so many natural descendants of Abraham had declined to be so enrolled.32
3. The organization of Roman Christianity
Why does Paul address his letter “to all God’s beloved ones in Rome, saints by calling” and not “to the church of God which is in Rome” (following the precedent, say, of his Corinthian letters)? We cannot infer forthwith that there was no church in Rome organized on a city-wide basis. The letter to the Philippians is addressed not to the church at Philippi but “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons” (Philippians 1:1), but that does not preclude us from speaking of the church in Philippi. Indeed, the addition of the “bishops and deacons” implies a well-administered church, and when Paul, thanking the Philippian Christians for a gift, recalls a time when, as he says, “no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only” (Philippians 4:15), he makes it explicitly dear that he regarded them as a church. “The saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae” to whom another Pauline letter is sent (Colossians 1:2) are not expressly called a church,33 but they were evidently as much one as the sister “church of the Laodiceans” (Colossians 4:16), the more so as the Christian community at Colossae, like those in the other cities of the Lycus valley, appears to have been planted by one man, Paul’s colleague Epaphras (Colossians 1:7; 4:12 f.).34
If it is doubtful whether there was one centrally administered church in Rome, this is not simply because the Christians there are not called a church, but rather because of the probabilities of the situation together with the evidence of Paul’s letter. On the one hand, he expected that his letter would reach all the Roman Christians,35 but it is unlikely that he thought of a single occasion when they would all hear it read together. Perhaps Phoebe carried it from one house-church to another.36
The Christians in Rome appear at this time to hare met as groups in house-churches or other local meeting-places. Some of the Jewish Christians may still have counted themselves as adherents of one or another of the Jewish synagogues. The time was fast approaching when they would no longer be able to maintain a foot in either camp, so to speak, but some were not disposed to sever their connexion with the synagogue until they were compelled to do so. This was perhaps the situation of the group addressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. They had come to faith in Christ several years before the time at which this document was written (c. A.D. 63)37 and had endured considerable persecution in consequence. But they were not willing to burn their boats and identify themselves irrevocably with Christ and his people, whom the synagogue as an institution had by now repudiated, to exchange the security of a collegium licitum for the uncertainty involved in a fellowship which enjoyed no such protection. Hence the urgency of the unknown writer’s call to them: “let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing the stigma that attaches to his name” (Hebrews 13:13).
4. Evidence of the greetings in Romans 16
The Roman destination of the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot, however, be taken for granted. This must be said also of the destination of the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul sends greetings by name to twenty-six individuals and five households or house-churches, in view of the weighty arguments which have moved many exegetes to ascribe an Ephesian destination to it.38 But two general points may be made.
First, Paul was not in the habit of sending personal greetings to members of a church with which he was well acquainted. The only other letter in which he sends personal greetings is that to the Colossians. He had not himself visited the church of Colossae, but he had met elsewhere one or two people who were now resident in Colossae (Nympha and Archippus, for example)39 and he sends greetings to them by name, knowing that others in the church would not wonder why they were not mentioned (which might very well happen if he sent personal greetings to some members of the church in Corinth or Ephesus and not to others). So, in view of the ease of travel throughout the Roman world of Paul’s day and the fact that all roads led to Rome, it was but natural that many people whom Paul had met in other places should now be resident in Rome (including Epaenetus, his first convert in the province of Asia)40 and that he should send his personal greetings to them and to others of whom he had heard, without risk of causing offence to those whom he had never met and who were unknown to him even by name.
Second, a number of the names of people to whom these greetings are sent are better attested at Rome than at Ephesus. This is largely due to the much larger number of inscriptions available from Rome than from Ephesus; in any case it is, for the most part, the names and not the individuals that are well attested at Rome. (Such a name as Urbanus, occurring in Rom. 16:9, immediately bespeaks an association with the urbs.)
