On the Road to Rome (Transcript)

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Chris Sims: "Therefore, any one of you who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things. We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth. Do you really think—anyone of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same—that you will escape God’s judgment?" Paul's letter to the Romans, Chapter 2, 1-3.

[Music: "Monkey Gone to Heaven" by Pixies]

C:Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Apocrypals, it's the podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible and are we be jerks about it? "Absolutely not!" to quote Paul. My name is Chris Sims, and with me as always is the other set of footprints, Benito Cereno. Benito, how are you this fine morning?

Benito Cereno: I'm really good, Chris. How are you? I hope better than last time we recorded.

C:Yeah. For those of you who might not know, in the middle of recording the last episode my computer just – just pieces of it stopped working specifically the trackpad. The keyboard had been done for a while. For about six months I had been using a USB keyboard plugged into my laptop, which is not great, but now I have a shiny new laptop, a shiny new MacBook, so maybe if we pass that collection plate sometime soon, maybe make a love offering to your friends here on Apocrypals.

B:Yeah, we should really get that put together. One of us should do that.

C:One of us who is you should do that.

B:One of us who is me should absolutely do that.

C:So today, everyone, we are back in the New Testament. We're back with one of the two main dudes of early Christianity. We are reading Paul's letter to the Romans. And the good news is: it is a full 50 chapters shorter than the book of Isaiah. So that's nice.

B:Yeah, I think it worked out to pretty much being about one fourth the length of Isaiah in terms of chapters and pages, so yeah, a bit a bit of a relief after last time.

C:The bad news is that this is the first book of the Bible that we have read for this project that I have come away from going, "Oh, I don't like this. I actually do not like this."

B:Yeah, that's really interesting. But I mean, the thing about Romans is everybody has a different take on it. Like everyone's take is different as we'll see in just a bit. Obviously, Protestant Evangelical Christians have a very specific take on it. Catholics have a different take. And apparently every different Bible scholar has their view and it's very contentious. And if you want to get in a fight with a THD, this is a good way to do it. Just say like, "oh, I know what Romans is about." So I'm very glad that we have this episode wherein I'm going to have to try to explain what Romans is about. So a bunch of divinity school boys can come and beat me up, I suppose.

C:I think I have two big problems with it.

B:Yeah.

C:One is that, like you said, this is one that gets quoted quite a bit. We're going to talk about that in just a second. And so I recognize a lot of these passages from people who are believers who read the Bible and are jerks about it.

B:Right.

C:I think the other problem is that I just don't like Paul. I don't like him. He's a lot.

B:Yeah, yeah. Before we get into it, you know, just like as ever, I've just got to remind people like we are not theologians. We are not Bible scholars. I have things I would say I'm an expert in. Like if you guys needed me to explain to you a double dative or relative clause of characteristic, that's something I could and would do with some authority. But this, you know, in this case on this show, I'm just a boy standing in front of another boy trying to tell him what the Bible is about. That's all it is.

C:You know, usually we do the bit about who wrote this. This one seems pretty cut and dried to me. I think it's our boy. It's our long bearded boy with the sword. It's Paul, right? Like how much dispute over that is there, any?

B:Practically zero. There's practically zero dispute that.

B:So, yeah, what I actually wanted to talk about here up at the top is the whole genre of biblical epistles, because they're a big deal. Like as long as we're going to do the New Testament, as long as we're going to do the canonical New Testament, we're going to keep encountering them. Because canonical New Testament, 27 books, 21 out of those 27 books are epistles. The six that are not are the four Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. Everything else is in the form of a letter. And out of those 21, 13 or 14, depending on who you ask, are traditionally attributed to Paul. There's a lot of question about whether all of those are actually by Paul or if some of them are pseudepigraphical. Because typically the ones that are attributed to Paul usually start by saying, "this is from Paul," like Romans does. But yeah, there's practically zero dispute about whether Romans is an authentic Pauline letter. So: 13, 14. So basically Romans through either Philemon or Hebrews, depending on who you ask, are attributed to Paul.

B:And then seven or eight of the remaining, either starting with Hebrews or starting with James through Jude, are considered the general letters. And one of the ways to tell the difference is Pauline letters are named after the people to whom they are addressed, right? So Romans is his letter to the Romans. The Corinthians are his letters to the Corinthians. Philemon is a letter to Philemon, whereas the general letters are named after the person who is credited with writing them. So first and second Peter are by Peter, first, second, third John are by John, and so on.

B:And they're not listed chronologically. I think another thing we've discussed on this show before is that the books don't tend to get arranged chronologically. They are sometims chronological within genre, like we talked about like law versus history versus major prophets, minor prophets, wisdom, literature, that kind of thing. So books are arranged by topic or genre. In this case, the letters are actually arranged by length within the two subgroups. So Romans goes first because it's the longest of Paul's letters, even though it's not necessarily the earliest. In this case, with the epistles, they're actually divided. They're actually arranged by length. So Romans is the longest of Paul's letters, and each subsequent one is going to be a little bit shorter until you end up with either Philemon or Hebrews, depending on who you choose to believe are the authors of those books.

B:These are, in fact, letters or epistles, and the distinction there between what's an epistle versus what's a letter, if you think of letters, they're intended to be private correspondence, and they're usually shorter and they cover a particular slice of life, basically. Whereas epistles are more literary, they're longer, and they're meant to be read by a group. And in fact, probably meant to be published and public and permanent in a way, rather than being ephemeral the way that a letter might be.

C:And I'm guessing that's why Dracula is called an epistolary novel, because it is made up of letters, but it is also obviously meant for publication.

B:Sure. In that case an epistolary novel is just is one that's in the form of the letter because, I mean, epistle comes from the Latin word epistola, which is itself from the Greek epistola, which just means a thing that is sent out, right? And so that is just the word for letter in Greek and Latin. And so that is where we do get the word epistle and epistolary from that. But when we talk about an epistle versus a letter, the idea is that an epistle is supposed to be slightly more literary. And you can see, obviously, this is obviously meant to be a little bit more permanent and has really stood the test of time.

B:But it does follow the format of a letter. An ancient letter from Romans followed a very specific – in the Roman times, I should say – followed a very specific format, and Paul's letters do that. You start with a salutation, a greeting in which the person says, here's who I am. Here's the person I'm writing to. Hello.

C:Oh, I can't wait to talk about that.

B:Yeah, Paul's –

C:As we get into this, I cannot wait.

