Today Dr. Keener was interviewed by George P. Wood of AGTV about his book Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.
Miracles: the credibility of the New Testament accounts (video)
The Word became flesh — John 1:1-14
The Greek term translated “word” was also used by many philosophers to mean “reason,” the force which structured the universe; Philo combined this image with Jewish conceptions of the “word.” The Old Testament had personified Wisdom (Prov 8), and ancient Judaism eventually identified personified Wisdom, the Word and the Law (the Torah).
By calling Jesus “the Word,” John calls him the embodiment of all God’s revelation in the Scriptures and thus declares that only those who accept Jesus honor the law fully (1:17) . Jewish people considered Wisdom/Word divine yet distinct from God the Father, so it was the closest available term John had to describe Jesus.
1:1-2. Beginning like Genesis 1:1, John alludes to the Old Testament and Jewish picture of God creating through his preexistent wisdom or word. According to standard Jewish doctrine in his day, this wisdom existed before the rest of creation but was itself created. By declaring that the Word “was” in the beginning and especially by calling the Word “God” (v. 1; also the most likely reading of 1:18), John goes beyond the common Jewish conception to imply that Jesus is not created.
1:3. Developing Old Testament ideas (e.g., Ps 33:6; Prov 8:30), Jewish teachers emphasized that God had created all things through his Wisdom/Word/Law and sustained them because the righteous practiced the law. (Some even pointed out that Genesis 1 declared “And God said” ten times when he was creating, and this meant that God created all things with his Ten Commandments. ) Ancient Jewish teachers would have agreed with verse 3.
1:4. Developing Old Testament prom ises of long life in the land if Israel obeyed God (e.g., Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16; 8:1; 11:9), Jewish teachers emphasized that the reward for obeying God’s word was eternal life. John declares that this life had always been available through God’s word, which is the same word that he identifies with Jesus. Jewish teachers called many things “light” (e.g., the righteous, the patriarchs, Israel, God), but this term was most commonly applied to God’s law (a figure also in the Old Testament, e.g., Ps 119:105).
1:5. That darkness did not “apprehend” the light may be a play on words (it could mean “understand” [NIV] or “overcome” [NRSV]). Similarly, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the forces of light and darkness were engaged in mortal combat, but light was predestined to triumph.
1:6-8. “Witness” was especially a legal concept in the Greco-Roman world and in Jewish circles. Isaiah used it in relation to the end time, when the people God delivered would testify to the nations about him before his tribunal (43:10; 44:8). This image recurs throughout this Gospel.
1:9-10. Jewish tradition declared that God had offered the law to all seventy nations at Mount Sinai but lamented that they had all chosen to reject his word; only Israel had accepted it. In the same way, the world of John’s day has failed to recognize God’s Word among them.
1:11. Here John breaks with the image in Jewish tradition, according to which Israel alone of all nations had received the law. Jewish people expected that the faithful of Israel would likewise accept the revelation when God gave forth the law again in the end time (Is 2:3; Jer 31:31-34). (In most Jewish tradition, the law would, if changed at all, be more stringent in the world to come.)
1:12-13. The emphasis is thus not on ethnic descent (v. 11) but on spiritual rebirth; see comment on 3:3, 5 for details on how ancient Judaism would hear the language of rebirth.
1:14. Neither Greek philosophers nor Jewish teachers could conceive of the Word becoming flesh. Since the time of Plato, Greek philosophers had emphasized that the ideal was what was invisible and eternal; most Jews so heavily emphasized that a human being could not become a god that they never considered that God might become human. When God revealed his glory to Moses in Exodus 33-34, his glory was “abounding in covenant love and covenant faithfulness” (Ex 34:6), which could also be translated “full of grace and truth.”
