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  • From: Lee Dahn <lee_dahn AT yahoo.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Corpus-Paul] RE: The audience of Romans
  • Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:04:46 -0700 (PDT)

Antti,

You said:
you admit that 1.7 "seems to indicate that 'all the believers [including Jewish ones]' 
are addressed." You,
 however, think that it is important to "recognize additional comments" 
what Paul means in 1:7. But, don't you think that it is pretty iffy to redefine meanings of such 
words which do not conform to our views? My impression is that you turn "all" into "all Gentile 
Christians" because
 "all" just cannot refer to every believer in Rome, according to your opinion. 
I, instead, would like to give words their full weight.
 
My response:
I am not against giving words their full weight.  Another text might help explain what 
I mean.  Mt3.5: “Then went out to [John] Jerusalem and all [PASA] Judea and all [PASA] 
the region about the Jordan  Are we to take PASA to mean “every single Judean, et al” there?  
Of course not.  The context dictates what is meant there.  I am saying that it is incredibly 
irresponsible to hinge the conclusion that Paul must have been writing to a mixed audience 
on the single term PASIN without view to the immediate context (which I have shown suggests 
a Gentile audience).  I am not trying to make words conform to my own view, as you suggest.  
I am trying to make sense of the text given the text itself.
 
On Rom7:

I realize that you deny Stowers’ logic and interpretation of Rom7.  But, do you suggest that Stowers has misunderstood Quntillian, Cicero, Theon, etc. as well?  Their writings and teachings on PROSOPOPOIIA seems to support my (Stowers’) reading of Rom7.  I don’t really see any conflicting interpretation coming from Origen, either.  He doesn’t read Rom7 as autobiographical, and explicitly uses PROSOPOPOIIA language to describe it.  The point is that Rom7 was recognized as PROSOPOPOIIA by those familiar with the rhetorical device.  Does that not speak for something?  Your Mr. Anderson seems to dismiss this reading too easily, suggesting that diatribe “always” was “immediately identifiable”.  Really?  ALWAYS?  If this is so, then why are the grammarians (i.e., Quintillian, Cicero, et al) critiquing each other (even Homer) and teaching the various ways of reading and writing diatribe?  Why are they explicitly educating against ambiguous diatribe habits?  There were obviously differing habits concerning, even differing schools of thought on, diatribe.  I’m not prepared to dismiss the interpretation when rhetoricians contemporary (or predating) to Paul explicitly taught and wrote in the same manner and language as Paul, or rather vice versa.

 

Lee Dahn

Houston, Tx

 



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