After establishing the direction adhered to in this thesis, we now come to the first step of the trilogy: Scripture, Tradition, and Context. The Epistle to the Romans1 has been a theological reservoir from which great Christians across the ages have drawn. Yet at the same time, it has also has been a source of debate among scholars, giving birth to what has been called the Romans Debate. According to F. F. Bruce, the Romans Debate signifies “the debate about the character of the letter (including questions about its literary integrity, the possibility of it having circulated in longer and shorter recensions, the destination of chapter 16) and, above all, Paul’s purpose in sending it.”2 This chapter is not meant to treat in detail every point in this debate; rather points are addressed in connection to the theme of ethnic and cultural identity in the epistle.
The first part of this chapter deals with the background of the city of Rome in terms of ethnic plurality, while the second presents the apostle Paul as the author of this epistle. The third discusses the recipient of the epistle, which is then followed by the fourth part that is a cultural and rhetorical analysis of the letter concerning its purpose(s). The fifth part provides an overview of the content of Romans in connection with ethnic and culture identity.
3.1. Rome and Ethnic Diversity
Rome, originally a shepherd’s village, had become cosmopolitan in the first century AD, serving as the capital of the Roman Empire, a vast range of political territory mostly acquired by wars.3 It developed its military power and by 275 BC had gained control over Italy and even Macedonia in 148 BC. These conquests were followed by political unrest that bewildered Rome, so that in 60 BC it was governed by the first triumvirate of generals: Julius Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey. The last of these three brought calamity to the land of the Judeans earlier in 63 BC and made it part of the reorganized province of Syria.4
In 27 BC, Octavius, whose edict later forced Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem, received the title Augustus from the Roman Senate, and reigned as Princepts (Latin for “first one” or “leader”), which meant more or less “a benign dictator.”5 Named Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, he stabilized Rome and propagated “pax Augusta,” the era of peace in the entire Roman dominion. Octavianus Augustus died in 14 AD and was succeeded by Tiberius Caesar (14-37 AD), Gaius Caligula (37-41 AD), Claudius (41-54 AD), and then Nero (54-68 AD) who burnt the city of Rome in 64 AD and blamed the Christians.6 The Epistle to the Romans was written previous to this event, most probably at the time when Nero “had not [yet] become the ambitious and murderous tyrant (before 60 AD).”7
“Early Imperial Rome truly was one of the most 'multicultural' cities in antiquity,” Jurgen Zangenberg and Michael Labahn write. “...Syrians, Africans, Gauls, Egyptians, Jews and other groups flocked into the city and formed their communities – as well as Christians.”8 Although it seems rather peculiar to add Christians in a row of people defined by ethnic/regional origin, such statement points to the fact that later Christians' opponents in Rome regarded the followers of Christ as “a third race” (genus tertium).9 Tacitus makes a good case for a multicultural Rome and therein anti-Christian attitude. As Peter Lampe points out, he has the Christians in mind when he writes that in Rome “all detestable and appalling things from all over the world come together” (Annales 15.44.3).10
While some scholars testify to the migration into Rome in the way Zangenberg and Labhan imply above,11 the reality of multiculturalism and ethnic plurality in Rome was to a great extent influenced by the practice of taking war prisoners as slaves in this era.12 For example, Julius Caesar reportedly captured more than one million people during his campaign in Gaul (today France) in 58-59 BC.13 Similarly, Pompey transported many Judeans from the eastern Mediterranean in his campaign in 63 BC.14 According to Lampe, many of these Judeans later received Roman citizenship, at the latest, under Augustus.15 It is estimated that by the first century AD, there were about 50,000 Judeans in the Empire’s capital, organized in several different synagogues.16
When the Romans took hold of the Mediterranean, they found that the Greeks had established a distinct cultural presence in the area. Quoting Isocrates, the term Hellene “no longer suggest[s] a race [meaning nation or ethnicity]17 but intelligence, and the title Hellene is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share our blood.”18 This statement does not suggest the adoption of Greek ethnicity by other nations or the inclusion of other nations into Greek ethnicity;19 it shows how Hellene became an inter-ethnic culture in the Greco-Roman world and underlies Isocrates' ethnocentrism.20
At the same time, the term Ioudaioi also gained a cultural significance as those who were not of Judean origin but embraced the religion of Israel. Hence from this understanding, the expression “Ioudaious te kai Hellenas”21 may refer to an ethnic category: “Judeans and Greeks” or a religio-cultural category: “the Yehudi and the Hellene.”
1 The term “epistle” and “letter” both mean “surat” in Bahasa. In this thesis, the term “epistle” is understood as a “Lehrbrief” (didactic letter) (Fitzmyer, Romans, 69), written artistically by nature of the writer's ability to produce such material and sent to a particular recipient, whose relationship with the sender has been made close by their sheer conviction.