B:Paul's is a little bit more elaborate than that, but the standard formula for a Roman letter, if you were a centurion writing home, for example, you wouldn't say dear mother. You would say "Cornelius, a centurion, sends much greeting to his mother." That would be the opening of a letter.

C:That is weirdly enough exactly what I wrote on my mom's Mother's Day card this year.

B:Yeah. Well, congratulations on your promotion to Centurion, by the way. Yeah. So you have that. Then you have some kind of thanksgiving to a god of some kind, which, of course, Paul has that as well. Then you have the main body of the text. And then once you've discussed what you wanted to discuss, then you would have your list of greetings. You would name people by name, and then you would say, hey, what's up, Cornelia? What's up, Julia? What's up, Marcus, et cetera? And Paul does that, obviously. Basically, most of Chapter 16 is him listing off specific people he wants to give shout outs to.

C:Chapter 16 is basically, hey, make sure to smash that like and subscribe.

B:Yeah, like, comment, and subscribe on my letter to the Romans. Yeah.

C:Review us on iTunes. Five stars for Paul. Five stars for the Romans. Five stars for Phoebe. Julia.

B:Many shout outs. Many shout outs at the end. And then you have the farewell. And Paul's letters do follow that.

B:However, Christian letters in the form of Paul are start to be a whole new thing. It's a whole new genre because the main thing that distinguishes Paul's letters from a traditional Roman letter, or even a traditional Roman epistle is length. The average Pauline letter is 1,300 words long. Romans on the flip of that is 7,101 words. To compare that to a couple of famous ancient letter writers, you have Cicero, the great Roman orator, who is also known for writing all sorts of other genres, has a large number of letters. In fact, we have 796 confirmed letters from Cicero, and the average length of Cicero's letters is 295 words. 295 words compared to Romans, topping out over 7,000 words.

B:Then you have Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who wrote a lot of his philosophy in the form of letters, of which we have 124 confirmed letters of Seneca. Of those, his average length is 995 words. So as you can see, Paul is kind of blazing a new trail in the way that he uses his letters, especially Romans, to create basically an entire treatise that then goes on to become, Romans is probably the best known and most quoted of his 13 or 14 canonical epistles.

B:And like we said, very little dispute that this is Paul. What we do know about Paul from reading his letters is that he used a scribe who would have basically, depending on how you think about it, either taken dictation or taken kind of shorthand notes and then filled in what Paul was saying. We know that is true in Romans because we get his name at the end. Tertius is his name. "I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord." And also in some of the other letters, you can see there's parts where Paul drops in and says, "Hey, this is Paul writing this with my own hand. Look at how different my handwriting is from this scribe. Just wanted to pop in and say hello, blah, blah, blah." So we do know that Paul would dictate his letters. And so the opinion is divided on whether he dictated word for word or if things were kind of taken shorthand and then filled in by the scribes. Hard to say, but we do know the scribe of this one was Tertius.

B:We do also know that it is very likely that this letter was delivered by a woman named Phoebe. Paul gives a shout out to her here at the beginning of 16. "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church." And so Paul probably would have been in Corinth at this time, which is in Greece, as we saw in Acts chapter 20, verse two and three, we see Paul in Corinth there. So this is probably him at that time. So this would have been written in the mid to late 50s. So Paul would have been kind of at the height of his powers and we're still five to, well, seven to 10 years before his eventual death. And so Phoebe, she may have even been present at the composition of this letter. He would have given it to her to deliver to the church in Rome, whichever church in Rome this was going to. And likely she probably would have been the one to read it aloud to everybody because the audience for this would have not been reading it, but would have been hearing it most likely from Phoebe.

B:So there you go. There's some context. Mid-50s, epistles as genre, Paul's our boy.

C:Do you want to go into the Roman road now?

B:Yeah, I think we need to.

C:You want to talk about that?

B:Yeah.

C:My wife is convinced that over the course of this podcast I am going to experience a conversion. It is going to be one of those things that I start doing semi-ironically which in this case i don't think this is – this is not ironic, this is me genuinely wanting to learn about the Bible and and get some more context for things, but in the way that I have before, she thinks that I'm going to get into something and then genuinely get seriously into it. And I thought, since you and I had talked about the Roman road before, and how this is the book that a lot of people who are evangelizing will go to in order to lead you to Christ, I was like, okay, well, if it's going to happen, it's probably going to happen here. It did not for me, but why don't you take us down the Roman road? Which, by the way, should be called The Road to Rome like it's a movie with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. That would be more fun. Throw some songs in there.

B:There are a couple of songs in here, actually, which is strange for a letter. But, yeah, there are a couple of them.

B:Anyway, yeah, so The Roman Road or sometimes called The Roman's Road, which sounds weirder but is, I guess, more accurate to what's actually going on. But the Roman road to salvation is basically a tool used by evangelical Christians where they basically go through and pick out a number of verses from Romans that lay out the basic ideas of salvation. You know, you start with...

C:It is a plot of every Jack Chick tract that is not directly about Satan's influence on the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

B:Yeah, or Harry Potter or Star Wars.

B:Yeah, so you start with the question someone says, you know, this theoretical person you're going to, they say, "hey, I'm a good person. Isn't that good enough?" And you reply, no, it's not. As Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Then you follow that up with Romans 3:10, "as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one." Then Romans 5:12, "therefore, justice through one man's sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned." That's not even the complete sentence. Very cool. Okay. But anyway, yeah, the point is everybody sins, right? So you fall short. So then,"Yeah, well, okay," your theoretical straw man says, "is sin a big deal?" And

C:We should note that you are reading this, from the, you are kind enough to put together show notes for us before each episode, so I know how many words Seneca averages out to, you're reading this off of teenmissions.org.

B:Yeah, I am. Teen Missions. This is, you tuck this into your extreme teen, Extreme Teen Bible. And...

C:Honestly, like that's, that's the level I'm at. I'm at the level of a teen who wants to know more about Jesus at this point.

B:Yeah.

C:Just skateboard up to you with a – slam at Dew real quick and be like, "Hey bro, is sin a big deal?"

B:And I say, "well, according to Romans 6:23, 'the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.'"

C:That one's, that one's quoted a lot. I have written a comic story titled The Wages of Sin way back in the 2000s.

B:That's a commonly quoted one. Of course, Romans is a very commonly quoted New Testament book. "You want to hit me with that next question, Jake Cool-Ice? What's next?"

