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Subject: Corpus-Paul

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  • From: "Jim Hester" <hester AT jasper.uor.edu>
  • To: Corpus Paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Roman churches
  • Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 11:45:41 -0800


The list has been quiet lately but now I am in need of some expert help, so
I have decided to interrupt your post-holiday recuperation period and seek
some info.

Does anyone has a sense of where Paul's letter to the churches in Rome would
have been read? My experience in walking around the houses in Pompei and
poking around the ruins at Ostia Antica leads to me to reckon that the
average Roman domicile wouldn't have meeting room for more than 20 - 30
people. Ancient synagogues I have seen in Israel, etc., suggest
accommodations for not a lot more people than that. John White's new book,
The Apostle of God, makes the argument that Paul understood the church to be
a single entity even though it was gathered in house churches, but for me
rhetorical criticism suggests that a speaker would have to account for the
diversity of audiences in a situation where a speech might be heard in
different material contexts, thus raising the issue of the presence of
contigency even within one text. And, although the rhetorical situation
would not materially change -- pace Neil Elliott -- the argumentative
situation would, thus leaving the speaker with even a more complex
inventional task if the speech, or letter in this case, was repeated in
different places to slightly different audiences.

The question occurred to me while reading Hays's review of Stowers on
Re-reading Romans. I would find it difficult to argue for a single
audience, encoded or otherwise, for Romans given the presumption that Phoebe
had to trundle around Roman meeting with at least 5(?) different groups in
order to read them Paul's letter.

What do you all think?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Hester "Never be afraid to try something new.
736 Buckingham Drive Remember, amateurs built the ark.
Redlands, CA 92374 Professionals built the Titanic."
(909) 792-0533
hester AT uor.edu http://rhetjournal.uor.edu




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