Corpus-Paul

[Bob MacDonald <bobmacdonald AT shaw.ca>]

Justin
(please excuse me for jumping in - Loren will have his say
too I expect)

Mark Nanos, The Mystery of Romans 1996, gives a brief
overview (chapter 2) of a Judaism in Rome in the year 57. He
notes considerable interest in (pro and con) Jews and the
Jewish beliefs in the surrounding culture of the time.

People who may have been in the assembly when the letter was
read could have been
-Jews who had not believed the message of Christ,
-Jews who had believed (Prisca, Aquila, Andronicus and
Junia - perhaps the Joanna of the gospels per Richard
Bauckham in Gospel Women),
-proselytes
-Gentile converts to Judaism,
-God-fearers of various backgrounds,
-Greeks who had believed the message of Christ (Epaenetus),
-and other interested Gentiles

If the letter is addressed to "all God's beloved in Rome" -
i.e. not a "church", then I do not see this as excluding any
of the above. I do not know whether chapter 16 belongs to
Rome or Ephesus; the consensus seems to be Rome.

E.g. Nanos page 69: Both formalized Christianity and
rabbinic Judaism found it necessary to seek to define
themselves "over against" each other in the second century
and thereafter, which further suggests that the umbilical
cord may not have been cut earlier, certainly not as early
as Paul's letter to Rome between 55-58 C.E.

re the weak and the strong, the repetition in chapter 14 of
these words in chapter 4 as applied to Abraham gives
substance to the recapitulation - Paul chooses his words
carefully - can God raise us from the dead as Isaac was so
raised in a figure? This weak and strong prelude re Abraham
in chapter 4 finds its power in the instruction not to judge
one another first approached in chapters 1 and 2, and taken
up again in chapter 14. Nanos further suggests that Paul's
letter had the desired unifying effect. For him, the letter
centres around the Shema cited by allusion in 3.30.

Of all the historical reconstructions of Romans, I cite
Nanos more comfortably than others because he has clearly
shown a plausible historical and personal setting and has
avoided the trap of later theology.

Bob

Bob MacDonald
http://bobmacdonald.gx.ca
Victoria, B.C., Canada

Are you saying either (a) the addressees in Rom 14f are
non-believing Jews,
or that (b) the subject of that discourse is non-believing
Jews and the
addressees are someone else.

If (a):  What in the text makes you think so?

If (b):  What in the text lends you to believe so?  Why
can't they,
hypothetically, be unbelieving religious pagans, or perhaps
nobody in
particular, but anyone "weak in faith" in general?

Justin D
MA Student
The Jewish Theological Seminary