C:"Well, let me stop playing Nintendo for a second, because after what I've done to grieve God, how could he willingly die in my place?"

B:"Well, Romans 5:8 says, 'God demonstrates his own love towards us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.'"

C:"Okay. Sounds cool. I agree with all of these points so far."

B:"All right."

C:"But how can I be saved?"

B:"It's easy. Romans 10:9 and 10 tells us, 'If you confess with your mouth, Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.' There it is. Two steps."

C:"Okay, but now that I've done that, did God accept me? Did he hear me?"

B:"Well, Romans 10:13 tells us, 'whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' So, yes."

C:"All right, but now I can just get back to skateboarding, slamming Dew, and playing these sweet Nintendo tapes, right?"

B:"Well, Romans 10:17 says, 'faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.' So your journey as a child of the King of Kings has just begun. You must begin by spending time daily in prayer and in God's word, the Bible." So we're actually, we're doing that.

C:Yeah, we're ahead of the game on that one. Okay, here's the problem with the Roman road.

B:Yeah.

C:The way this is structured assumes that you're already halfway there. There is no answer in this to just straight, "yeah, I don't actually believe in God." Like there is, there is nothing to, if you are like converting, which I think is a big subject of Romans, then this can lead you down there. But if you're just an atheist, a non-believer, a heathen, this requires you to accept so many premises that are just stated.

B:Yeah. It does seem to take as granted that you already are familiar with a number of things, but you're just confused about the last couple of steps, I suppose.

C:It starts with, "I consider myself a good person. Won't that be enough?" Question mark. But the other clause in that sentence is to get into heaven. That presupposes that you are already in agreement with the fact that there is an afterlife, that there is a heaven, that there is a God who will judge you, that your works on earth could have some impact on where you are put in the afterlife. These are things that are not necessarily in place for everyone.

B:Right. Definitely true. So it definitely is– it does come from a very mainstream American Protestant line of thought, for sure. Yeah, you assume people know things about God and heaven, which is actually weird because a lot of the Chick tracts just assume that the reason that people are not already Christians is that they've literally never heard of Jesus before. And as soon as you say, "by the way, Jesus exists," everyone will immediately convert. That is the plot of like very many Chick tracts.

C:"Bad Bob"? "Bad Bob"does that one?

B:Yeah. I think though that this kind of mainline evangelical interpretation to Romans doesn't work? Like I don't think– I think you can pull that stuff out if you do it with a number of verses pulled out of context and then arranged into a different order, right? Like those are not even in chronological order as they appear in the letter.

C:Yeah. I am not necessarily disputing the theology.

B:Right.

C:Behind these verses. I'm disputing the fact that this does not seem like a convincing argument to me.

B:Sure. I mean, that's a thing for people to decide on their own. But...

C:Yeah, of course.

B:Right.

C:I do not mean to come off as rude or dismissive of anyone's beliefs, but, you know, honestly, I feel like a much better verse, which is the other one that gets all the play, like John 3:16 is much more convincing because it does presuppose the existence of God. But if you say, "look, I believe in God and I also believe that this is the result of his love for the earth," that puts it in the context of belief rather than, "well, here are some facts about heaven."

B:Right.

C:Which don't really seem to hold up read in context, start to finish.

B:My thought is, though, that if you actually read the book of Romans, start to finish, there's another argument being made altogether. From modern mainline Christians, Romans is often used as like, here's the game plan for salvation. But I think if you read the whole book, and again, this is just me, this is my take on it. And in fact, I'm actually influenced very heavily in this thought by, there's a different podcast that's actually done by Bible experts called The Bible for Normal People. They do not cover the Bible book by book like we do. But there is an episode on Romans where he lays that out. And a lot of my ideas here are influenced by the guy on that show because I was very convinced by them, basically.

B:But the argument he makes there and that I'm going to make here is that if you look at the entire book of Romans, the thesis is not surrounding the idea of individual salvation at all. Elements of that come up. But instead, the question of this book is not a question of "how do I, an individual, become saved," but rather the main question is "who is and who is allowed to be a member of the Christian church?" Because it does seem like the audience for this book is a church or a church community in Rome that would have been a mix of ethnically Jewish Christians and Gentiles.

B:And I should go ahead and drop at the beginning of this discussion here that if I say Jews or Jewish at this point, I mean, obviously, ethnically Jewish people. I do not mean people who are practicing Judaism because they are practicing Christianity in this case. So what I'm talking about here is people who are ethnically Jewish versus the Gentiles or the Greeks as they are called.

B:So the idea is you'd have a church that would be a mix of those two people, or you might even have a group of Greeks who are inclined to try to convert to Judaism first, because that was a question that was had in the early church. Do you need to convert to Judaism before you convert to Christianity? That is, you need to become a member of the family of Abraham first. And so at any rate, Paul is addressing the issue, whether he's writing to a group of Jews and Gentiles, or if he's just writing to Gentiles, some of whom are inclined towards Judaism. Either way, he's addressing an audience that would be a mix of Jewish and Gentile influences.

B:And so I feel like if you understand that and the idea that he's trying to deal with these early questions of a Jewish approach to things versus a Gentile approach to things, a lot of these questions make a lot more sense. Well, an example that really stands out to me is the very first stop on the Roman road, right? 3:23. We can probably say it from memory at this point, right? "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." It's the very first one. But the thing is, that's not even the whole sentence. You have to look at what comes before it. Well, let's see, the HCSB punctuates it as one sentence. Other translations don't.

B:But if we start with 21, "But now apart from the law, God's righteousness has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets. That is God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe since there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And so in that context, or even as they do on the other podcast, it makes even more sense if you change the "all" to "both," "for both have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Right? Jews have sinned. Gentiles have sinned. So there's no distinction. There's no distinction between one group and the other. Yes, one has been traditionally and historically God's chosen people. And this other group are the Johnny-come-lately-s to Yahweh. But everyone has sinned. Everyone has messed up. Everybody needs salvation.

B:So like if you look in those contexts, the specific context, this book becomes less about how do I as an individual become saved? And it's more about how do I as a Jew, or how do I as a Gentile, how do I belong to this new community? Right? And so in that way, we kind of have to address a big question. And this is one that people, again, will have to decide for themselves. The question is, is the Bible meant to be this general rule book? Like, is it a rule book for life where I can pull out an individual passage and then just apply it universally to myself and to others with a quote like," for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?" Or is the Bible a collection of documents that were written by people for a specific purpose and for a specific context? And do we need to look at each individual writing that way, right? Do I need to look at this letter and understand, oh, Paul was addressing a specific concern and a specific problem within a specific church. And from that, I can draw some universal things because he does lay out a lot of teaching and information.