Like Moses of old (see 2 Cor 3:6-18), the disciples saw God’s glory, now revealed in Jesus. As the Gospel unfolds, Jesus’ glory is revealed in his signs (e.g., Jn 2:11) but especially in the cross, his ultimate act of love (12:23-33). The Jewish people were expecting God to reveal his glory in something like a cosmic spectacle of fireworks; but for the first coming, Jesus reveals the same side of God’s character that was emphasized to Moses: his covenant love.
“Dwelt” (KJV, NASB) here is literally “tabernacled,” which means that as God tabernacled with his people in the wilderness, so had the Word tabernacled among his people in Jesus.
(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)
Separation of church and state — Romans 13
In Romans 13 Paul depicts relations with the state within a particular kind of situation. What happens, however, when a state, far from avenging wrongdoing, is itself the persecutor? Paul wrote early in Nero’s reign, before he began persecuting Christians. Nevertheless, as a Jew who had faced Roman rods (2 Cor 11:25) and lived in Judea, Paul was well aware that the empire already oppressed peoples and that injustices often occurred under its auspices. Injustice notwithstanding, he does not side with the Judean nationalist ethos already building when he was writing (ct. Rom 15:31), which would soon climax in open war with Rome.
Many historically used this passage (among others) to support the divine right of kings. But if Paul follows Jesus’s teaching on giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s (13:6-7; Mark 12:17), he presumably also agreed with his caveat that some things belonged only to God (Mark 12:17). For example, Paul surely would not, out of allegiance to the state, sanction participation in the popular imperial cult (ct. 1 Cor 10:20-21). Further, submission was a temporary expedient; Paul did not expect Rome or other worldly empires to continue for long (ct. Rom 2:5; 8:21-23; 9:22; 11:26-27; 12:19; 13:12).
Nor did Paul have reason to envision modern democracies, in which Christians as citizens would in a sense constitute part of the government, and hence need to evaluate and critique government activities. Finally, Paul lacked reason to envision this minority movement ending up in a situation of significant influence over the political process and so being able to address large-scale injustices like slavery (despite Paul’s personal concerns, ct. Phlm 16-21). Opposed to ideologies behind the Judean revolt, Paul was likely in practice a pacifist. But what do personal pacifists do in extreme cases, when their influence affects whether genocide may be forcibly stopped? German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, ultimately participated in a plot against Hitler because of the magnitude of evil involved.
While few would support the divine right of kings today, the subservience of the leaders of the German state church to Hitler’s Third Reich, based on this passage, raised anew the issue of its application, and Christian cooperation with the apartheid government in South Africa had the same effect. Abolitionists and liberation theologians have long grappled with these issues. Most likely, Paul would have applied 13:1-7 as the norm where possible, living in a respectable manner in society but allowing dissent where necessary and political participation for justice when possible.
For example, he would presumably urge Christians in China (given the normal situation there at the time I am writing this) to be model Chinese citizens, yet without imbibing atheism. In cases of wholesale massacres of Christians or their neighbors, such as have happened at various times in northern Nigeria, the Indian state of Orissa, parts of Indonesia, and so forth, conclusions are harder to come by (though these were not sponsored by national governments, a situation closer to, e.g., the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915). I am inclined to think that Paul would not endorse armed resistance in such cases, but it is admittedly easy for me to pontificate from a currently safe location. I know of other settings where suppression and the killings of individuals led to armed uprisings, which most often led to more suffering without decisive liberation; but other solutions seemed hard to come by. Once we recognize that Paul’s words addressed a particular historical situation, translating the message into new situations becomes more problematic.
Respect for one’s government and the expected obligations of citizenship have limits (though as a modern Western reader I am probably overly inclined to emphasize this qualification). Paul cooperated with the Jerusalem church’s identification with their culture (which was also his culture, Acts 21:20-26), but not to the extent of honoring such nationalism above his commitment to the Gentile mission (Acts 22:21-22). When Christians are more loyal to our ethnicity or nation than to Christ’s body, when nationalism or racism corrupts our love for fellow believers, we have gone beyond giving Caesar what is Caesar’s to giving Caesar what is God’s. On many other points, however, Christian ethicists debate the boundaries between those two spheres.
