Livy. imagination and vivified by dignified emotion, attained its perfection in him. Fourth Period: from 17 to about 130 A.D. feeling, yet he alone among the elegiac poets is able to embody it in dramatic form, and by his vivid gifts of fancy to create a literature of romantic passion and adventure adapted to amuse and fascinate the idle and luxurious society of which the elder Julia was the centre. The power For more than a century after the death of Augustus Characof continuous narrative is best seen in the Metamorphoses, Roman literature continues to flow in the old channels. teristics written in hexameters, to which he has imparted a rapidity Rome continues the centre of the literary movement. The of postAugus and fluidity of movement more suited to romantic and pic- characteristics of the great writers are essentially national, tan age turesque narrative than the weighty self-restrained verse not provincial nor cosmopolitan. In prose the old forms of Virgil. In his Fasti he treats a subject of national-oratory, history, the epistle, treatises or dialogues on interest; it is not, however, through the strength of Roman ethical and literary questions-continue to be cultivated. sentiment but through the power of vividly conceiving Scientific and practical subjects, such as natural history, and narrating stories of strong human interest that the architecture, medicine, agriculture, are treated in more poem lives. In his latest works- the Tristia and Ex elaborate literary style. The old Roman satura is develPonto-he imparts the interest of personal confessions to oped into something like the modern prose novel. In the the record of a unique experience. Latin poetry is more various provinces of poetry, while there is little novelty or rich in the expression of personal feeling than of dramatic inspiration, there is abundance of industry and ambitious imagination. In Ovid we have both. We know him in effort. The national love of works of large compass shows the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weak- itself in the production of long epic poems, both of the ness of his nature more intimately than any other writer historic and of the imitative Alexandrian type. Out of of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero. As Virgil marks the many others four of these have been preserved, two at point of maturest excellence in poetic diction and rhythm, least of which the world might have allowed to perish Ovid marks that of the greatest facility. without sensible diminution to its literary wealth. The imitative and rhetorical tastes of Rome showed themselves in the composition of exotic tragedies, as remote in spirit and character from Greek as from Roman life, of which the only extant specimens are those attributed to the younger Seneca. The composition of didactic, lyrical, and elegiac poetry also was the accomplishment and pastime of an educated dilettante class. The only extant specimens of any interest are some of the Silva of Statius. The only voice with which the poet of this age can express himself with force and sincerity is that of satire and satiric epigram. Ovid was the last of the true poets of Rome who combined idealizing power of imagination with artistic originality. After him we find only imitative echoes of the old music created by Virgil and others, as in Statius, or powerful declamation, as in Lucan and Juvenal. There is a deterioration in the diction as well as in the music of poetry. The elaborate literary culture of the Augustan age has done something to impair the native force of the Latin idiom. The language of literature, in the most elaborate kind of prose as well as poetry, loses all ring of popular speech. The old oratorical tastes and aptitudes find their outlet in public recitations and the practice of declamation. Forced and distorted expression, exaggerated emphasis, point and antithesis, an affected prettiness, "melliti verborum globuli," were studied with the view of gaining the applause of audiences who thronged the lecture and recitation rooms in search of temporary exciteEducation was more widely diffused, but was less thorough, less leisurely in its method, less than before derived from the purer sources of culture. The precocious immaturity of Lucan's career affords a marked contrast to the long preparation of Virgil and Horace for their high office. Although there are some works of the Silver Age of considerable and one at least of supreme interest, from the insight they afford into the experience of a century of organized despotism and its effect on the spiritual life of the ancient world, it cannot be doubted that the steady literary decline which characterized the last centuries of paganism begins with the death of Ovid and Livy. If the world had not altogether ceased to produce men of genius, the conditions under which their genius could unfold itself were no longer the same. The influences which had inspired the republican and Augustan literature were the artistic impulse derived from a familiarity with the great works of Greek genius, becoming more intimate with every new generation, the spell of Rome over the imagination of the kindred Italian races, the charm of Italy, and the vivid The Augustan age was