B:Or can I just say, you know, each individual verse can be applied to me individually, right? And a lot of that stems from Martin Luther's approach to things because he used Romans in a big way to help him address his own thoughts and concerns when he was trying to figure out his own new theology. So it's a question for each individual, you know, is it meant to be a universal rule book? Is it meant to be a specific document for a specific purpose, right? But, you know, Paul himself doesn't really have an issue with the universal thing because we see him quoting scripture throughout and he very frequently pulls it out of context and uses it. He conforms it to his own purposes.

B:Like for example, just an example I have, there's a part where he quotes Hosea 2:23, and Hosea 2:23 says in Romans chapter 9 verse 25, And so he says, "as he also says in Hosea, I will call not my people, my people, and she who is unloved, beloved." And there in this context, he's saying this is his evidence that, you know, God has made the Gentiles his people. But in the context of Hosea, it's the meaning is almost entirely opposite. It's talking about the Jewish people or even an Israelite who has fallen away and is coming back. Right? He was not my people, now he's my people again. But here, Paul's using almost the entirely opposite idea that someone who was traditionally not his people, the Gentiles, now are. So, I mean, if Paul himself pulls out these verses from context and then uses them to his own purposes, then maybe I shouldn't be telling people that that's not– well, I mean, it's not my approach, right? I would look at the whole book and think, what was this book written for? What does this individual verse say in the context of Paul's larger purpose, right?

B:So yeah, I mean, I think the general, the major question is like the dilemma that Paul has is, you know, for so long, God was the God of Israel, you know? And we saw that in Isaiah, the development that follows from Isaiah where we see, you know, God is the only God, all these other gods are wood and metal. And the development now from that is if God's the only God that exists, then obviously he's got to be God of the whole world. The dilemma is how can he be God to his chosen people, but then also all these other people?

C:Yeah, it's the transition from being a specific to a universal.

B:Right.

C:And it goes back to Acts and the vision that Peter has of the bats and whatever being lowered from the heavens on a sheet. When all the giraffes parachuted in back in Acts?

B:Yeah.

C:As you might remember.

B:Yeah, giraffes, hippopotamuses, ostriches, we learned in Isaiah were an unclean animal. So, yeah.

C:When all the screech owls, Halo jumped down onto Peter's dinner table. And God said, if I made everything, then what have I made that is unclean? Who are not my people if I made all people?

B:Right.

C:Which is, again, a much more elegant point than I think what Paul is doing here.

B:Yeah? Okay. I mean, I–

C:I mean, mainly because it involves a metaphor and Paul is not the kind of person who likes metaphors. It seems Paul's pretty straight up about everything.

B:There's some metaphors in here, but yeah, sure.

C:He specifically says there's one metaphor in here and he specifically goes, "I'm going to use a metaphor because I think that's what you're going to understand."

B:Look, it worked. Yeah. So, yes, it's that same idea. How can you say what God has made is unclean? So that goes for food. It goes for people. And yeah, so it's addressing all these issues of like, do I need to do Jewish things? How important is it to follow Torah? And obviously you've got a group of Jewish, ethnically Jewish Christians who have been up to this point, their whole, their main thing has been following Torah. I mean, heck, that would have been Paul's thing, right? He was a Pharisee. And I mean, the Pharisee is a sect of Judaism where their thing was the law, right? They were very much about following the law to the letter, which is why they did not like Jesus at all in the Gospels. That's why we see them clashing all the time.

B:And Paul's take on it basically is he's like, hey, guys, the law is good – faith is better. Faith is best. Right? And he says, in fact, he says, you guys, the Jewish side, you guys have had the advantages. You've had the law longer. You've had the covenant. You've had the oracles of God. But the thing is, a lot of these Gentiles are doing better at following the law by accident than you are knowing the law. And he says it's better to be a Gentile following the law on accident than to be a Jewish person who knows the law and doesn't follow it.

B:So yeah, there's a lot of talk there. And part of the reason why there's some contention between, for example, a Protestant interpretation and a Catholic interpretation of the book is that for Protestants, faith is the most important thing, right? Martin Luther's sola fide, right? I think we mentioned that in a previous episode, "by faith alone." Whereas works and the things that you do are more important to Catholics. And so you can see why there might be some contention about this, because Paul's big argument throughout is that works are good, but faith is the only thing that really matters, right?

C:Well, his argument is that if you have faith and you adhere to your faith and you live in such a way that embodies that, then you will be following the law regardless of whether it's written down. And that leads to the only part of the book that I liked, which is chapters 12 and 13. We can get there in a minute. Do you want to just go through this letter?

B:Okay, let's do it. Yeah.

C:Okay. Now, you mentioned that these are arranged by length. Do you know why they're arranged by length, by the way? Is it just that like medieval scribes wanted to knock out the, like, oh, if I get through Romans, I'm halfway done. I can blow through all three Johns in a week.

B:I think probably it just was associating length with the idea of importance. If it's longer, it must be more important.

C:It does follow narratively.

B:Yeah.

C:In our copy of the Bible, in the HCSB, Acts ends on page 1,172. Romans begins on page 1,173. If you recall our episode on Acts, it ends the final verse. "Then he stayed two whole years in his own rented house and he welcomed all who visited him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with full boldness and without hindrance." Then we go right into Paul with full boldness.

B:Right.

C:From a standpoint, if you are reading it top to bottom, it does make sense. Except he's not in Rome.

B:He's not in Rome yet. Right. He has not yet been to Rome. So this is a little bit before the end of the book. And in fact, you know, at the end, he says, "I'm going to come to Rome on my way to Spain," which we never actually see him do in canon. We do see him go to Spain in the Acts of Peter. And it's when he's gone to Spain that Simon Magus starts kicking up trouble. And so Peter has to come to town. But, yeah, we do not in canon see Paul make his way to Spain. So, yeah, the action of this or the time of him writing the letter would have been about concurrent with Acts chapter 20. So very, very near the end of the book.

C:Okay. So if you recall from Acts, Paul is extremely extra. He is running at 118% at all times. That dude wakes up in the middle of the night and immediately begins proclaiming God's wrath. I have a lot of difficulty with Paul, but I also kind of love the way that he introduces this letter. You talked about how the opening of the letter is establishing who he is.

