Romans 15 - Introduction

XV.

These concluding Chapter s present some remarkable phenomena which seem to need a special theory to account for them.

It will be seen that Romans 16 ends, according to the Received text, with a two-fold benediction and a doxology, one at the end of Romans 15:20, another in Romans 15:24, and the third covering Romans 15:25.

Of these, the two benedictions in Romans 15:20; Romans 15:24 are alternatives. They are not found in the same group of MSS. at both places, but the MSS. which insert them in the first place omit them at the second, and vice versâ. Weighing the authorities on both sides together, there can be little doubt that the earlier position is the right one — that the doxology ought to stand at Romans 16:20 and to be erased in Romans 16:24. How it came to be inserted there we shall see presently.

The longer, concluding doxology is also placed where it is by a quite decisive preponderance of authority. At the same time it is also found at the end of Romans 14 in one important MS., the Codex Laudianus, and in a number of others of lesser value, while the Alexandrine Codex and Porphyrian Palimpsest, with some few others, have it in both places.

It is to be observed also that Marcion, the Gnostic writer, who lived about 140 A.D., had a copy of the Epistle in which these last two Chapter s were omitted altogether.
How is this series of facts to be accounted for? It is obviously only a rude and reckless logic which infers from them that the whole two Chapter s are not genuine. The same conclusion has been supported by other arguments, which need not be mentioned in this Commentary. The proof of the genuineness of the Chapter s is overwhelming.

Other theories have been propounded, which, while assigning the Chapter s to St. Paul himself, have treated them as either entirely or in part fragments inserted here from some other lost Epistle. For instance, Ewald held that Romans 16:3 was written by St. Paul from Rome to Ephesus, and M. Renan has recently put forward the view that the main body of the Epistle was sent to different churches with different endings — Romans 1-11 with the ending Romans 15 to the Romans; Romans 1-14. with the ending Romans 16:1 to the Ephesians; Romans 1-14 with the ending Romans 16:21 to the Thessalonians; and Romans 1-14 with the ending Romans 16:25 to a fourth unknown church.

This last is an ingenious theory, but, like the rest, does not appear to be tenable when applied in detail.
We will only mention one more theory which has the advantage of being simpler than most, and which seems to account almost if not quite satisfactorily for the complex and peculiar phenomena of the text, while it accords well with the general character of the Epistle. It is this: —

The Epistle was originally written and sent to the Romans in the form in which we have it now, except that it ended at Romans 16:23. The portion which was dictated by St. Paul himself really concluded with the benediction given in Romans 16:20, but a brief and informal postscript was added by Tertius and his companions.

At some later period of his life, probably during one or other of his two imprisonments, finding the Epistle current in Rome, it occurred to the Apostle that it might with advantage be circulated more widely. Accordingly he struck out the whole of the more personal matter, i.e., Romans 15:16, And, in order to give somewhat more finish to the composition, he added the elaborate doxology, which now concludes the whole, at the end of Romans 14. At the same time, at the beginning of the Epistle, he erased the express mention of Rome (Romans 1:7), and left merely the general phrase “To them that are beloved of God” — a change of which some traces are still to be found remaining in the MSS.

There was thus a shorter and a longer recension of the Epistle — the shorter with a formal ending, the longer without. It was the shorter form which happened to fall into the hands of Marcion, who, for reasons of his own, cut off the doxology. Later copyists, observing the ragged edge which was caused by the postscript of Tertius, sought to remedy this by transferring the benediction of Romans 15:20 to Romans 15:24 : and others, with more success, by adding to the original Epistle the doxology composed for the shorter recension. The general tendency in the scribes being to add and accumulate rather than to subtract, all three forms have come down to us.

The main arguments in favour of this theory are — (1) the extent to which it accounts for the phenomena of the text; (2) the striking resemblance between the style and diction of the concluding doxology and those of the Epistle to the Ephesians and Pastoral Epistles, which would make it appear as if it had been composed at that later date, rather than when St. Paul originally wrote to the Romans; and (3) the analogy of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which seems to have gone through a somewhat similar process, being circulated in two forms — as a circular or general Epistle, and also as one addressed to a particular Church. The opinion is also growing that the Gospel according to St. Luke received additions, and was issued in an enlarged form during the lifetime of the Evangelist himself.
It would not be well to speak too positively where all is so much a matter of conjecture; but so far as conjecture can carry us, this theory seems, on the whole, the most probable and most likely to represent the real state of the facts. The author of it is Dr. Lightfoot.