one of those great eras in the world, like the era succeeding the Persian War in Greece, the Elizabethan age in England, and the beginning of the present century in Europe, in which what seems a new spring of national and individual life calls out an idealizing retrospect of the past. As the present seems full of new life, the past seems rich in glory and the future in hope. The past of Rome had always a peculiar fascination for Roman writers. Virgil in a supreme degree, and Horace, Propertius, and Ovid in a less degree, had expressed in their poetry the romance of the past. But it was in the great historical work of Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) that the record of the national life, coloured by idealizing retrospect, received its most systematic exposition. The conception of his work must have nearly coincided in point of time with the impulses in which the Eneid and the national Odes of Horace had their origin. Its execution was the work of a life prolonged through the languor and dissolution following so soon upon the promise of the new era, during which time the past became glorified by contrast with the disheartening aspect of the present. The value of the work consists not in any power of critical investigation or weighing of historical evidence but in the intense sympathy of the writer with the national ideal, and the vivid imagination with which under the influence of this sympathy he gives life to the events and personages, the wars and political struggles, of times remote from his own. Although he has no accurate conception of the constitutional history of the state, yet nowhere else in ancient history do we find the patrician and plebeian forces in a state by which that history is worked out so vividly and dramatically embodied. He makes us feel more than any one the majesty of the Roman state, of its great magistracies, and of the august council by which its policy was guided. And, while he makes the words "senatus populusque Romanus" full of significance for all times, no one realizes with more enthusiasm all that is implied in the words "imperium Romanum," and the great military qualities of head and heart by which that empire was acquired and maintained. While the general conception of his work is thus animated by national enthusiasm, the details are filled up with all the resources of a vivid imagination and of literary art. The vast scale on which the work was conceived and the thoroughness of artistic execution with which the details are finished are characteristically Roman. The prose style of Rome, as a vehicle for the continuous narration of events coloured by a rich and picturesque ment, New elements. sensibility of the Italian temperament. These influences | the contrast between moral good and evil. In this respect were certainly much less operative in the first century of it is truly representative of the life of the age. Another the empire. The imitative impulse, which had much of new element is the influence of a new race. In the two the character of a creative impulse, and had resulted in preceding periods the rapid diffusion of literary culture the appropriation of the forms of poetry suited to the following the Social War and the first Civil War was seen Roman and Italian character and of the metres suited to to awaken into new life the elements of original genius the genius of the Latin language, no longer stimulated to in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. In the first century of the artistic effort. The great sources of Greek poetry were empire a similar result was produced by the diffusion of no longer regarded, as they were by Lucretius and Virgil, that culture in the Latinized districts of Spain. The as "integri" and "sancti fontes," and approached in a fervid temperament of a fresh and vigorous race, which spirit at once of daring adventure and reverential enthusi- received the Latin discipline just as Latium had two or asm.1 We have the testimony of two men of the shrewdest three centuries previously received the Greek discipline, common sense and the most masculine understanding revealed itself in the writings of the Senecas, Lucan, Martial and Juvenal-to the stale and lifeless character of Quintilian, Martial, and others, who in their own time the art of the Silver Age, which sought to reproduce in the added literary distinction to the Spanish towns from which form of epics, tragedies, and elegies the bright fancies of they came. This new cosmopolitan element introduced the Greek mythology. into Roman literature draws into greater prominence the characteristics of the last great representatives of the genuine Roman and Italian spirit,-Tacitus and Juvenal. On the whole this century shows, in form, language, and substance, the beginning of literary decay. But it is still capable of producing men of original force; it still maintains the traditions of a happier time; it is still alive to the value of literary culture, and endeavours by minute attention to style to produce new effects. Though it was not one of the great eras in the annals of literature, yet the century which produced Martial, Juvenal, and Tacitus cannot be pronounced barren in literary originality, nor that which produced Seneca