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  • From: "Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Was Romans written from Ephesus?
  • Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 15:58:12 -0500

At 01:28 PM 1/24/04 -0800, Richard Fellows wrote:
>thanks for questioning the Corinthian provenance of Romans. The evidence for
>Corinth is indeed weak, but I don't think Ephesus is a better bet. Here's
>why:

Thanks for your thoughtful comments; I'll try to address them.

>1. Romans must have been written at least several months after 1 Corinthians
>because Prisca and Aquila were in Ephesus at the time of 1 Cor, and in Rome
>at the time of Rom. Time must be allowed for Prisca and Aquila to travel to
>Rome, to start a church in their house, and for the news of this to reach
>Paul. I doubt that all this could have happened in the interval between the
>writing of 1 Cor and Paul's departure from Ephesus. Paul probably wrote 1
>Cor around Passover, and left Ephesus at Pentecost (1 Cor 16:8). This is a
>period of only a few weeks. We have no evidence that Paul cancelled his
>travel plan of 1 Cor 16:5-8.

Why do you think that 1 Cor. was written around Passover? But in any
case, Michael B. Thompson's chart of travel times in this "Holy Internet"
chapter (p. 61) in Bauckham's GOSPEL FOR ALL CHRISTIANS, indicates that
"average" travel times from Ephesus to Corinth/Cenchreae is 6-10 days plus
another 10-25 days to get to Rome from Corinth/Cenchreae, which is well
within the 7 weeks between Passover and Pentecost. (Return travel from
Rome is faster due to the winds (7-14 days to Corinths, then 4-7 days to
Ephesus.) Furthermore, Paul's asking for greetings to be sent to Prisca
and Aquila need not imply Paul's actual knowledge they have arrived safely
rather than his anticipation of it. The time involved would be even less
of a issue if Prisca and Aquila were the ones to have delivered 1 Cor. on
their way to Rome.

>2. Timothy was with Paul when Romans was written. At the time of 1 Cor
>Timothy was taking the land route to Corinth via Macedonia. Now, Acts 19:22
>mentions this journey of Timothy from Ephesus to Macedonia, and simply says
>that Paul sent Timothy and Erastus to Macedonia while Paul stayed in Ephesus
>a while longer. This seems to exclude the possibility that Timothy returned
>to Paul in Ephesus. So Timothy was not in Ephesus after 1 Cor, and Prisca
>and Aquila were not in Rome before 1 Cor. Therefore, I don't think Romans
>can have been written from Ephesus. Of course, one could hypothesise that
>Paul sent Timothy to Macedonia twice, and that Acts 19:22 represents a
>different journey, but one should not multiply entities lightly.

It's not clear to me from 1 Cor. 16:10 that Timothy is already on-route,
only that Paul was intending to have Timothy depart Ephesus and arrive
in Corinth before him. In my scenario, Timothy does not return to Paul
in Ephesus, but that Romans is written around the time of Timothy's
departure from Ephesus.

>3. As Michael Pahl points out, Phoebe was from Cenchreae, and this makes it
>more likely that Romans was written from Achaia.

I've responded to Michael, suggesting that Paul's companions were mobile and
sending letters is not infrequently based on opportunism with other people's
travel plans. But, if the idea that Phoebe is unlikely to have been in
Ephesus
is still a stumbling block, another possibility is that Phoebe is the one who
delivered Romans on the second leg from the busy port of Cenchreae to Rome.
Someone else would have delivered the letter from Ephesus to Cenchreae,
and that person would have commended Phoebe to Paul for the second leg.

>4. Sosipater is probably the Sopater of Acts 20:4 so an Achaian provenance
>for Romans is preferred.

If Sosipater = Sopater, then Acts 20:4 is certainly consistent with an
Achaean/Corinthian origin for Romans, but it does not exclude the Ephesian
origin since Acts does not tell us the whereabouts of Sosipater earlier.
Also, the equation of Sosipater and Sopater is not exactly water-tight.

>5. If Romans was written from Ephesus we would expect Paul to send greetings
>from Sosthenes, who was there and was prominent enough to be the co-sender
>of 1 Corinthians.

I couldn't find *any* co-sender of the Pauline letters sending greetings.

>6. If Romans was written from Ephesus we would expect Gaius (Rom 16:23) to
>send greetings to the Corinthians in 1 Cor, since Gaius, like Prisca and
>Aquila, had been a Corinthian (1 Cor 1:14).

Perhaps, if the greetings of Gaius is not subsumed in 1 Cor. 16:19a ("The
churches of Asia send greetings.").

>But there are some problems with the common assumption that Romans was
>written from Corinth. As you point out, Stephen, 1 Cor 1:14 probably
>indicates that Gaius had left Corinth. Furthermore, I am struck by the lack
>of Corinthians mentioned in Romans 16, where we read only of Tertius,
>Erastus, and Quartus. Why is there no mention of Stephanas or Titius Justus?
>For these reasons Cenchreae is a better guess than Corinth, I think. It
>seems to meet all the criteria.

Plus Phoebe.

>Stephen, you made some interesting observations on Rom 15:26-28, indicating
>that the collection in Achaia may not have been complete when Romans was
>written. Does this suggest that the letter was not written in the spring, as
>is normally supposes, but was written before the close of sailing the
>previous season? You are proposing that Romans should be brought forward to
>a time when the collection was not yet complete, but is it really necessary
>to being it all the way back to Ephesus? Could we not just being it forward
>by a few months, and leave it in Achaia?

My observations on Rom. 15:26-28 permit Romans to be written earlier than
commonly throught. The evidence for that is logically independent of whether
an earlier Romans was written back in Ephesus or a little bit earlier in
Cenchreae, if we had reason to believe that Paul stayed in Cenchreae
before arriving in Corinth.

>I do not see an excessive number of Asians in Rom 16. Prisca and Aquila were
>from Rome, and it is not surprising that they should return there after the
>death of Claudius, and after Nero repealed some of his decrees. Prisca and
>Aquila were important believers and had lived in both Corinth and Ephesus.
>Their mention in Rom 16 tells us nothing about where Romans was written
>from, as far as I can tell.

What about Epaenetus, prominently listed as the first-fruit of Asia
(Rom. 16:5)? But we probably weigh the importance of Phoebe and
Epaenetus differently.

>Your thoughts?

See above. Somewhat tangential but in connection with Cenchreae, Acts
tells us that Paul cut his hair in Cenchreae when he left Corinth earlier
because he was under a vow (18:18). This is usually understood as a
Nazirite vow, and Num. 6 indicates that the hair is cut due to contact
with a corpse, so who died?

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Weblog: http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/hypotyposeis/blogger.html
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35




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