(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)
Paul’s perspective on the flesh in the book of Romans
Neoplatonic and gnostic dualism absorbed by later Christianity denied that the body was good, and many scholars today, reacting against this conception, argue that Paul’s use of sarx bears little relation to soma, “body.” Some translations (such as the NIV) even poorly translate sarx simply as “sinful nature” (which for some Christian traditions also evokes a dualism of two natures struggling within the believer).
Paul certainly believes that the body can be used for good (Romans 12:1) – but also for evil (6:13). The body as such is not evil, but if the body’s desires rather than God’s Spirit dominates one’s existence, one readily comes into the power of sin. Paul speaks of the “passions” (1:24; 6:12; 13:14) and “desiring” what is not one’s own (7:7-8; 13:9). Impure hearts lead to defiling bodies sexually (1:24); the old life in Adam involves the “body of sin” (6:6); one should avoid obeying the desires of the mortal body (6:12); the existence of moral defeat is characterized by the “body of death” (7:24; cf. 8:10-13).
Paul connects the term “flesh” with the body. Ultimately this is not an anthropological dualism between two parts within a person (in 7:23, the mind remains subject to the flesh), but humanity as sarx contrasted with God’s Spirit (8:4-9; Gen 6:3). The Old Testament employed the equivalent Hebrew term basar for humans (or other animals) in their limited creatureliness, including their mortality. By Paul’s day, some Jews employed the term for human weakness in its susceptibility to sin. Basar and its Greek translation sarx were not inherently evil, but as “human weakness” were susceptible to sin. Flesh was not meant to lead human life, but to be the arena in which life should be lived in obedience to God. Paul could use “flesh” also for the outward existence (Rom 1:3; 2:28; 4:1; 9:3, 5, 8; 11:14), again what is merely human (though not intrinsically evil) rather than empowered by God (he sometimes contrasts flesh with the Spirit or the promise). Despite these observations, flesh had an inescapable bodily dimension.
Contrary to the views of a large proportion of New Testament scholars, mostly following secondary sources, Diaspora Jews by Paul’s day commonly did distinguish soul and body, often expecting immortality for the former even when affirming resurrection for the latter. In 7:5, sinful passions working in the body’s members characterize being “in the flesh.” In 8:13 one is either destined for death in the flesh or resurrection by putting to death the body’s deeds. Flesh is also linked with the body in 6:19; it contrasts with the mind in 7:25; the law working in one’s bodily members (7:23) is the law of the flesh (7:25).
The conflict between the law of sin in the members and the law in the mind in 7:25 was not the basis for the verdict of “no condemnation” in 8:1, as if God would overlook physical sin provided one’s mind harbored good motives. Far from it: 8:1-13 contrasts those who serve the flesh with those who serve God by the Spirit! Paul’s goal is a way of thinking dominated not by the flesh (hence by one’s physical desires, which have a legitimate place, but not in ruling life), but a way of thinking dominated by the Spirit (8:5-9).
This new way of thinking involves a renewed mind (12:2). This renewed mind teaches believers how to present their bodies in the service of the larger body-the body of Christ (12:1, 4-5). Such a mind is no longer self-centered, but Christ centered; no longer seeking full autonomy, it now submits gladly to the greater good of God’s purposes. “Flesh” is the localized self in contrast both to depen dence on God (through the Spirit) and the corporate interests of Christ’s body. Life ruled by the flesh is, at root, human selfishness and self-centeredness (or sometimes centered in one’s group), rather than genuinely altruistically sharing God’s interests. Paul’s goal is not to annihilate self, as in some religions, but to connect it to the service of a greater purpose (ct. 12:1-8; Matt 6:33). Paul was no gnostic, but neither was he a hedonistic Western individualist who keeps religion in its subjective place.
