Romans 16:3-16

To the recommendation of Phoebe, the apostle joins a list of salutations, which might indeed still be called recommendations; for the imperative ἀσπάσασθε, greet, fifteen times repeated, is addressed to the whole church. It is, in fact, the church itself which he charges to transmit this mark of affection to its different objects. How was this commission carried out? Probably, at the time when the letter was read in full assembly of the church, the president expressed to the person designated, in some way or other, the mark of distinction which the apostle had bestowed on him. Most critics of the present day hold that this list of salutations cannot have been written by Paul with a view to the church of Rome, which he had not yet visited. How then could he have known so many persons in it? The persons in question, therefore, were friends of the apostle in a church which he had himself founded, and, to all appearance, in the church of Ephesus. Accident has willed that this list should be joined afterward to the Epistle to the Romans (see especially Reuss, Epîtres Pauliniennes, pp. 19, 20). Bauer, Lucht, etc., go still further: they think that this list was composed later by a forger, who thought good to make Paul pen the names of several notable persons of the church of Rome, in order to produce an advantageous impression on this church, which was always somewhat unfavorably disposed toward the apostle. “A very improbable procedure,” observes Schultz. “And how,” asks this writer with reason, “would the forger in this case have forgotten Clement,” who should surely have figured at the head? For the rest, let us study the list itself.