and Quintilian in culture and literary taste. The idea of Rome, owing to the antagonism between the policy of the Government and the sympathies of the class by which literature was favoured and cultivated, could no longer be an inspiring motive, as it had been in the literature of the republic and of the Augustan age. The spirit of Rome appears only as animating the protest of Lucan, the satire of Persius and Juvenal, the sombre picture which Tacitus paints of the annals of the empire, Oratory is no longer an independent voice appealing to sentiments of Roman dignity, but the weapon of the "delatores," wielded for their own advancement and the destruction of that class which, even in their degeneracy, retained most sympathy with the national traditions. Roman history was no longer a record of national glory, stimulating the patriotism and flattering the pride of all Roman citizens, but a personal eulogy or a personal invective, according as servility to a present or hatred of a recent ruler was the motive which animated it. The charm of Italian scenes still remained the same, but the fresh and inspiring feeling of nature as a great power in the world, a great restorative influence on human life, gave place to the mere sensuous gratification derived from the luxurious and artificial beauty of the country villa. The idealizing poetry of passion, which found a genuine voice in Catullus and the elegiac poets, could not prolong itself through the exhausting licence of successive generations. The vigorous vitality which gives interest to the personality of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid no longer characterizes their successors. The pathos of natural affection is occasionally recognized in Statius and more rarely in Martial, but it has not the depth of tenderness found in Lucretius and Virgil. Human life is altogether shallower, has the same capacity for neither joy nor sorrow. The wealth and luxury of succeeding generations, the monotonous routine of life, the separation of the educated class from the higher work of the world, have produced their enervating and paralysing effect on the mainsprings of poetic and imaginative feeling. New elements, however, appear in the literature of this literary period. As the result of the severance from the active interests of life, a new interest is awakened in the inner life of the individual. The extreme immorality of the age not only affords abundant material to the satirist but deepens the consciousness of moral evil in purer and more thoughtful minds. To these causes we attribute the pathological observation of Seneca and Tacitus, the new sense of purity in Persius called out by contrast with the impurity around him, the glowing if somewhat sensational exaggeration of Juvenal, the vivid characterization of Martial. The literature of no time presents so powerfully This fourth period is itself subdivided into three divisions: (1) that extending from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Nero, 68,-the only important part of it being the Neronian age, 54 to 68; (2) the Flavian era, from the death of Nero to the death of Domitian, 96; (3) the period included in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan and part of the reign of Hadrian. Tiberius (1) For a generation after the death of Augustus no Period new original literary force appeared. The later poetry of from the Augustan age had ended in trifling dilettanteism, for to Nero. the continuance of which the atmosphere of the court was no longer favourable. The class by which literature was encouraged had become both enervated and terrorized. The Fables of Phædrus, the Pierian freedman, a work of no kind of national significance and representative in its morality only of the spirit of cosmopolitan individualism, is the chief poetical product of the time. Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus are the most important prose-writers, The traditional culture was still, however, maintained, and the age was rich in grammarians and rhetoricians. The new profession of the "delator" must have given a stimulus to oratory. A high ideal of culture, literary as well as practical, was realized in Germanicus, which seems to have been transmitted to his daughter Agrippina, whose patronage of Seneca had important results in the next generation. The reign of Claudius was a time in which antiquarian learning, grammatical studies, and jurisprudence were cultivated, but no important additions were made to literature. A fresh impulse was given to letters on the accession of Nero, and this was partly due to the theatrical and artistic tastes of the young emperor. Four writers of the Neronian age still possess considerable interest,-Seneca, Lucan, Persius, and Petronius. The first three represent the spirit of their age by exhibiting the power of the Stoic philosophy as a moral, political, and religious force; the last is the most cynical exponent of the depravity of the time. Seneca (d. 65) is less than Persius a pure Stoic, and more of a moralist and pathological observer of man's inner life. He makes the commonplaces of a cosmopolitan philosophy tian. interesting by his abundant illustration drawn from the private and social life of his