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1. Does Romans 16 go with Romans 1-15? Everyone thinks it does in terms of the timing -- Paul's at Corinth around AD56. He's about to head to Jerusalem with an offering for the poor in the Jerusalem church.
But was Romans 16 written to Rome? Or, just maybe, was it written to Ephesus? That is the question. At the moment, most scholars say Rome.
But I am old. I was trained right before New Testament scholarship went all sentimental. [1] While I once would have been in the majority, I am now in the loyal opposition. I side with the older idea that Romans 16 was an independent letter written to Ephesus, collected and attached to Romans because they were written at the same time.
I summarize the argument at the end of this post. For now, here's that version of the story.
2. Paul had been kicked out of Ephesus, I think. There had been the riot of Acts 19. I believe Demetrius did in fact bring charges against Paul (Acts 19:24, 38). I side with N. T. Wright and others that Paul was jailed and that he wrote Philippians at that time. He feared he had a death sentence on him (2 Cor. 1:8).
But God delivered him.
Now, exiled from the city, Paul longed for the churches at Ephesus. After all, he had stayed there for almost three years. Paul's time at Ephesus was almost the longest he had managed to stay in one location before being driven out. [2] During his time there, Paul had used Ephesus as a base, perhaps planting churches in nearby places like Colossae and Laodicea.
Phoebe
3. So, Paul was delighted when Phoebe came to him asking for a letter of recommendation to the churches of Ephesus (Rom. 16:1). Perhaps she was leaving Corinth to live in Ephesus for a bit. Maybe she had business there.
Paul saw the Lord's hand in it. This was a chance to send a letter back to the churches of Ephesus while helping Phoebe out by vouching for her.
Phoebe was a deacon of the house church that met in Cenchrea, the eastern port village of Corinth. Deacons did a lot of the work in a church, somewhat like our pastors today. A large enough house church might have a group of elders who provided wise council for it. They were modeled after the elders who provided the background leadership of a synagogue. The Sandhedrin in Jerusalem was the ultimate example of this sort of elder council.
Deacons were thus like the "feet" of a local assembly. They did the day to day work. They were like the synagogue leaders responsible for keeping the ship going. They were the "servants" of the churches. They were people like Epaphroditus at Philippi (Phil. 2:25) or Epaphras at Colossae (Col. 4:12). Phoebe was one of these "servants" of the church at Cenchrae.
4. By the way, don't get confused by Acts 6. Acts never calls the seven deacons. And they don't act like deacons either in the modern sense. Philip was an evangelist. Stephen preaches himself to death. There's a recent tradition that says a deacon does what Peter describes in Acts 6:3. The text just doesn't say that! It's made up.
And Peter done messed up anyway. He got caught with his britches down, overlooking a group just as important to God as he was. Making excuses, "I can't wait tables. I've got to pray." Yeah, right.
It was a ministry failure plain and simple. Luke softens it up as usual. But the bottom line is that Greek-speaking Jews weren't being ministered to. So, God raised up these people to step into the gap. We don't see these seven waiting tables in Acts. We see them spreading the gospel!
4. Paul commended Phoebe to the churches of Ephesus. Such letters of recommendation were important in a world where a stranger could show up claiming things with no way of knowing if they were reliable or not. Paul wanted the churches at Ephesus to know that Phoebe was trustworthy. Indeed, she was a deacon of the house assembly that meets at the port village of Cenchraea.
Paul doesn't have to justify the fact that she's a woman. Apparently, a female deacon wasn't unusual enough to comment on. And, yes, it is the masculine form of the word such as Paul uses in Philippians 1:1 (diakonos). Phoebe is not an informal "servant." The word often has this more generic meaning -- but not when it is used in relation to a specific church as here.
He calls her a prostatis to him and others (16:2). This probably indicates that she was a person of some financial means, a patron of sorts to the church. Indeed, perhaps she is traveling to Ephesus on business. Paul asks the churches of Ephesus to help her in any way they might when she arrives.