B:Right.

C:Romans chapter 1 verse 1: "Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and singled out for God’s good news which He promised long ago through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh and who has been declared to be the powerful Son of God by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness." That's how Paul introduces himself. "Hey it's Paul. I am an apostle. I am a servant of God. I'm a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's what happened to him." That's a strong opener.

B:Yeah, that's what's on his business card.

C:I really like that he talks about how, like, the next thing he does is he talks about how he is not in Rome. And he's like, "wow, I really wish I could get over to Rome to tell you all this in person. But things just keep keeping me out of Rome." And I feel like whoever this letter is addressed to is not entirely sad that Paul is not there to scream at them in person. He makes it six paragraphs before he starts invoking the wrath of God, which is nice.

C:Here's where I start to have difficulty with Paul is right in the first chapter, 1:26. It's when he starts talking about perversions, basically.

B:Yeah. So yeah, this, this bit here from 26 to 32, the end of the chapter, this is known as the vice list because yeah it's just a list of like "don't, don't do these things y'all." But yeah okay I know exactly what you're what you're getting at. Go ahead.

C:Yeah I mean it's chapter 1 verse 27 about the "males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error." That's– like, that's... that's not great.

B:Yeah.

C:That that i imagine that one verse has caused a lot of trouble yeah over the years

B:Yeah for sure. Yeah. So yeah, "for even their females exchange natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed with their lust for one another." Yeah, I mean this is him basically addressing what would be Jewish stereotypes of gentiles, right? The idea is Gentiles will have sex with anything. And so, yeah, that's it. Yeah. Out of, well, even in context, it's not great, but yeah. That's definitely what's going on here is he's trying to address the friction that would exist between Jew and Gentile here, because that's the Jewish idea of what a Greek is. They're just being gay everywhere.

C:Which is a stereotype that continues to today.

B:I mean, yeah, the word Greek is still code word, yeah.

C:Now that I was kind of expecting, like, again, I grew up in the South as you did.

B:Yeah.

C:So I've heard a lot of, of scripture quoted in a, what I think is a very un-Christ-like way, at people. Here's what got me though. Chapter two, like that's the end of chapter one. Paul shows up and he's like, "Hey, what's up? I'm Paul. I'm an apostle, by the way, probably the most important apostle, but whatever." Then he it talks about gGd's wrath, then he talks about all these sinners. and then chapter two is the verse that i read at the top of the show about how judging others is bad.

B:Yeah.

C:Is it Paul? Is it though?

B:But see because...

C:It seems like chapter one is a lot of judging.

B:Well see, again it makes it makes more sense if you understand that he's speaking to a group rather than individuals, right? If he's not judging an individual and saying hey man why don't you stop your unrighteousness, evil, greed, wickedness, envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hate, arrogance, et cetera, right? From the, just reading down the vice list, like rather than pointing to an individual, he's speaking to a group. He's like, "Look guys, you know, you know who you are. You know who these people are. You've seen them, you've done it. Everyone's done it," right? That's it. It makes more sense in the context of, of groups. I think.

C:It does. And again, I realize fully that I am bringing my own experiences with evangelical Christianity to the table on this one. But, like, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how frustrating reading Romans was for me when I was going through it. Because the most frustrating thing is that by the time we get to the end, by the time we get to the last four chapters of the book, there's a complete turnaround. And Paul really does get me back on that. But it's just getting there that goes into some weird areas.

C:Let's talk about chapter 2, verse 25.

B:All right.

C:That's where Paul just starts talking about circumcision. And that's not a context I have.

B:Yeah, well, I mean, circumcision has to come up, right? Because if it is a book about distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, that is the most obvious outward sign, right? The two most obvious distinctions between a Jewish person and a non-Jewish person is circumcision and dietary laws. And so he addresses both of those things, right? There's a couple chapters about diet near the end. But yeah, he talks about circumcision because it is the outward sign of being Jewish.

B:I was having a discussion with a friend of the show, Ben Rowe, who always has insightful things to say after each episode. We were having a discussion about some things that we'll probably have to get into in depth in a later episode, another Old Testament episode. But, you know, for the ancient Jewish people, they were very tribal in a way and xenophobic even to the surrounding nations, people of Babylon and Egypt and what have you. And so they were really interested in making sure they set themselves apart from these people and they used physical and cultural markers for doing that. And circumcision is a major one because you can very easily know if your daughter is marrying the right kind of boy, there's a way to check. So circumcision and then dietary habits, of course.

B:And so, yeah, so for Paul talking about circumcision, "for circumcision benefits you if you observe the law, but if you're a lawbreaker, your circumcision has become un-circumcision." And so if you understand that to be a metaphor, Chris, then you know that circumcision represents the covenant with God. And that if you are a covenanted person, if you are a Jewish person, but you're not following this law that God gave you, then it's as if you are no Jew at all.

C:I mean, yes. On one level, it is a metaphor. On another level, he is talking for about three paragraphs about literal circumcision. But we get to chapter five, and there's another very frustrating element for me, which is where suffering builds character. It's that very frustrating, like kind of Calvinist idea that, you know, we live in a fallen world and therefore suffering is mandatory, which it is. I mean, that's a tenet of a lot of reasons. You know, it is a tenet of Buddhism that suffering is mandatory while we live on Earth. But Paul characterizes it as ultimately a good thing.

B:Right.

C:Which I find very frustrating.

B:When you said Calvinist, I thought you were going to say because it's the position of Calvin's dad from Calvin and Hobbes. He always tells him to go play in the snow because it builds character.

C:That is also true. That is also true.

B:Yeah, this is definitely another one that kind of gets used as a weapon in a way, right? It's that if you're suffering, it's because suffering is good for you.

C:And because God has decreed it, because it will harden you and make you a better person, which is... I read something not too long ago about how the pervasive idea of the quote, "everything happens for a reason," is ultimately very harmful because it inures us to the suffering of others based purely on the fact that we cannot understand why a thing is happening. That it takes the chaos of the world and makes it something we can shrug at instead of helping. That you won't try to prevent it or alleviate it. And that is an idea that I find very personally frustrating and very personally – like I disagree with it completely.

