The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGT OF ST. PAUL. 447
decree of Claudius, which had been passed only six years before, formed a
large community, sufficiently powerful to bo an object of alarm and jealousy
to the Imperial Government.
Of this Jewish community wo can form no conjecture how many were
nor have we a single datum to guide us in forming an estimate
Christians ;
of the numbers of the Christian Church in Rome, except the vague assertion
of Tacitus, that a " vast multitude " of its innocent members were butchered
by Nero in the persecution by which he strove to hide hia guilty share in th?
conflagration of July 19, A.D. 64. 1 Even tho salutations which crowd the
last chapter of tho Epistle to the Romans do not help us. Twenty-six people
are greeted by name, besides " the Church in the house " of Aquila and
Priscilla, some of the "households" of Aristobulus and Narcissus, 2 tho
" brethren," with Asyncritus and others, and tho " saints " with Olympas and
others. 3 All that we could gather from these notices, if we could bo sure that
is that tho Roman Chris-
(he sixteenth chapter was really addressed to Home,
tians possessed as yet no common place of meeting, but were separated into
at least three communities grouped around different centres, assembling in
different places of worship, and with no perceptible trace of ecclesiastical
organisation. But there is nothing whatever to show whether those communities
were large or small, and we shall see that the sixteenth chapter,
though unquestionably Pauline, was probably addressed to the Ephesiau and
not to the Roman Church.
Assuming, however, that the Christians were numerous, as Tacitus ex-
pressly informs us, two questions remain, of which both are involved in deep
obsurity. The one "
is, When and how was Christianity introduced into
Home P " The "
other is, Was the Roman Church predominantly Jewish or
predominantly Gentile P"
1. Tradition answers the first question by telling us that St. Peter was tho
founder of Latin Christianity, and this answer is almost demonstrably false.
It is first found in a work, at once malignant and spurious, written late in
the second century, to support a particular party. That work is the forged
Clementines, 4 in which we are told that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.
Tradition, gathering fresh particulars as it proceeds, gradually began to assert,
i Tac. Ann. xv. 40, 41 ; Suet. Nero, 38.
5 The mention of these two names has been regarded as an argument that the
sixteenth chapter really belongs to the Roman letter, since Aristobulus, the son of
Herod, and other Herodian princes of that time, had been educated in Rome, whose slaves
and freedmen these might be. Again, although Narcissus, the celebrated freedman of
Claudius, had been put to death in A.D. 54 (Tac. Arm. xiii. 1), four years before the
date of this letter, they of the household of Narcissus " may have been some of his
slaves. On the other hand, neither of these names was uncommon, and it is less
intrinsically improbable that there should have been a Narcissus and an Aristobulus at
Ephesus, than that there should have been so many Asiatic intimates and Jewish
kinsmen of St. Paul at Rome. Muratori (No. 1328) and Orelli (No. 720) give an inscription
found at Ferrara from a tablet erected by Tib. Claud. Narcissus, to the manes of
Iris wife, Dicceosune (Righteousness). See an interesting note on thi* in Phiniptre, Bill,
Stud., p. 428.
8 Rom. xvi. 5 14 15 Rccognit. I 6