Priscilla and Aquila
5. He sends greetings to Priscilla and Aquila (16:3). Fascinating how often he mentions Priscilla first when he mentions the couple. Apparently, she was the one who first came to mind when he was writing about ministry. He regularly mentions her first in ministry contexts (Acts 18:26; Rom. 16:3; 2 Tim. 4:19). She is mentioned first in the discipleship of Apollos (Acts 18:26).
Hey, wait a minute. Weren't Priscilla and Aquila with Paul in Ephesus (18:26)? And aren't they in Ephesus in 2 Timothy 4:19 at the end? So why are they in Rome all of a sudden?
They aren't. This is the first clue that Romans 16 was actually written to Ephesus rather than Rome. It won't be the last (keep reading). It's certainly possible that they went to Rome when Paul left Ephesus and then returned by the time of 2 Timothy. But this is the first drip in a cumulative case against Rome as the destination for Romans 16. Ephesus makes much more sense.
Priscilla and Aquila have a house church. Presumably, both of them are elders in their own house church. In more than one place, Paul mentions churches that meet in the houses of women. There is the church that meets in Nympha's house (Col. 4:15). There are those "of Chloe" in 1 Corinthians 1:11. Perhaps these are widows. Or perhaps their husbands aren't believers or aren't involved.
But in the end, he identifies these churches by their names. It is the First Church of Chloe and the First Church of Nympha. It is natural to assume they were elders in their own house churches. Why wouldn't they be -- except for the way some people wrongly interpret one verse in 1 Timothy?
Epaenetus
6. Paul greets Epaenetus, the first fruits of Asia (16:5). Let that sink in -- the first convert in Asia. A little odd, isn't it -- if he's writing to Rome? Drip, drip. He's not writing to Rome. He's writing to Ephesus.
Again, it's not impossible that Epaenetus went to Rome, perhaps even with Priscilla and Aquila. But wouldn't these greetings fit very nicely if Paul were writing to -- wait for it -- Ephesus. There, the mention that he was the firstfruits of Asia would make perfect sense.
I'm guessing that Mary has something to do with Epaenetus (16:6). Maybe not. But she is a worker in the church. Children's worker? Nope. Doesn't say that. Women's ministry? Nope. Doesn't say that.
She labors hard "among y'all."
Andronicus and Junia
7. Andronicus and Junia are probably a husband-wife pair. Paul greets them as "my fellow prisoners, notable among the apostles." (ἐπίσημος ἐν...). He adds that they "have been in Christ before me."
The big question here is how to take "notable among the apostles." Most instances of this expression in the Greek outside the Bible refers to a member of a group. [3] This is also the way most early Christians took the phrase with Chysostom in the 300s marveling that a woman would be an apostle. [4] Finally, some copyists of the verse apparently felt uncomfortable enough with the verse that they made Junia (feminine) into Junias (masculine).
All that is to say, what may seem like an ambiguous expression to us -- is it "notable among the apostles or "well-known to the apostles" -- wasn't ambiguous to the ancient Greeks or to ancient Christians. Junia is called an apostle here.
It fits the context too. This husband and wife were believers before Paul. Indeed, as "fellow prisoners," we can infer that they were probably imprisoned with Paul at Ephesus during the Demetrius scandal.
8. What were the criteria for an apostle? Here we don't mean one of the Twelve, but one of the broader group of apostles that included people like James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul. Paul himself gives the criteria -- they needed to be a witness to the resurrection (1 Cor. 9:1).
And here note that there are no apostles of this sort today. Paul was the last (1 Cor. 15:8). When Ephesians refers to God giving some to be apostles (Eph. 4:11), it is referring to the apostles of the earliest church. However, this was a wider group than the Twelve.
Apostles were sent, as the core meaning of the word implies. They were sent as witnesses to the resurrection, as both Paul and Acts 1:22 indicate.