To come to particulars, greetings are sent, among others, to “those in the Lord who belong to the household of Narcissus” (Romans 16:11). This Narcissus has been commonly identified with Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, a wealthy freedman of the Emperor Tiberius, who exercised great influence under Claudius but was executed at the instance of Agrippina soon after Nero’s accession in A.D. 54.41 His goods being confiscated, his slaves and retainers would pass into the imperial household, being distinguished from other groups in that household by the additional designation Narcissiani. Paul’s greetings may have been intended for Christians among those Narcissiani. We have no idea, of course, how he would know, or know of, members of the Narcissiani. But if the tentative identification is right, these were certainly “saints in Caesar’s household” and may have been among those so described whose greetings are sent by Paul to the church of Philippi (Philippians 4:22).
Another group of “saints in Caesar’s household” has been tentatively identified in “those who belong to the household of Aristobulus”, to whom Paul sends greetings in Romans 16:10. Aristobulus was a name particularly common in the Herod family. One Herodian of that name, a younger brother of the elder Agrippa (and called after their ill-fated father), lived in Rome as a private citizen and, like his brother, enjoyed the friendship of Claudius.42 If he bequeathed his property to the emperor, then his slaves too would pass into the imperial household and be distinguished as Aristobuliani. But we do not know that he bequeathed his property to the emperor, although such an action would be not at all unprecedented. It could then be more than a mere coincidence that the next person to whom Paul sends greetings bears the name of Herodion. Paul calls Herodion his “kinsman”, meaning probably a fellow-Christian of Jewish birth.43
Two other Christian groups are identified by the mention of several of their members by name. They are (first) “Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brethren who are with them” (verse 14) and (next) “Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them” (verse 15). In the former group the name Patrobas will remind the reader of Tacitus’s Histories that Nero had an influential and unpopular freedman called Patrobius,44 of which Patrobas is an abbreviated form: the Christian Patrobas was conceivably a dependent of Nero’s Patrobius.45 The name Hermas (an abbreviation of Hermagoras, Hermodorus, Hermogenes or the like) was common enough: a generation or two later it was borne by another Roman Christian, the author of the very popular Shepherd.46 Roman ecclesiastical tradition, as far back as the fourth century, gives the name Nereus to a Christian of the last decade of the first century who, with his companion Achilleus, was associated with Flavia Domitilla, niece of the Emperor Domitian, after whom the Cemetery of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina is named.47 (This cemetery, incidentally, contains burying-places of Christian members of the gens Aurelia bearing the cognomen Ampliatus, a name appearing in Romans 16:8.).48 In the latter group Philologus and Julia may have been husband and wife or (like another pair mentioned in the same list) brother and sister. Julia’s name suggests some association with the imperial household. It is remarkable, indeed, how many names occurring in Romans 16:5–15 are found on inscriptions as names of members of the imperial household, though community of name is no evidence for identity of person.
Then we note at the head of the greetings a reference to Priscilla (or Prisca, as Paul regularly calls her) and Aquila, together with “the church in their house” (verses 3–5a). Since they left Italy when Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome, there is nothing surprising in their return to the capital when the expulsion edict had lapsed. True, when last they were mentioned by Paul (1 Corinthians 16:19) they were still in Ephesus, to which they had gone with him from Corinth; but Paul’s departure from Ephesus may have been their cue to go back to Rome. Their return, indeed, could have been connected with Paul’s own plan to visit Rome as soon as possible,49 and in any case it is to be expected that they would keep in touch with Paul by letter or otherwise. As they accommodated a Christian congregation in their house in Ephesus, so they did also in Rome. As for Epaenetus, Paul’s first Asian convert, to whom he sends greetings immediately after greeting Priscilla and Aquila (verse 5b), he may well have attached himself to those two and accompanied them on their return to Rome.