B:Yeah, I mean, the idea of the philosophy here has a lot in common with the Greek philosophy of Stoicism, which actually has a number of things in common with modern Christian thought. And this is a big one, the idea that there is God or in the case of Stoicism, providence, right? Some kind of outside plan. And that word's used in Christianity as well, God's providence. And all things happen according to that. And a lot of times that means suffering, but if you suffer through it, it's better for you. That's a thing that would have been very mainstream Greek thought at this time. I mean, Stoicism would have been one of the main philosophical schools that even day-to-day people would have followed. So, in fact, you can really see elements of Stoicism there.

B:The one main thing that Stoicism and Christianity have different is that Stoicism says that suicide is okay if things get too bad. Christianity pretty decisively says no on that.

C:Well, I think you can see that as a function of the shift from polytheism to monotheism, right? Because the Greek idea of Greek and Roman gods, there's a capriciousness that you get from polytheism where things can happen that are beyond the scope or the portfolio of a particular god. They can be the meddlings of other gods. If you have monotheism if you have God – God in His heaven – and He is both all powerful and all good then suffering has to ultimately be good because it comes from God as everything comes from God. This is a theme that's going to come up again throughout the Bible and it's one that I don't think i'm alone in having a lot of trouble grasping. If you know three Bible stories from the old Testament, you know, Job.

B:Right? Yeah.

C:Job is a book that for a lot of people is extremely problematic because it injects that capriciousness into a God that is meant to be all powerful and all good. And it is like– my mom broke with the church for a long time because of specifically the book of Job, because she read it and could not accept that as part of her philosophy. And ultimately she did come back. I told you I was raised moderately religious, but I remember having conversations with her about that, when we read JB in high school.

B:I was going to bring up JB. All right. For those who aren't familiar, JB is a play by Archibald MacLeish - is the playwright. It's from the fifties and it's an adaptation of Job. And ultimately the theme of that play is if God is good, he isn't God. If God is God, he isn't good. Because the idea is if he's all powerful and well-intentioned, there shouldn't be suffering at all, right? If he is all powerful and benevolent, there's no reason for suffering. And yet, right, there is suffering and it's just something you have to, you know, reconcile in your own mind.

B:And we, I mean, we see Paul kind of address this idea. I didn't mark this down because I wasn't sure if we'd be talking about it, but yeah, here we are. He kind of talks about how God doesn't help everyone. Is there injustice with God? This is the question here, chapter nine, I guess. And ultimately Paul's answer is that like, no, God's not unjust because God doesn't owe anybody anything. He doesn't owe you mercy. If he decides to show mercy to one person but not to another, it's not unjust because he didn't owe the first person mercy. And so in the same way that like if you're walking down the street and you give a dollar to one homeless person and not to another, is that unjust? Well, no, because you didn't have to give the first dollar.

C:Well, that depends on whether or not you consider capitalism as a whole to be just. That's beyond the scope of this podcast.

B:Yeah, beyond the scope of this podcast. But that's the idea, right? And so, yeah, when he's talking –

C:But that also implies that I, walking down the street, have an unlimited number of dollars.

B:Well, right, and...

C:God's mercy is boundless. God's love is boundless.

B:Right. But yeah, the idea is that God picks some people and not others, right? He says, I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau. And we can't understand God's mind. He does what he wants, right?

C:I'm glad that you brought this up. And I'm glad that we are reading through the Bible in the order that we are. Because in chapter 9, specifically starting with verse 14 through verse 29, not only does Paul quote Isaiah in this verse, but it's also very evocative of Isaiah. We talked in our Isaiah episode about how I really liked the way that Isaiah talked about the incomprehensible majesty of God in that it is like a pot trying to comprehend a potter. You have no frame of reference for this.

C:But whereas Isaiah states it in what I think is a very elegant way of, you know, comparing magnitudes of consciousness, Paul is doing the same thing, but also assuring you that he's good. Whereas I think Isaiah is like, yeah, I'm pretty sure God's good. He did send angels down to give me the gift of prophecy, but I don't understand him. and I fully admit that I don't understand him.

B:Right.

C:And Paul, meanwhile, is pretty confident. Paul never met Jesus. I don't want to remind people about that.

B:They met on the road. Kinda.

C:Kinda.

B:Kinda.

C:Kinda.

B:Yeah.

C:Also, there's a weird part. We skipped over it in that discussion. Chapter 7, Paul gets into some very televangelist style, I have sinned stuff where he starts talking about sin ruling over his body, which again, common idea. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You know, we are all familiar with this,

B:Right.

C:Paul gets weird in this part. I wrote, what are you talking about, Paul?

B:Yeah.

C:In the margins of my Bible.

B:You sent me that note. And, I kind of laughed because you basically identified with that note, what I see according to this scholar, is probably the most difficult and controversial passage in the letter to the Romans. So we're looking at chapter 7:14-25, "The Problem of Sin in Us" as the header is in the HCSB. So yeah, the question is like, from what perspective is Paul even talking? So, let me just read you this footnote here. "For the most part, the Eastern church has interpreted it as referring to an unregenerate person, that is Paul before his conversion. The Western church has followed Augustine, Luther, and Calvin in thinking that it refers to a regenerate person, that is, Paul after his conversion. Some suggest a mediating position. One such view interprets the subject as an Old Testament believer who loves the law but struggles to perform it. Living before Christ in Pentecost, this person does not have the permanent and empowering gift of the Holy Spirit as do new covenant believers. Another view holds that the subject is almost..." blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that's not even half the footnote.

B:So, yeah, so you quite rightly in your marginal note of "what are you talking about" have hit upon a question that people have been asking for hundreds of years. That is, what is Paul talking about? And the answer is, I don't know.

C:There is a quote that I read years ago. I was a tween when I read this. It's from Al Cap, legendary cartoonist.

B:Yeah.

C:Who said, "All comedy is rooted in pain." Walt Kelly, who I know you like, another cartoonist, the creator of Pogo, said "that says a lot more about Al Cap than it does about comedy."

B:Yeah.

C:When Paul says, "For I know that nothing good lives in me, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this dying body?" I feel like that says a lot more about Paul than it does about God.

B:Sure.

C:When Paul says, "I do not understand what I am doing because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate." I mean, look, I get it. That is a universal feeling. And yes, we are all trapped in these dying bodies. The Mountain Goats song that I played at the beginning of the Isaiah episode, "I am not this body that imprisons me." I agree with that. I'm with you on that. But Paul getting into like, "yes, I am ruled by sin," is very... performative is kind of the word I'm looking for. But like, of course it is. He is literally performing a theology lesson to the Romans in this. But it's a lot.