Bottom line: Andronicus and Junia were Jews to whom Jesus had appeared after the resurrection. Perhaps they were part of the "five hundred brothers [and sisters]" that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:6. Jesus sent them as witnesses to his resurrection, and they found themselves in Ephesus at the same time as Paul. Indeed, they go to jail with him during his time there.
9. They are Jewish -- Paul calls them "kinspeople" or "relatives." But he probably doesn't mean blood relations. He means they're Jewish.
Again, some manuscripts have Junia as a guy -- Junias. However, it's pretty unanimous among scholars that it's a woman, Junia. For one thing, the best manuscripts -- the earliest Greek copies of Romans -- all say Junia. Also, the fundamental rule of deciding what a verse said is this: "What original wording best explains how the other wordings came about?"
So which scenario is more likely? Some copyist felt uncomfortable with a woman being an apostle and made it into a guy or someone intentionally made an apostle into a woman? Copying errors can happen accidentally too, of course.
It's virtually unanimous among text experts that it was Junia, a woman.
10. These are just the first of a number of Jewish individuals mentioned in the closing greetings of Romans 16. Here we get to an important aspect to Romans 16. How Gentile (non-Jewish) were the churches at Rome? I think they were predominantly Gentile, as we will see.
However, Robert Jewett -- who has written an important commentary on Romans in the Hermeneia series -- sees the churches in Rome as much more evenly divided between Jew and Gentile. This conclusion has a major effect on his interpretation of the letter. [5] And he reaches this conclusion in large part by seeing how many Jewish individuals are in the greetings of Romans 16.
Similarly, Scot McKnight "reads Romans backwards," making a great deal of the idea that Phoebe carried the letter to Rome. [6] I love what he does with this concept. I just don't agree in the end.
While I love what these two interpreters do with their working assumptions, I don't go there. In fact, I think these assumptions end up clouding an objective reading of the first fifteen chapters.
He knows a lot of people.
11. So far we have had two hints that Romans 16 was actually sent to Ephesus: Priscilla and Aquila and Epaenetus. There's also the question of Andronicus and Junia being jailed with Paul -- he hasn't been to Rome yet so they had to be imprisoned with him somewhere else. Ephesus fits.
Paul has not been to Rome yet (e.g., Rom. 1:13). So, how does he know so many people there? It's not impossible of course. But it fits Ephesus very well.
Mary. Ampliatus (his "beloved"). Urbanus (a "fellow worker") and Stachys. Apelles and the household of Aristobulus. How does he know his household if he's never been to Rome?
Herodion, a fellow Jew, and the household of Narcissus. Again, he knows a household and he's never been there.
Tryphaena and Tryphosa -- women he has worked with. One, women work in the church. Two, where has Paul worked with them? Persis, another woman.
Rufus and his mother, who is like a mother to Paul. Do ancient Mediterranean mothers move around a lot? No. Ephesus makes a lot more sense.
Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas. Brothers and sisters with them. Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas. Also there are saints with them. Paul is probably going house church by house church in these greetings. [7]
Come on. It's Ephesus. Yes, people were mobile in the early church. But we're talking about massive mobility here. It's Ephesus.
Paul says for them to greet each other with a holy kiss (16:16). Why? Because they're family. They are brothers and sisters. They are mothers and sons/daughters. A holy handshake works today.
Memories of Ephesus
12. Paul warns them about dissension and false teaching. We know this will be a problem at Ephesus for decades to come. The Christian Gnostics will emerge from Ephesus. John, perhaps writing the letter of Revelation 2 within fifteen years of Romans, mentions false teachers at Ephesus.
In Philippians 1:16-17, Paul mentions people at Ephesus who talk Christ in a way that gets him in trouble. That fits the tone of Romans 16:17-18.
Paul says that God will soon crush Satan under their feet, an allusion to Genesis 3:15 (Rom. 16:20). By the way, this is the only allusion to Genesis 3:15 in the New Testament -- and it is not about Christ. It is the feet of the church at Ephesus under which Satan will be crushed here. I don't have a problem with seeing Christ in the Genesis verse. Just know the Bible itself never does it.