(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)
Overcoming prejudice: the Roman centurion in Matthew 8:5-13
The Gentile mission was at most peripheral to Jesus’ earthly ministry: he did not actively seek out Gentiles for ministry (Mt 10:5), and both occasions on which he heals Gentiles he does so from a distance (8:13; 15:28). The Gentile mission became central to the early church, however, and early Christians naturally looked to accounts of Jesus’ life for examples of ministry to the Gentiles (compare 1:3, 5-6; 2:1-2, 11; 3:9; 4:15).
The significance of Matthew 8:5-13 is clarified by some basic information about Roman centurions and what they represented to Jewish people in the first century. In this period soldiers in the Roman legions served twenty years. Unlike aristocrats, who could become tribunes or higher officials immediately, most centurions rose to their position from within the ranks and became members of the equestrian (knight) class when they retired. Roman soldiers participated in pagan religious oaths to the divine emperor.
Matthew here demonstrates that a call to missions work demands that disciples first abandon ethnic and cultural prejudice. His Jewish readers would be tempted to hate Romans, especially Roman soldiers, and perhaps their officers even more; this would be especially true after A.D. 70. Jesus’ teaching about accommodating a Roman soldier’s unjust request (5:41), paying taxes to a pagan state that used the funds in part for armies (22:21) or paying a temple tax that the Romans later confiscated for pagan worship (17:24-27) would seem intolerable to anyone whose allegiance to Christ was not greater than his or her allegiance to family and community. But Jesus is not satisfied by our treating an enemy respectfully; he demands that we actually love that enemy (5:44). No one challenges our prejudices— and sometimes provokes our antagonism more than a “good” member of a group that has unjustly treated people we love. This narrative challenges prejudice in a number of ways.
“Exceptions” can make a difference. When one white minister living in the U.S. South was experiencing the deepest trauma of his life, some African-American Christians took him under their wing and nursed him back to spiritual and emotional health. The white minister began to experience the spiritual resources and strength that the black American church had developed through slavery, segregation and contemporary urban crises and was eventually ordained irl a black Baptist church. Subsequently he discovered slave narratives and other accounts that brought him face to face with what people who looked like him had done to the near ancestors of his closest friends. He became so ashamed of the color of his skin that he wanted to rip it off. But the love of his African-American friends and the good news of Christ’s love restored him, and soon he began to feel part of the community that had embraced him.
He often joined his friends in lamenting the agony of racism and its effects. But one day after a Sunday-school lesson, a minister friend said something about white people in general that he suddenly took personally. “I didn’t mean you,” the black minister explained quickly. “You’re like a brother to me.• The black minister made an exception because he knew the white Christian, but the white Christian wondered about all the people who didn’t know him. He had experienced a taste of what most of his black friends regularly encountered in predominantly white circles.
The next week the ministers were studying together the story of the centurion’s servant in Luke, and they noted that the centurion’s Jewish contemporaries viewed him as an exception to the rule that Gentiles were oppressors. They also noted that the Gospels tell this story because that exception in Jesus’ ministry points to a huge number of Gentile converts pouring in at the time when the Gospels were being written.
If even a few people become exceptions and really care enough about their brothers and sisters of other races to listen, these exceptions can show us that the racial and cultural barriers that exist in our societies do not need to continue. If we are willing to pay the price-which will sometimes include hints of rejection from people we have come to love-we can begin to bring down those barriers.
(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)
You will know them by their fruits – Matthew 7:16-20
The false prophets in Matthew 7:15 claim to have prophesied, exorcised and effected miracles by Jesus’ name (v. 22). Although Matthew is surely charismatic in a positive way (compare, for example, 5:12; 10:8, 40-42; 23:34), here he challenges false Christian charismatics whose disobedience Christ will finally reveal (10:26). Although some could prophesy and work signs by demonic power (for example, 2 Thess 2:9; Rev 13:13-16; compare Jer 2:8; 23:13), one could also manifest genuine gifts of God’s Spirit yet be lost (1 Sam 19:24).