contemporaries. He has knowledge of the world, the suppleness of a courtier, Spanish vivacity, and the "ingenium amoenum" attributed to him by Tacitus, the fruit of which is sometimes seen in the "honeyed phrases" mentioned by Petronius,-pure aspirations combined with inconsistency of purpose, the inconsistency of one who tries to make the best of two worlds, the ideal inner life and the successful real life in the atmosphere of a most corrupt court. The Pharsalia of Lucan (39-65), with Cato as its hero, is essentially a Stoical manifesto of the opposition. It is written with the force and fervour of extreme youth and with the literary ambition of a race as yet new to the discipline of intellectual culture, and is endowed with a rhetorical rather than a poetical imagination. The Satires of Persius (34-62) are the purest product of Stoicism,-a Stoicism that had found in a living contemporary, Thrasea, a more rational and practical hero than Cato. But no important writer of antiquity has less literary charm than Persius. He either would not or could not say anything simply and naturally. In avoiding the literary conceits and fopperies which he satirizes he has recourse to the most unnatural contortions of expression. Of the works of the time that which from a human point of view is perhaps the most detestable in ancient literature has the most genuine literary quality, the fragment of the prose novel of Petronius. It is most sincere in its representation, least artificial in diction, most penetrating in its satire, most just in its criticism of art and style. of Juvenal. Martial represents his age in his Epigrams, as Horace does his in his Satires and Odes, with more variety and incisive force in his sketches, though with much less poetic charm and serious meaning. We know the daily life, the familiar personages, the outward aspect of Rome in the age of Domitian better than at any other period of Roman history, and that knowledge we owe to Martial. Though a less estimable character than some of them, he is a better writer than any of his contemporaries because he did not withdraw into a world of literary interests, but lived and wrote in the central whirl of city life. He tells us the truth of his time without the wish either to protest against or to extenuate its vices. (3) But it was under Nerva and Trajan that the greatest Period and most truly representative works of the empire were of Nerva, written, those which at once present the most impressive Trajan, spectacle to the imagination and have made its meaning Hadrian. sink most deeply into the heart and conscience of the world. The Annals and Histories of Tacitus (54-119), with the supplementary Life of Agricola and the treatise On the Manners of the Germans, and the Satires of Juvenal (c. 47-130) have summed up for all after-times the moral experience of the Roman world from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Domitian. The powerful feelings under which they both wrote, the generous scorn and generous pathos of the historian acting on extraordinary gifts of imaginative insight and imaginative characterization, and the fierce indignation of the satirist finding its vent in exaggerating realism, have undoubtedly disturbed the completeness and exactness of the impressions which they received and have perpetuated; nevertheless their works are the last powerful voices of Rome, the last voices expressive of the freedom and manly virtue of the ancient world. In them alone among the writers of the empire the spirit of the Roman republic seems to revive. The Letters of Pliny (61-c. 115), though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their representation, and to show that life even in the higher circles of Roman society had still sources of pure enjoyment and wellbeing. (2) A greater sobriety of tone was introduced both into life and literature with the accession of Vespasian. The time was, however, characterized rather by good sense and industry than by original genius. Under Vespasian Pliny the elder is the most important prose-writer, and Valerius Flaccus, author of the Argonautica, the most important Age of among the writers of poetry. The reign of Domitian, Domi- although it silenced the more independent spirits of the time, Tacitus and Juvenal, witnessed more important contributions to Roman literature than any age since the Augustan, among them the Institutes of Quintilian, the Punic War of Silius Italicus, the epics and the Silva of Statius, and the Epigrams of Martial. Quintilian (c. 3595) is brought forward by Juvenal as a unique instance of a thoroughly successful man of letters, of one not belonging by birth to the rich or official class who had risen to wealth and honours through literature. He was well adapted to his time by his good sense and sobriety of judgment. His criticism is just and true rather than subtle or ingenious, and thus stands the test of the judgment of after-times. The poem of Silius (25-101) is a proof of the industry and literary ambition of members of the rich official class. Of the epic poets of the Silver Age Statius (c. 45-96) shows the greatest technical skill and the richest pictorial fancy in the execution of detail; but his epics have no true inspiring