This is also one of the places where we learn that Paul saw the serpent in the Garden as Satan. John does too in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. However, note that Genesis itself never says this. It was not until the first century BC that any Jew seems to have made this connection. [8].
The letter to Ephesus may have ended with verse 20: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." That means that the closing from verse 21-23 may have been the way the letter to the Romans originally ended -- as it does now in this extended version.
He's at Corinth.
13. Now we get information on where Paul is when he is writing. We can apply this information to both the writing of Romans and the short letter to the Ephesians.
First, there is his co-worker Timothy. Notice that Titus is not mentioned. Then he mentions Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, fellow Jews. We know of a Jason from Thessalonica in Acts 17:6. Perhaps it is the same person.
Tertius is Paul's secretary in the writing of Romans 16, probably in the writing of all of Romans. He slips in a greeting of his own. Cheeky. Paul would not likely have handwritten his own letters (cf. Gal 6:11 where he briefly picks up the stylus). He would have planned them and dictated them.
Gaius seems to host the church at Corinth (Rom. 16:23). That suggests he had a large house, perhaps one that could accommodate 40-50 people for the worship assembly. Perhaps there were smaller assemblies too, but his house was apparently the large meeting place.
That suggests he has money. Perhaps he is the same person as Titius Justus in Acts 18:7 -- Gaius Titius Iustus, a Roman citizen. He was apparently from the earliest layer of the church, a Paul convert (cf. 1 Cor. 1:14).
Erastus is the city treasurer. Obviously, some in the church were well-connected in the city. Still today, you can see an inscription with his name on it on a sidewalk he paid for (see the image of this post). Quartus was probably another prominent person in the church and city.
Manuscript Issues
14. Romans 16:24 in some manuscripts repeats verse 20 -- "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." It is not likely original, although it gets a number because it was in the medieval manuscripts that formed the basis for the numbering in the 1500s.
Here we get to the final piece of the Romans 16 puzzle. The manuscript evidence for the last part of Romans is a mess. First, the current 16:25-27 probably isn't original. It's beautiful. It just probably wasn't written by Paul. It's a cap on an exposed tooth. When you are collecting Romans and 1 Ephesians together, you need a new ending. This is a beautiful one. It doesn't sound much like Paul's normal style, but it's beautiful. Let's keep it.
Here's another kicker. These verses appear in some manuscripts at the end of Romans 15 and even in some manuscripts at the end of Romans 14. It's true that all manuscripts of Romans have Romans 16, but we can see "fossils" in the manuscripts that hint it wasn't there in some very ancient ones.
Thus the cumulative argument that Romans 16 was largely a separate letter are 1) a manuscript mess, 2) people we know were at Ephesus (Priscilla, Aquila, Epaenetus), 3) a whole lot of people Paul knows, including house churches, including households in an age where mobility was far less than it is today, 4) a situation that seems to fit Ephesus well.
[1] In the 1980s, New Testament scholarship got tired of the search for hypothetical sources and theories of composition. It decided to focus on the text itself as it currently stands. The trajectory has resulted in scholars having a bias toward the unity of texts, explaining inner tensions by way of literary theories rather than theories of different sources.
[2] He apparently did better in his hometown area around Tarsus from AD36-44. Unfortunately, we don't know the details of that time. Since he doesn't return to that area -- and we have no record of him going north to Cappadocia and beyond -- perhaps he traveled a bit in that region during those years.
[3] For example, in Josephus, Antiquities 11:110, he refers to someone who is "notable among the Jews."
[4] John Chrysostom, Homily on Romans 31.
[5] Robert Jewett, Romans (Fortress, 2006).
[6] Scot McKnight, Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire (Baylor University, 2021).
[7] Once upon a time, Wayne Meeks blew my mind with how much social context he extracted from these greetings. In The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (Yale University, 2003).
[8] The first instance is in a book called The Life of Adam and Eve.