2 F. F. Bruce, “The Romans Debate – Continued,” in Romans Debate, ed. Karl P. Donfried (Peabody, Massachusetts, 1991), 175.
3 Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes that after about two hundred years from the time it was founded (c. 753 BC), in which generations of kings had reigned, Rome took up the form of a republic (c. 510 BC) and was ruled by two yearly-elected magistrates called consuls (Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [London: G. Chapman, 1993], 25).
4 Fitzmyer, Romans, 26.
5 Fitzmyer, Romans, 26.
6 Fitzmyer, Romans, 26.
7 Fitzmyer, Romans, 26; Udo Schnelle makes available the accounts of Tacitus and Suetonius, Roman historians, regarding the persecution of the Christians during this period of time. Traditionally, the apostle Peter's and Paul's martyrdom is associated with this persecution as attested in I Clement 6.1 (Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005], 381-386).
8 Jürgen Zangenberg and Michael Labahn (ed.), preface to Christians As a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City, (London [u.a.]: T & T Clark International, 2004), vii; Fitzmyer, Romans, 26-27.
9 Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, tr. and ed. James Moffatt (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2005), 231, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/harnack/mission.pdf (accessed September 15, 2012).
10 “Early Christians in the City of Rome: Topographical and Social Historical Aspects of the First Three Centuries,” in Christians As a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City, 20-32.
11 For example, Fitzmyer refers to the lists of names in Romans 16: ten Latins, eighteen Greeks, and two perhaps Hebrew names. He continues, quoting H. Lietzmann who writes, “everyone streams to Rome” (Romans, 36). In the same line, Claudia Moatti writes, “Migration increased greatly from the end of the republic and the beginning of the principate, chiefly because of peace” (“Translation, Migration, and Communication in the Roman Empire: Three Aspects of Movement in History,” Classical Antiquity, Vol. 25, Issue 1, [April 2006]:117-118, http://hal-paris1.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/65/86/82/PDF/translation.pdf (accessed September 15, 2012). Moatti further adds: “Ancient societies did not need to identify all their inhabitants: identification could be left to social networks, to indifference, or to uncertainty. In the same way, all people did not need to be identified.” Yet she draws attention to the Christians, who could escape identification, but because of “their desire to affirm their strong personal identities provoked administrative identification” (121).
12 See Walter Scheidel's analysis on the topic of slavery in Roman Empire in his article “The Roman Slave Supply,” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, Stanford University, 2007, http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/050704.pdf (accessed September 15, 2012).
13 Scheidel, “The Roman Slave Supply,” 8; Hays, “Paul and the Multi-Ethnic First Century World,” in Paul as Missionary, 79-80.
14 Fitzmyer, Romans, 27.
15 “Early Christians in the City of Rome,” in Christians As a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City, 20. Before the convoluted relations between Judea and Rome, that is when the Greeks were still strong in the Mediterranean, three times the Hasmoneans sent envoys to the Roman Senate, establishing friendship between the two states. First in c. 161 BC (1 Maccabeus 8:1-32); second c. 150 BC (1 Maccabeus 12:6); and third c. 139 BC (1 Maccabeus 14:24). These friendship agreement may have been followed by the Judeans' presence in the city of Romulus (Peter Richardson, “Augustan-Era Synagogues in Rome,” in Judaism and Christianity in First Century Rome, ed. Karl Paul Donfried and Peter Richardson [Grand Rapids, Mich. [u.a.]: Eerdmans, 1998], 18).
16 Fitzmyer, Romans, 27.
17 The term “race” shares the meaning of “nation” and “ethnicity,” although they are still used in different contexts (see Fenton, Ethnicity, 14ff). However, in the second quarter of 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th century, “race” became a specific scientific term, especially later during the Nazi era in Germany. Among the assumptions held in the race-thinking, or “racist theory” as Esler puts it, is that all of humankind may be classified “into a relatively small number of races, defined primarily by physical and visible difference” and that the white-race is superior to all others (Fenton, Ethnicity 19-20). This concept has been largely abandoned in social science and, as with the term “race,” Esler points out “the concept of ethnicity has become popular as a way of talking about differences among peoples” (Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 52).
18 Hays, “Paul and the Multi-Ethnic First Century World,” in Paul as Missionary, 76 referring to Harry Brewster's book Classical Anatolia: The Glory of Hellenism. According to the John Akritas Blog, this quotation appears in The Panegyricus in 380 BC (“Isocrates on Greek culture and race,” posted March, 26, 2009, http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/2009/03/isocrates-on-greek-culture-and-race.html [accessed October 13, 2012]).
19 Cf. Hays, “Paul and the Multi-Ethnic First Century World,” in Paul as Missionary, 77.
20 Isocrates seeks to unite the Greek sub-ethnic groups under Athens to march against Persia by appealing to the idea of cultural superiority of the Hellene (John Akritas Blog, “Isocrates on Greek culture and race”).
21 3:9; Cf. 1:16; 2:9, 10; 10:12.
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