1.  For St. Augustine’s conversion, see Confessions, bk. 8, sec. 12; for Luther, see R. Bainton, Here I Stand. A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon, 1950), ch. 3; for Wesley, see C. Nehemiah, ed., The Journal of John Wesley (New York: Eaton & Matins, 1909), vol. 1, pp. 465–78; for Barth, see Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind, ed. J. Godsey (Richmond: John Knox, 1966), pp. 24–25.

2.  That Paul wrote Romans from Corinth was reinforced by an archaeological discovery in Corinth in 1929. In limestone paving blocks just east of the theater a Latin inscription was unearthed which reads:

ERASTVS PRO AEDILIT[AT]E S[UA] P[ECUNIA] STRAVIT

“Erastus in return for his aedileship laid [the pavement] at his own expense.” An aedile was a commissioner of public works. Paul sends greetings to the Roman church from “Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works” in 16:23. Since Erastus is a rather uncommon name, and no other Erastus is known to have been an official at Corinth, it is likely that the Erastus of the inscription is the same person named in Romans 16:23, who was the traveling companion of Paul mentioned in Acts 19:22 and 2 Timothy 4:20. See V. P. Furnish, “Corinth in Paul’s Time,” BAR 15 (3, 1988), p. 20.

On the Gallio inscription and its dating, see C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background; Selected Documents (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 48–49.

3.  Juvenal, 3.188–202; Martial, 1.117; 7.95; 8.23; 12.57.

4.  Dio Cassius, History 68.7.

5.  Augustus, Monumentum Ancyranum 8.

6.  Pliny the Elder, Natural History 3.5.66. A hectare is about two and one-half acres.

7.  Rome had some 250 bakeries, with a total daily capacity of perhaps 450,000 loaves.

8.  So R. M. Grant, “Rome,” IDB, vol. 4, p. 104.

9.  On the question of Rome’s population, see J. C. Russell, The Control of Late Ancient and Medieval Population (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1985), pp. 8–40; idem, Late Ancient and Medieval Population, TAPS, New Series—volume 48, part 3 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1958), pp. 63–66. T. H. Hollingsworth (Historical Demography [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969], p. 281) suggests a maximum population of between 500,000 and 750,000.

10.  Quoted in F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 379.

11.  Pro Flacco 28.66.

12.  War 2.80–83; Ant. 17. 299–303.

13.  Ant. 18.81–84. This expulsion is mentioned by the Roman historians Tacitus (Ann. 2.85.4), Dio Cassius (History 57.18.5a) and Suetonius (Tib. 36). Describing the severity of Tiberius’ decree, Suetonius writes, “he suppressed and compelled those who were engaged in that superstition (= Judaism) to burn their religious vestments with all their apparatus.… the rest of that race, and those who adopted similar opinions, he expelled from the city, on pain of perpetual slavery if they did not obey.”

14.  See H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1960), pp. 135ff.; and Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, pp. 379–92.

15.  Dio Cassius, History 60.6.

16.  Claudius 25; see Barrett, New Testament Background, pp. 13–14. The dating of these events is not altogether certain. Dio Cassius (History 60.6) places Claudius’ restraining order in A.D. 41, whereas Orosius (History 7.6.15f.) places it in A.D. 49. Many scholars, assuming that Dio Cassius and Orosius refer to the same event, are forced to decide which of the two competing dates is (more?) correct. Suetonius, however, says that the Jews “constantly made disturbances,” and I am inclined to regard Dio Cassius and Orosius as referring to separate actions of Claudius necessitated by unresolved Jewish agitation in the capital. In this I follow A. J. M. Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans, SNTW, ed. J. Riches (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), pp. 57–58; Dunn, Romans 1–8, WBC 38A Dallas: Word Books, 1988), p. xlix; and Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, p. 381.

17.  For fuller treatments of this reconstruction, see J. Drane, “Why Did Paul Write Romans?” in Pauline Studies. Essays Presented to F. F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday, ed. D. Hagner and M. Harris (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), pp. 217–19; and Wedderburn, Reasons for Romans, pp. 58–65.

18.  Bishop Anders Nygren (Commentary on Romans, trans. C. Rasmussen [Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1949], pp. 1–9) calls Romans “The clearest gospel of all.” Karl Barth’s commentary belongs to this category, although with an existential emphasis. See especially his preface to the second edition.

19.  Dunn (Romans 1–8, pp. lv–lviii) also adopts this threefold division, although he labels the purposes as apologetic, pastoral, and missionary.

20.  Introduction to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), vol. 2, p. 140.

21.  T. W. Manson, “St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans—And Others,” in The Romans Debate—Revised and Expanded Edition, ed. K. Donfried (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1991), pp. 3–15.

22.  Jacob Jervell, “The Letter to Jerusalem,” in Romans Debate—Revised, pp. 53–64.

23.  G. Bornkamm, “The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament,” in Romans Debate—Revised, pp. 16–28; idem, Paulus (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), pp. 103–11.

24.  Note John Drane’s summary: “What we have in [Romans, Paul’s] magnum opus, is therefore a conscious effort to convince himself as well as his opponents that it is possible to articulate a theology which is at once antilegalistic without also being intrinsically antinomian” (“Why Did Paul Write Romans?” pp. 223–24).

25.  Ann. 13.

26.  Wedderburn (Reasons for Romans, pp. 54–65) discusses this matter in detail and concludes: “We can argue that Paul knew a great deal about what was going on in Rome, and that his advice to them was written in light of that knowledge, and is to be interpreted by us in the light of that situation” (p. 63). So too, Dunn, Romans 1–8, pp. lvi–lviii. Wolfgang Wiefel offers a helpful reconstruction of events in Rome in “The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity,” in Romans Debate—Revised, pp. 85–101.

27.  Günter Klein interprets 1:11 and 15:20 to mean that Paul desired to visit Rome to lay a proper apostolic foundation for a church which had not been founded by an apostle (“Paul’s Purpose in Writing the Epistle to the Romans,” in Romans Debate—Revised, pp. 29–14). Klein’s argument is ingenious but weak. Paul registers no dissatisfaction with the foundation of the Roman church; in 15:14, in fact, he praises the foundation. In Philippians 1:15–18 Paul even concedes that the gospel preached from the wrong motives is still the gospel.

28.  See Robert Jewett, “Romans as an Ambassadorial Letter,” Int, 36 (1982), pp. 5–20.

29.  The debate was launched by E. P Sanders in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1977), and followed by Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Subsequent voices in the debate include L. Gaston, “Paul and Torah,” in Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity, ed. A. T. Davies (New York: Paulist Press, 1979); J. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism. Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford, 1985); H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); Dunn, Romans 1–8, lxiii–lxxii, and further, Jesus, Paul and the Law. Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990); and Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989).