B:Sure. But yeah, I think we can all relate to the idea of like, I have things I want to do, but I don't do them and I hate myself for it. I think we can.

C:Yeah, I have bad habits that I know are bad habits. Like I, yes.

B:Yeah.

C:And like, I get it, but, but it's very, it's, it's over the top. It's Paul running at 110% again.

B:Yeah. Yeah, sure. And I should probably point out because our good friend, Jonathan Stewart, King of the Gnostics, this is a very Gnostic kind of passage, right? With the idea of flesh, flesh, bad spirit, good. That's, that's kind of at the heart of the Gnostic idea. So I'm sure this is probably a favorite passage of that particular group of thinkers.

C:Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but that also goes back to Plato, right?

B:Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

C:That our souls are perfect, but the world around us is flawed.

B:Oh, yeah. Gnosticism has a lot of Platonism in its roots, for sure.

C:So, yeah, I've gotta, like– I'm struggling with Paul at this point because he's seeming to go off the rails. He says "absolutely not" a lot. Like he introduces every point by saying, "so is... God unjust? Absolutely not."

B:Yeah.

C:And he does that like five times in the chapter.

B:Yeah.

C:So it's, again, it's all these definitive, "I know what's going on" statements that, like I said, when we talked about Acts, the person I was talking to about Paul who said, "Yeah, Paul is very hardcore about people worshiping God the wrong way. And then the first thing he does after his conversion is go back to telling people they're worshiping God the wrong way."

B:Sure. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the rhetorical, "is this true? Absolutely not." comes from the fact that, you know, he's just following argument upon argument where if he says, "if we commit sin, then we receive grace and grace is good." So then is sin good? No, idiot. No. I mean, that's just kind of like, that's how he's formulating his argument. Yeah. All right.

B:Let's look at something where I think you'd be a little bit happier to talk about it because something that comes up here in chapter eight, since we're in this area, something I know you've been waiting to talk about. So 8:23 says, "Not only that, but we ourselves who have the spirit as the first fruits, we also grow within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." Please take this opportunity, Chris, and tell us about your church's view on resurrection bodies, please.

C:Apparently we got a tweet from someone who said that their church also had resurrection bodies. And I believe...

B:I mean, it is an idea, right? The idea that those who have died before the second coming of Christ will be resurrected into new bodies that are beyond temptation and beyond the faults of the flesh. Yeah. That's not an uncommon idea, but I want to hear more about your version, your church's version of it.

C:I got a tweet from Robert Secundus. It's the one that says, "With regard to resurrection bodies, at my grandmother's normal Baptist funeral, there was also one at her cowboy church. The preacher focused entirely on this subject. The climax? Superman will have nothing on us."

B:Amazing.

C:So the way this was explained to me when I was taking confirmation classes, it's one of those things where it's like, "here's the scientific explanation for resurrection bodies," was that it was going to be all about vibrating molecules like we were in a Flash comic.

B:That is amazing. All right.

C:My pastor explained to me that we know that atoms and molecules all vibrate at different rates. And so when we have our resurrection bodies, we will be able to control the vibration, the vibrational rate, which as we all know, will allow us to travel forward and backwards in time and walk through walls. Like he specifically said, we will be able to vibrate through solid objects. That's a thing Barry Allen does.

B:Yeah! Wow. The gospel, according to Gardner Fox, sign me up.

C:Hey, hey, who was the one who brought back Simon Magus?

B:Yeah. Very true.

C:Also, since you mentioned this part about resurrection bodies, I do want to single out whoever was writing the headlines for these chapters in the HCSB. Cause this one is called "From Groans to Glory," which is pretty great. Having a lot of trouble with Paul, but like I said, chapter 12 is where he gets me back. Chapter 12 is where we're back on the page of things that I do full-heartedly agree with. Because it's in the chapter headlined "Christian Ethics" in the HCSB.

B:Right.

C:"Love must be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. Show family affection to one another with brotherly love. Outdo one another in showing honor." "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Try to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes." This is where we get uh a reprise of a a very famous quote: "Friends do not avenge yourselves instead leave room for His wrath for it is written 'vengeance is mine saith the lord," which is translated differently, but that's one you gotta say in King James talk.

B:We all know it, yeah.

C:Then there's a whole seven verses about how good government is which is where he starts to lose me again?

B:Yeah so this is an interesting one because it's another one of those that certain groups of people kind of use as a weapon, right? Like if your guy is in office, then you pull this one out you go, "everyone must submit to the governing authorities," right? That's what you say. You quote this one. But, yeah, so I mean Paul's argument here is there's no authority except from God, and we see this basically as a reflection of what we saw in Isaiah right? We talk about we have the statement from God where God is saying "Assyria is my sword and I'm going through and punishing my enemies by using this." So in this same way, you have God or Paul saying that if these people weren't supposed to be in power, they wouldn't be. We've seen God topple empires before.

B:And so the people who are in charge are in charge because God put them there, which, of course, is the kind of justification you get for ideas like the divine right of kings that you see very commonly with like Charles I. And you end up with a whole civil war as a result of that particular argument.

B:But, yeah, it's not great from a context like a modern context. It makes a little bit more sense if you think about kind of what was going on at the time in Rome. You would have had the Emperor Claudius expel all the Jews from Rome in the year 40, and they would have only just recently come back. And so they would have been gone, and they would have come back and been like, "someone put Gentiles in my church." And so Paul has to say to them.

C:It's more likely than you think.

B:Yeah, "Gentiles in my church?" Yeah. And so Paul has to say to them, look, guys, maybe just be chill for a minute. Just, you know, let the Romans do what the Romans do. Also, you know, Jesus says render unto Caesar and all that. Although, of course, we should note, right, this book is written before any of the Gospels. So part of the reason Paul doesn't really ever reference like specific narrative elements of the life of Jesus is because those things had not been written down yet, right? We're still ahead of even the earliest gospel.

B:But yeah, so he's basically just saying, you know, lie low, be chill. But again, I mean, we can see specifically that this is an example where the things he's saying are not a universal. Because if he says, "don't rebel against authority, don't make waves, God has put this government in place to create order." If Paul thought that was a thing that everyone should follow all the time, he himself doesn't follow his own advice, right? Like Paul himself is executed by the Roman authorities because, well, we've seen a couple of different explanations, but at any rate, it's because he's not doing what the government told him to do, right? Whether it's "he's murdering someone via prayer" or he's standing by while someone else does it or whatever, whatever different traditional version for the execution of Paul you have. We do know that, I mean, he gets arrested canonically, right? He's arrested for his ideas not following what the Roman authorities want him to do.