The inclusion among those greeted by name of Andronicus and Junias (or possibly the feminine Junia) raises interesting questions—not only because Paul claims them as kinsfolk and fellow-prisoners but even more so because he says that they are “of note among the apostles” and “were in Christ before me” (verse 7). They must have been very early Christians if they were Christians before Paul, and if their being “of note among the apostles” implies not merely that they were well known to the apostles but that they were in some sense apostles themselves, what does this mean? Perhaps they were among the five hundred and more to whom on one occasion the risen Christ appeared; J. B. Lightfoot hinted (he was too cautious to do more) that they could have been among the visitors from Rome who heard Peter preach in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.50
As for “Rufus, eminent in the Lord” (verse 13), mention has already been made of the possible implication of his coincidence in name with one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene.51 If these greetings were sent to Rome by Paul, and the Gospel of Mark was written a few years later for the Christians in Rome, the possibility that one and the same Rufus is meant in both documents becomes almost a probability.
The impression given by these greetings is of a decentralized Christian community in Rome—indeed, the word “community” may be more a spiritual interpretation than a practical fact. The various groups may have differed one from another in outlook, not to speak of differences in outlook within any one group. The Pauline understanding of the gospel was probably fostered especially in the house-church which enjoyed the hospitality of Priscilla and Aquila. One scholar has identified elsewhere in the letter to the Romans evidence of five different outlooks among the potential readers, with special reference to being strong or weak in faith and adopting various attitudes towards debatable aspects of Christian conduct such as observance of certain days or avoidance of certain foods, and various attitudes, also, towards fellow-Christians taking a different line in these matters.52 This correlation cannot be established in any thorough-going way. Paul was certainly aware of differences in attitude and practice which might set up tensions if brotherly consideration were not exercised; this is why he urges all the groups so earnestly to give one another the same welcome as they had all received from Christ, “for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Thus a sense of spiritual unity would be fostered.
But if Paul found the Roman Christians decentralized in organization, he did little to centralize them in this way; indeed, had he wished to do any such thing, his opportunities were limited. And half a century after his coming to Rome the evidence of Ignatius and Hermas is that the Roman church was still less centralized than many other churches were by that time: it was not yet organized under the administrative authority of a single bishop.53
5. Evidence of the letter to the Philippians
Our uncertainty regarding the Roman destination of some New Testament documents is matched by our uncertainty regarding the Roman provenance of others. Paul’s “prison epistles” have traditionally been dated during his Roman captivity but we have seen that, for some of them at least, an Ephesian or Caesarean provenance has been defended.
If the “saints in Caesar’s household” whose greetings are sent to the Philippian church were Roman Christians, as seems most probable, then it is in Rome also that we may most naturally seek the praetorium throughout which, according to Philippians 1:13, it was generally known that Paul’s imprisonment was for Christ’s sake. (It has been argued by some students that the Epistle to the Philippians as we have it comprises more than one letter sent by Paul to his friends in Philippi,54 and this possibility should be kept in mind, even if it does run counter to “bibliographical probability”.)55 Of all the possible meanings of praetorium, the most appropriate in this context is “praetorian guard”. The praetorian guard was the emperor’s personal bodyguard, and since Paul by his appeal had placed himself at the emperor’s disposal it was natural that the soldiers who had charge of him in his lodgings, relieving one another in succession, should be drawn from the praetorian guard. Few of those soldiers had ever come across a man like Paul before, and each of them would quickly learn what had brought him to Rome.
Not only the praetorian guard, but “all the rest”, says Paul, had come to know the reason for his imprisonment—“all the rest” meaning, probably, all those who were in any way concerned with arrangements to be made for the eventual hearing of his case.
Moreover, the fact that Paul, despite the conditions of his house-arrest, was able to preach the gospel freely to all who came to see him encouraged many other Christians in Rome to bear witness more boldly than they had done before, so that Paul’s coming to Rome had in every way worked for the advance of the gospel in the city. Not that this advance was consistently promoted in a spirit of co-operation with Paul; the differences in outlook among the various groups of Christians in Rome meant that some groups were less sympathetic to Paul than others: some, in fact, were downright antipathetic. So much may be gathered from Paul’s own words that, while some preached Christ in a spirit of good will, counting themselves as his friends and partners, others did so in a spirit of envy and rivalry, with no worthier motive than to rub salt into his wounds, to add to the sense of frustration which he might well feel in his restricted situation. But Paul reacts in a spirit of contented relaxation: what mattered was that Christ was being proclaimed, whether from worthy or unworthy motives—“and in that,” he says, “I rejoice” (Philippians 1:15–18).
