Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2019 8:45 pm"I have written to you
very boldly, but it was to remind you (sc. of what you already know)" is not the same Paul as "I have been called, set apart, and given authority from God to preach the gospel to all nations, including you."
I agree; they are not the same. They are, in fact, apples and oranges. One is Paul's mission statement; the other is the rationale for Paul's letter to a church which is, at best, the product of somebody
else's mission.
At the very least, it's less intense.
In what way? I am not following.
Furthermore, since Paul's status as an apostle was so dear to him, it cannot be insignificant that he replaces that title with "leitourgos."
It
is significant. It is part of the liturgical metaphor. Also, despite his pride in his apostleship, Paul does not always call himself an apostle; he frequently calls himself a servant, for example.
But Paul tells them that they are, en masse, πεπληρωμένοι πάσης τῆς γνώσεως, full of all knowledge. For him that would be a weighty claim.
Why do you think he would not make such a claim? What is this based on? Is he not allowed to be nice (or extend a measure of flattery) to a church he has never visited but hopes to visit soon?
And is it believable that he would make that assertion to a church he has never visited?
Yes, of course it is believable. Why do you think otherwise?
I think that our image of Paul as the great missionary is a product of Acts (which I read as fiction). It seems that Paul largely failed in Galatia (wherever that was), and Corinth, and it was partly out of frustration at not getting his gospel properly heard and understood that he wrote Romans. Paul was essentially an apostle (from God to humanity), not a missionary (from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth).
I potentially agree with all of this, except that you are dicing up the terminology too finely (apostle versus missionary, both of which mean "sent one," and neither of which etymologically specifies the sender). But Paul still chose whither to go, and the reason(s) for his choice may still be opaque to us: not just in this case, but in every case.
We do know some of his preferences: whereas the gospels speak of apostles/missionaries going to villages and roaming the countryside, Paul seems to go only to strongholds of Greco-Roman culture (Thessalonica, Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus). So to go to Rome or to Spain is at least in keeping with his overall
modus operandi. But why Spain as opposed, say, to some other province with Roman cities? That is what I am saying we may never know for certain, because the rationale is probably purely subjective. Why Ephesus instead of Alexandria? And so on.
If there really had been a church in Rome when Paul wrote, and if his letter included chapters 15 and 16, don't you think they would have preserved the entire thing as a treasured possession? Why circulate a 14-chapter version that says nothing about them?
This is where Gamble comes in. The point of eliminating all references to Rome would be to make the text catholic/universal, which was demonstrably a point of concern for churches in century II. I recommend reading his book in full for a more complete picture.
And who says it had to be Rome that cut it off at chapter 14?
My point was that this difference doesn't tell us anything about which text came first.
I freely admit it is not a slam dunk. But Acts has Paul predicting what will happen to him, and Romans does not. One of these texts is plausible as coming from Paul's own mouth or pen, and the other is not. And that the interpolator of Romans should
subtract Paul's prediction seems less likely to me than that the author/editor of Acts should
add it.