motive, and, although the recitation of the Thebaid could attract and charm an audience in the days of Juvenal, it really belongs to the class of poems so unsparingly condemned both by him and Martial. In the Silva, though many of them have little root in the deeper feelings of human nature, we find occasionally more than in any poetry after the Augustan age something of the purer charm and pathos of life. But it is not in the artificial poetry of the Silva, nor in the epics and tragedies of the time, nor in the cultivated criticism of Quintilian that the age of Domitian lives for us. It is in the Epigrams of Martial (c. 41-102) that we have a true image of the average sensual frivolous life of Rome at the end of the 1st century, seen through a medium of wit and humour, but undistorted by the exaggeration which moral indignation and the love of effect add to the representation be With the death of Juvenal, the most important part of whose activity falls in the reign of Trajan, Roman literature as an original and national expression of the experience, character, and sentiment of the Roman state and empire, and as one of the great literatures of the world, may considered as closed. There still continued to be much industry and activity in gathering up the memorials of the past and in explaining and illustrating the works of genius of the ages of literary creation. A kind of archaic revival took place in the reign of Hadrian, which showed itself both in affectation of style and in a renewed interest in the older literature. The most important works of the age succeeding that of Juvenal are the Biographies of Suetonius (c. 75-160), which did much to preserve a knowledge of both political and literary history. The Noctes Attica of Aulus Gellius, written in the latter part of the 2d century, have preserved many anecdotes, some of them of doubtful authenticity, concerning the older writers. The persistence of critical and grammatical studies and of interest in the literature of the past resulted in the 4th and 5th centuries in the works of Donatus and Servius and in the Saturnalia of Macrobius. The works of the great Latin grammarians are also to be connected with the scholarly study of antiquity which superseded to a great extent the attempt to produce works of new creation. The writer of most original genius among the successors of Juvenal and Tacitus is probably Apuleius, and his most E original work, the Metamorphoses, has nothing of Roman | again found its organ in the Greek language, and that ROMANS, a town of France, in the department of Drôme, 12 miles north-east of Valence by the railway connecting this town with Grenoble, stands at the foot of an eminence on the right bank of the Isère, 530 feet above the sea. A fine stone bridge unites it with Bourg du Péage on the other side of the river. Both towns owe their prosperity to their situation in the most fertile part of the valley of the Isère, where land is sometimes sold at £200 per acre. The population of Romans was 11,916 (13,806 in the commune) in 1881. The present parish church belonged to an abbey founded in 837 by St Bernard, forty-ninth bishop of Vienne. The north portal, now condemned, dates from the 11th century; the principal portal is one of the finest specimens of 12th-century Romanesque; and the choir and the transept are striking examples of the style of the 13th. Romans has also a wealthy hospital and a large seminary. Besides the silktrade the local industries comprise shoemaking, tanning, hat-making, oil-refining, &c. ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE. The origin of the Christian community at Rome is involved in obscurity. According to Catholic tradition it was founded by Peter, who was its bishop for a quarter of a century. But neither allegation has historical support. The most striking proof of the contrary is precisely this epistle of Paul. It does not contain the remotest reference to either the one fact or the other. And if Paul had written such an epistle to a community founded by Peter he would not only have violated the agreement mentioned in Gal. ii. 9, but would also have gone against his own principle of refraining from intrusion on the mission fields of others (Rom. xv. 20; 2 Cor. x. 16). But neither was Paul the founder of the church in Rome. This also is shown by the present epistle, in which he for the first time opens relations with a community already formed. Thus we are thrown upon mere conjecture. In pursuing the investigation we have this fact to start from, that even before the Christian era there already existed in Rome a strong Jewish colony. After the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey (63 B.C.) numbers of Jewish prisoners of war were brought to Rome and there sold as slaves. Of these many were soon afterwards emancipated by their masters, Jewish slaves being a peculiarly inconvenient kind of property on account of the strictness of their observance of their law, especially in the matter of clean and unclean meats (Philo, Leg. ad Caium, ii. 568, ed. Mangey). These freedmen became the nucleus of a Jewish community, which ultimately settled in Trastevere and organized itself into an independent religious communion. It rapidly increased and became an important element in the life of the capital. By the time of Herod's death (4 B.C.) the independent Jews of Rome- that is, besides women and children-already numbered 8000 according to Josephus (Antiq., xvii. 11, 1; Bell. Jud., ii. 6, 1). In the reign of Tiberius indeed this large and powerful organization was dissolved at a single Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, by J. C. F. Bähr; the GrundLiterature.