Once we acknowledge that God can inspire people to speak his message (and this would apply to gifts like teaching as well as prophecy), how do we discern his genuine representatives? Like his follower Paul, Jesus subordinates the gifts of the Spirit to the fruit of the Spirit (compare 1 Cor 13) and submission to Jesus’ lordship (1 Cor 12:1-3). Jesus’ words about fruit thus refer to repentant works (Mt 7:21; 3:8, 10), recalling Jesus’ ethical teachings in 5:21-7:12.
Much of today’s church may miss out on prophecy altogether, which is not a healthy situation (1 Thess 5:20). Prophecy remains a valid gift until Jesus’ return (1Cor 13:9-12), and we should seek it for our churches (1 Cor 14:1, 39). But wherever the real is practiced, the counterfeit will also appear (a phenomenon I as a charismatic have witnessed frequently; compare 1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:21).
An adulterous minister may exhibit many divinely bestowed gifts— sometimes because God is answering the prayers of people in the congregation— but such ministers are unworthy of our trust as God’s spokespersons as long as they continue in sin. Yet Jesus wants us to look even closer to home. Do we become so occupied with “the Lord’s work” that we lose sight of the precious people God has called us to serve? Do we become so preoccupied with our mission and our gifts that we neglect a charitable attitude toward our families and other people around us?
Yet the image of the tree and the fruit also reminds us that behavior flows from character, and in Christian teaching character comes through being born again rather than merely through self-discipline. Our own best efforts at restructuring unregenerate human nature are doomed to failure (Gal 5:19-21). By contrast, a person transformed by and consistently dependent on the power of God’s Spirit will live according to the traits of God’s character because of God’s empowerment, just as trees bear fruit according to their own kind (Gal 5:18, 22-23).
(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)
God does miracles only when we need them — Matthew 14:13-21
The miracle of the “feeding of the five thousand” in Matthew 14:13-21 is greater than the manna of the exodus, since none of the manna would be left over. But manna was never left over because it was to be provided every day, whereas this miracle is a rare one. So much was left over that each of the twelve disciples gathered food in his wicker basket (v. 20). The leftovers stress the lavish abundance of God’s miraculous power in Christ; many people felt that a good host should provide enough food that some would always be left over.
Yet the gathering of the leftovers (compare 2 Kings 4:7, 44; 7:1-2, 16-20; 1 Kings 17:16; Jn 6:12) teaches us something further. Most moralists condemned wastefulness and emphasized thrift. Jesus trusted that God’s provision would always be available when it was needed (compare 16:9-11), but like most moralists he refused to squander what was available. The extra bread, which was more than the amount started with, could be used for other meals.
Everett Cook, a retired Pentecostal minister running a street mission, confronted an associate who had a growth on his nose but refused to see a doctor. “God will heal me,” the man insisted.
“If you needed a miracle, God would give you one,” Everett retorted, “but right now he’s given you a doctor and medical insurance. You need to use what he’s given you.”
The next time they met the man’s growth was much bigger, but the man still insisted, “I am healed.” The third time they met the growth had spread further, and finally the man was thinking that perhaps he needed to see a doctor.
God performed a miracle when he created the world and set its laws in motion, and we are often wise to start with natural means when those are available. God performs miracles to meet our genuine needs, but he will not perform them merely to entertain us.
God is not intimidated by the magnitude of our problem. The disciples saw the size of the need and the littleness of the human resources available; Jesus saw the size of the need and the greatness of God’s resources available. Often God calls us to do tasks for him that are technically impossible-barring a miracle.
The day before I was going to call my prospective Ph.D. program to say I was not coming because I had no money, God unexpectedly met my need. And in the summer after I finished my Ph.D., I found myself still unable to locate a teaching position for the fall. After much prayer, one night I finally determined the bare minimum I needed to live on and to store my research that year, and I cried out in despair. Barring a miracle, I thought, I will be on the street this year. Less than twenty-four hours later Rodney Clapp called from InterVarsity Press and offered me a contract to write the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament I had proposed-plus an unexpected advance that was, to the dollar, what I’d decided I needed for the year. Undaunted by the magnitude of my need, God was teaching me that he alone has the power to meet my needs.