This is a far cry from the anathema which he invoked on those trouble–makers who, several years earlier, had invaded his Galatian mission-field and taught “a different gospel” to his converts there. True, his ill-wishers in Rome were not intruding into a sphere which was not their own, and it is not suggested that there was anything defective or subversive in the content of their preaching; even so, Paul has recognizably mellowed and manifests more of the “meekness and gentleness of Christ” than he was able to do when he invoked those qualities in his remonstrance with disaffected members of the Corinthian church.56 Perhaps his two years of imprisonment at Caesarea, followed by his present house-arrest in Rome, had taught him new lessons in patience.
For there was no way of knowing how long he would remain under house-arrest, or when he would be summoned to appear before Caesar. He more than half expected that when he did appear, the outcome would be favourable: many friends, in Rome and Philippi and elsewhere, were praying for this, and he was convinced that for the welfare of his converts and the furtherance of the gospel his acquittal and release would be desirable.57 If he had his own preference alone to consult, he was not so sure: it would be “far better” for him to set out on his last journey and be at home “with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). It was difficult for him to choose between the two; happily, the choice was not his, and his prayer was that, one way or the other, Christ would be glorified.58
6. Evidence of the letter to the Colossians
At this stage the relevance of the letter to the Colossians to Paul’s stay in Rome must be viewed as quite uncertain. But if this letter was indeed sent from Rome it is necessary to take account of the implication of the final greetings in which Paul names Aristarchus, Mark (“the cousin of Barnabas”) and Jesus surnamed Justus as the only men of Jewish birth who are with him at the time as “fellow-workers for the kingdom of God”—men, he adds, who “have been a comfort to me” (Colossians 4:10 f.). He has other companions who are of Gentile origin,59 but no other “men of the circumcision” apart from Timothy, whose name is coupled with his own in the initial salutation of the letter.60 This language may point, as J. B. Lightfoot thought, to the “antagonism of the converts from the Circumcision in the metropolis”61 and could be related to Paul’s mention, in writing to the Philippians, of those who “proclaim Christ out of partisanship” (Philippians 1:17).
Of the three Jewish Christians whom Paul names, Jesus surnamed Justus is mentioned nowhere else. Aristarchus, who is here described as “my fellow-prisoner”, had come with Paul to Rome, and may at this time have been sharing his house-arrest.62 The reference to Mark is of special interest, as his path and Paul’s had not crossed, so far as the records inform us, since the day that Barnabas took Mark and set sail with him from Syrian Antioch to Cyprus after Paul’s refusal to have him a second time as a missionary adjutant.63 Second-century tradition links Mark with Rome, more particularly in association with Peter.64
One way of reconstructing the situation which brought Mark to Rome is to suppose that, shortly after the return of Jews to the city about the year 54, Peter, accompanied by Mark, paid his first visit to Rome to help the Christian members of the Jewish community to re-establish their identity and witness.65 By the time of Paul’s writing to the Roman Christians at the beginning of A.D. 57 Peter, and probably Mark, had left the city; but Mark came back from time to time to maintain contacts with Jewish believers in Rome, and was paying one of these visits at the time when Paul wrote to the Colossians. While Paul had looked on Mark with a critical eye at one time, it is good to observe that now he includes him among the men who had proved a “comfort” to him.66 Mark no doubt had matured first under the wise and sympathetic guidance of Barnabas and then as aide-de-camp to Peter; and, as we have noted already, Paul for his part had mellowed.
But the question of a Roman provenance for the letter to the Colossians requires an examination of the companion letter to Philemon.