-The most important books on the subject are the riss der römischen Litteratur, by G. Bernhardy; and the Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, by W. S. Teuffel. The last of these has been translated into English. There is also a Geschichte der römischen Litteratur by G. Munck. The most recent books on the Literature from Ennius to Boethius, and the History of Roman subject in English are Mr. G. A. Simcox's History of Latin Literature from the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius, by Mr C. T. Cruttwell. (W. Y. S.) stroke, a decree of the senate (19 A.D.) having sent to Sardinia for military service all Jews capable of bearing arms (Tac., Ann., ii. 85; Suet., Tiber., 36; Joseph., Antiq., xviii. 3, 5). It is probable, however, that after the death (31 A.D.) of Sejanus, to whom this measure had been mainly due, the Jews were expressly permitted to return to Rome, for we are told by Philo (Leg. ad Caium, ii. 569, ed. Mangey) that after the death of his favourite Tiberius perceived the Jews to have been unjustly calumniated, and ordered the authorities to refrain from oppressing them. At all events the community must ultimately have come together again, for in the reign of Claudius its existence is again presupposed, the idea of expelling the Jews from the capital having anew been entertained under that emperor. Regarding this proposal, however, accounts vary. According to the Acts of the Apostles (xviii. 2), and also Suetonius (Claud., 25), it was actually carried out; but according to Dio Cassius (lx. 6) the expulsion was only proposed, and, when it was seen to be impracticable without great tumult, all that was done was to withdraw from the Jews their right of meeting. The latter version is doubtless the more correct. The withdrawal of the right of meeting was equivalent to the prohibition of public worship, and sufficiently explains why numbers left the city (Acts xviii. 2). But the main body must have remained and doubtless have again obtained the privilege of assembly, for from the time of Nero onwards we find the Jews in Rome once more flourishing with undiminished vigour. From the midst of this Jewish community it was that the Christian congregation doubtless arose. The Jews of the Dispersion, it is well known, kept up an active correspondence with the mother-country in Palestine. Every year they sent their gifts and offerings thither, and every one in a position to do so went in person to the great festivals of the Holy City. As a result of this vigorously maintained intercourse, which was aided also by the interests of trade, tidings of Jesus as the promised Messiah did not fail to reach the capital of the empire. Individual Jews who had become believers came forward in Rome as preachers of the gospel and found acceptance with a section of their countrymen. They found a perhaps still more numerous following among the "God-fearing" or "devout" (reẞóuevo, poßoúμevo, Tov Ocóv) heathen, i.e., within that large circle which consisted of those who had adopted the faith of the Jews, observed certain of the more important precepts of their law, and also attended their public worship, but did not, strictly speaking, belong to the communion, and thus represented a sort of Judaism of the second order.i In proportion as faith in Jesus as the Messiah gained ground within the Jewish community, a separation between the believers and the others would of course become more 1 Many scholars identify these "devout" heathen with the "proselytes of the gate" who are met with in Rabbinical literature; but in reality the two are quite distinct and unrelated. and more inevitable. Under what circumstances and con- | If the foregoing suppositions are correct, Paul's epistle to the church at Rome was written some six or eight years after its formation. Paul was staying in Corinth at the time, in the last month before the eventful journey to Jerusalem which led to his captivity (58 A.D.). The evidence that the epistle was written during this last sojourn in Greece, which is only briefly alluded to in Acts xx. 2, 3, is simple and conclusive. We know from the Epistles to the Corinthians that shortly before this stay the apostle had set on foot throughout the churches of Macedonia and Achaia a collection on behalf of the needy church at Jerusalem (1 Cor. xvi. ; 2 Cor. viii.