Another lesson in the miracle is this: God often begins with what we have. Jesus often takes what we bring to him and multiplies it (vv. 16-19). When Moses insisted that he needed a sign to take with him, God asked him what was already in his hand and then transformed it (Ex 4:1-3), using what had been merely a shepherd’s rod even to part the sea (Ex 14:16). When a widow needed financial help, Elisha asked what she had in her house; she responded that she had only a small amount of oil, so he commanded her to borrow jars into which to pour the oil and then multiplied it until all the jars were full (2 Kings 4:1-7).
Although God created the universe from nothing, he normally takes the ordinary things of our lives and transforms them for his honor (see, for example, Judg 6:14; 15:15-19). The narrative does not even report that Jesus prayed for the food to multiply; confident that he represents the Father’s will, he merely gave thanks (the meaning of the Greek expression that some translations render “blessed”; “blessing” food merely means giving thanks for it), which was the standard Jewish custom before and normally after meals.
(Adapted from Matthew: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Buy the book here.)
Mary, Joseph, and the virgin birth of Jesus — Matthew 1:18-25
Ancient biographers sometimes praised the miraculous births of their subjects (especially prominent in the Old Testa ment), but there are no close parallels to the virgin birth. Greeks told stories of gods impregnating women, but the text indicates that Mary’s conception was not sexual; nor does the Old Testament (or Jewish tradition) ascribe sexual characteristics to God. Many miraculous birth stories in the ancient world (including Jewish accounts, e.g., 1 Enoch 106) are heavily embroidered with mythical imagery (e.g., babies filling houses with light), in contrast with the straightforward narrative style of this passage.
1:18. Betrothal (erusin) then was more binding than most engagements are today and was normally accompanied by the groom’s payment of at least part of the bride price. Betrothal, which commonly lasted a year, meant that bride and groom were officially pledged to each other but had not yet consummated the marriage; advances toward anyone else were thus regarded as adulterous (Deut 22:23-27). Two witnesses, mutual consent (normally) and the groom’s declaration were necessary to establish Jewish betrothals (in Roman betrothals, consent alone sufficed).
Mary would have probably been between the ages of twelve and fourteen (sixteen at the oldest), Joseph perhaps between eighteen and twenty; their parents likely arranged their marriage, with Mary and Joseph’s consent. Premarital privacy between betrothed persons was permitted in Judea but apparently frowned upon in Galilee, so Mary and Joseph may well not have had any time alone together at this point.
1:19. The penalty for adultery under Old Testament law was death by stoning, and this penalty applied to infidelity during betrothal as well (Deut 22:23-24). In New Testament times, Joseph would have merely been required to divorce Mary and expose her to shame; the death penalty was rarely if ever executed for this offense. (Betrothals were so binding that if a woman’s fiancé died, she was considered a widow; betrothals could otherwise be terminated only by divorce.) But a woman with a child, divorced for such infidelity, would be hard pressed ever to find another husband, leaving her without means of support if her parents died.
But because divorces could be effected by a simple document with two witnesses, Joseph could have divorced her without making her shame more widely known. (It was necessary to involve a judge only if the wife were the one requesting that the husband divorce her.) Much later rabbinic tradition charges that Mary slept with another man, but Joseph’s marrying her (v. 24) demonstrates that he did not believe this was the case.
1:24-25. Joseph acts like Old Testament men and women of God who obeyed God’s call even when it went against all human common sense. Marriage consisted of covenant (at the betrothal; the marital contract also involved a monetary transaction between families), a ceremony and consummation, which ratified the marriage, normally on the first night of the seven-day wedding. Joseph here officially marries Mary but abstains from consummating the marriage until after Jesus is born. Jewish teachers thought that men had to marry young because they could not resist temptation (many even blamed a woman’s uncovered hair for inducing lust). Joseph, who lives with Mary but exercises self-control, thus provides a strong role model for sexual purity.