-ix.). This collection it was his wish to carry in person from Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 3-6; 2 Cor. i. 16; Acts xxiv. 17). But the Epistle to the Romans was written, as we learn from the author himself (Rom. xv. 24-28), when the collection had just been concluded and he was on the point of taking it with him to Jerusalem,-in other words, before his departure from Corinth, but not long before. And, if perhaps it was in need of fuller teaching, why did he not wait until he arrived in person in Rome in order to give it? Surely he could have done this more effectually by word of mouth than by a written treatise. Why, then, did he send this written message before him? There must have been some perfectly definite circumstances which led him to take this course. The nature of these will become clear to us when we seek to ascertain what at that juncture was the state of the Christian community in Rome. Assuming that church to have arisen out of the midst of the Jewish community of the place, the most obvious conjecture is that at the period of the present letter it still continued to consist mainly of Jewish Christians, i.e., that the majority of its members were Jews by birth who even after their conversion to Christ still continued to regard the Mosaic law in its totality as binding on them. This is the view which Baur in particular sought to establish,2 as against the previously prevailing belief in the Gentile Christian character of the church in question. Baur's position was adopted by many subsequent critics, the most careful and elaborate defence of it, though with many modifications in detail, being that of Mangold. An intermediate position between the older view and that of Baur has been sought by Beyschlag, who works out the theory that the Christian community in Rome may possibly have been Jewish Christian in its way of thinking, yet at the same time Gentile Christian in its origin. In direct opposition to Baur, on the other hand, Theodor Schott has again maintained the older view as to its Gentile character, and in all essential points this is also defended by Weizsäcker, who, however, recognizes in Baur's hypothesis certain elements of truth by which the older theory must be corrected and supplemented. tr 6 4 3 In presence of the facts we are compelled to adopt the view of Weizsäcker as on the whole the right one. For the Jewish Christian character of the church Baur and Mangold, besides the argument from its presumable origin, have adduced a number of isolated texts. On the majority of these Mangold no longer lays any stress, since they admit of being otherwise interpreted. Thus when Paul designates Abraham as "our father" (ròv рожάтора ημŵν; iv. 1) he indeed includes his readers under the nuv. But We have now to inquire into the motive which led the in 1 Corinthians, an epistle certainly addressed to a church apostle precisely at such a juncture to address a communi- of Gentile Christians, the fathers of Israel are also called cation so full and elaborate as this to the Christian com- our fathers" (1 Cor. x. 1). The Christian Church is in munity at Rome, with which he had no personal acquaint-point of fact the true Israel; hence the patriarchs of Israel ance. In general terms we have it from himself at the are its "fathers."7 In another place (Rom. vii. 1) Paul beginning and end of the epistle (i. 8-15, xv. 14 sq.). He addresses his readers as persons "who know the law." had proclaimed the gospel in all the East from Jerusalem But this holds true not of born Jews alone but of Gentile to Illyricum (xv. 19). He regarded his work in these Christians as well, to whom also the Old Testament was a quarters as for the present finished, and he felt impelled sacred book. Mangold finds an "irrefragable evidence of to preach Christ crucified also in the West. the Jewish Christian character of the community in Rome" already looking towards Spain (Rom. xv. 24, 28). He in Rom. vii. 4: ". 'ye also, beloved brethren, have died to wished first to take the collection to Jerusalem, and, that the law" (kai peis elavaтúonte тý vów). If they have once accomplished, his labours in the West were to begin died to it they must of course have once lived under it: forthwith. But there, in Rome, the metropolis of the so argues Mangold quite correctly. But the inference that world, a community already existed which had come into being apart from any effort of his. For his activity in the West it was obviously of the utmost importance to secure the organization for himself and his message. Should its attitude be cold, he would be left without any secure base of operations. The purpose of the present epistle, then, is, to speak generally, this: to secure a connexion with the community at Rome, to gain it for himself and the gospel he carried. But had it hitherto been without that gospel? The community was at any rate already a Christian one. He was 3 2 First of all in his essay "Ueber Zweck u. Veranlassung des Römerbriefs," in the Tübinger Zeitschr. f. Theol., 1836, hft. 3, p. 59 sq. Der Römerbrief u. d. Anfänge der römischen Gemeinde, Marburg, 1866; Der Römerbrief u. seine geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen, Marburg, 1884. 4 "Ueber das geschichtliche Problem des Römerbriefs," in Stud. u. Krit., 1867, p. 627 sq. Erlangen, 1858. 5 Der Römerbrief, seinem Endzweck u. Gedankengang nach ausgelegt, Ueber die älteste römische Christengemeinde," in Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., 1876, p. 248 sq. 7 The words xarà σápкa in Rom. iv. 1 are not to be construed with προπάτορα ἡμῶν but with the verb ευρηκέναι. Abraham is thus de signated as "our father" only in the spiritual and not in the physical sense. |