(Adapted from The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)
Paul’s approach to suffering in the book of Romans
Paul’s theological approach to suffering would encourage his Roman audience. They had faced the trauma of many of their number being expelled (49 CE), a situation that had ended perhaps less than five years earlier (54 CE), and would soon face deadly persecution (c. 64 CE). These believers also shared broader human experiences like grief for loved ones.
Suffering recalls our attention to God’s faithfulness and promises. Believers in many parts of the world experience suffering on a dramatic level. Many have faced deadly persecution, such as (among many other possible examples) in northern Nigeria, Iran, and the Indian state of Orissa. Others have suffered from genocide and horrific ethnic conflicts, such as in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Even in the face of such intense suffering, though, believers have often learned to cling deeply to God for hope (cf. 5:3-5). My wife was for eighteen months a refugee during war in Congo Brazzaville, and her journal records her experiences of hope in God that gave her strength to face the anguish.
Moreover, the possibility of chaos is not far from any society. For example, an infrastructure collapse would threaten massive death in heavily urbanized, economically interdependent societies. Yet even without such large-scale catastrophes, all believers face suffering-the death of a family member, struggles with a severely autistic child, miscarriages, and so on.
Counselors warn against giving a glib assertion that “all things work for good” to a person who is suffering. Instead, we should begin to learn to trust Paul’s message of God’s sovereign care and destiny for us before we suffer. At times we may be content learning such ideas without incorporating them in our lives; when we face suffering, however, with only God to cling to, the genuineness of our faith is tested. Then, with God’s help, we have opportunity to show our faith, to further develop an intellectual affirmation into a life of deeper trust.
(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)
Paul’s crafting of the book of Romans – the $2275 letter!
In the past, some scholars made much of the difference between “letters” and “epistles:” placing Paul’s in the former category to show their proximity to most surviving ancient letters (from Egyptian papyri) rather than literary letters.
While Paul did not belong to the elite circles of leisured letter writers like Cicero or Pliny, he did not simply compose his major letters, like Romans, off the top of his head. Given the time necessary to take normal dictation in antiquity (shorthand being unavailable), Paul may have taken over eleven hours to dictate this letter to Tertius, its scribe (Rom 16:22).
Since such a major undertaking probably involved more than one draft (and Paul could draw on his preaching experience), the final draft may have taken less than this estimate, but the total time invested in the letter was probably greater. Given the cost of papyrus and of the labor required (though Tertius, a believer, might have donated his services), one scholar estimates the cost of Romans at 20.68 denarii, which he calculates as roughly $2275 in recent US currency. In other words, Paul did not simply offer this project as an afterthought; Romans is a carefully premeditated work.
As we shall note below, Romans is no ordinary letter; it is a sophisticated argument. The average ancient papyrus letter was 87 words; the orator Cicero was more long-winded, averaging 295 words (with as many as 2530 words); and the philosopher Seneca averaged 995 words (with as many as 4134). The extant letters attributed to Paul average 2495 words, while Romans, his longest, has 7114 words.
One characteristic of letters that is surely relevant here is that authors expected the specified audience of their letters to understand them. Whether authors always communicated adequately or readers always understood adequately is another question, but most authors at least tried to communicate so as to be clearly understood. Paul thus writes to his audience in Greek. (Greek was the first language of many non-Italians in Rome, including the majority of Jews and of Christian ministers who had come from the east; only in the second century is it clear that many lower-class, Latin-speaking Romans joined the church.)
Paul also apparently writes with what he assumes will be shared cultural assumptions regarding language and concepts that he uses without detailed explanation. Informing ourselves about these shared cultural assumptions helps us understand his language.
(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)