B:So we can see this is an example of how like, these things are not always universal, because even Paul doesn't follow his own advice here. One thing that I do think is interesting is the kind of people who do bust out a "everyone must submit to the governing authorities. Yeah. "For this reason you pay taxes since the authorities are God's public servants.. pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes." Yeah. I feel like those same group of people would not be thrilled about, just a couple of verses later there.

C:So then after we get that explanation of how government works, we get to another part that like, if you take one thing away from Romans, I don't feel like it should be "the wages of sin is death." I don't feel like it should be any of the stuff that we encountered on the Roman road. I think it should be chapter 13, verse nine. "The commandments 'do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet. And whatever other commandment'," side note, I think it's hilarious that Paul can only remember four commandments, "All are summed up by this: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law," which is, again, a very similar thing to what we'll see Jesus saying when we get around to the Gospels.

B:Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see Jesus give the two great commandments, which are love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself, which if you look at it, that sums up the 10 commandments, right? You can break them down into those two groups. You have the commandments that are love God, love others. And that, I mean, that's it. It's simple. Yeah.

B:But I think, yeah, I think another major message that we can take from the book of Romans, especially again, if you view the thesis of this letter as how can I get these two conflicting groups of people to get along, you have in chapter 14, the bit that the editors of the HCSB have labeled as "The Law of Love," which, yeah, 14 verse 13. "Therefore, let us no longer criticize one another. Instead, decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in your brother's way. I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. Still, to someone who considers the thing to be unclean, to that one it is unclean. For if your brother is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love." So here he's talking about dietary laws as an example, right? He's saying "there are some of you..." He says, you know, there's no such thing as unclean food anymore. You can eat whatever.

B:However, for some people, it helps them to follow the dietary laws. There are people, it helps them to be circumcised. It helps them to follow these particular laws that he's saying you don't have to do anymore. But there are people who, he refers to it as weak faith, which is not great, but the idea is that these people, it's easier and better. They do a better job. They live the life they want to live by following these things. And some people don't. And he says, you know what? If this helps other people, just be chill. Let them do what they need to do.

B:And you yourself don't flaunt in their face. Don't lord it over them that you don't follow the dietary laws. If someone is eating kosher, don't just eat a big pork sandwich in front of them. Don't do it because you're going to hurt them. You will, in this case, he talks about you're presenting a stumbling block to them. You're going to cause them to stumble, right? "It's a noble thing not to eat meat or to drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble."

B:So it seems to me, right, that if he's saying, you know, there are some people who have to do things a particular way and you should encourage that rather than do something to lord it over them that you don't do that or you don't need to do that. My point is I think Paul would agree that we should just say happy holidays. Just say happy holidays, y'all. If it's going to hurt somebody, don't do it. Just be chill.

C:I do like the least chill figure in the Bible thus far is telling everyone else to be chill. Very Paul. Very Paul

C:Finally I think we're going to close out the book of Romans with a quote that I think is directly addressing us, me specifically "Now I urge you brothers to watch out for those who cause dissensions and obstacles contrary to the doctrine you have learned. Avoid them, for such people do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting with smooth talk and flattering words. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." That's how Paul closes out his letter to the Romans.

B:A very strong finish to a letter. I do just want to point out, which is real quick, that we do see in chapter 16, we see a number of notable women being mentioned. It's important to realize that in the early church, women would have played a very big role. And in fact, there's considerable evidence that early Christian churches would have been majority women. We see a couple here, notable ones here. Give my greetings to Prisca and Aquila. So Prisca would be Priscilla, right? Aquila and Priscilla. We saw them in Acts chapter 18. So that's a notable name from Acts coming back. Phoebe, of course, who is the one who's presumably reading this letter to the church in Rome. And then another one that's very notable here is in verse 7. "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow countrymen and fellow prisoners. They are noteworthy in the eyes of the apostles," or actually that probably in other translations would say they're "outstanding among the apostles," so... can you see why this verse might be a be trouble for some people?

C:I definitely can.

B:Yeah it calls a woman an apostle and so there are a number of weasel ways to get around that one of them is "oh maybe it's not supposed to say Junia it's supposed to say Junius it's it's a man's name actually," or you change it to "they're noteworthy in the eyes of the apostles" rather than "they are noteworthy among the apostles." You can see a couple of different ways to weasel out of the idea of a female apostle. Good job translators. You did it.

B:That's the last of my notes. Basically, I skipped over basically everything to do with election and predestination because I don't want to talk about it. If you guys want to hear about it, you should go listen to the Bible for Normal People episode about Romans. He covers it in good length there. And he talks about how predestination, again, makes more sense if you're talking about groups rather than individuals.

C:Do you have a reading to close out the book of Romans with?

B:Yeah, actually, the one I picked, we kind of covered. I'll pick here, 12:21. "Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good." I think, a very good...

C:That is my exact one that I picked as well.

B:And I like the quote, actually, I love the quote here from Proverbs that comes right before it. "If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing, you will be heaping fiery coals on his head. That is some very choice Proverb."

C:I like "Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good," because it is also essentially the thesis statement of Jack Kirby's new gods.

B:Absolutely.

C:Which some called the fourth testament.

B:Yeah the fourth testament.

C:That does it for the letter to the Romans. So with that i think we're going to close it out. Benito do you want to talk about what we're reading next time?

B:Yeah, I do. So you guys might remember in the last episode we hit a point where I was like, "man if only we had some kind of venue or vehicle in which we could discuss the death of Isaiah. If only we did!" and then it turns out we do. That's what this podcast is. So for our next episode, we are kind of, sort of returning to the Old Testament in the sense that we are doing a sequel to an Old Testament book, but it's technically a piece of New Testament Apocrypha. We are going to be reading the Ascension of Isaiah, which actually I have never read before. So this one is, for the first time, we're going to be hitting one that I have never read at all. So it's going to be new to me as it is to Chris and presumably most of our listeners. We're going to hit the Ascension of Isaiah, which talks about the end of Isaiah's life and his encounters with Hezekiah's son, Manasseh. And to also follow that up, we'll be reading the Prayer of Manasseh, which is a very short piece of Apocrypha that is considered canon by some Eastern churches. And so that one's very short, but we'll be looking at those two pieces. We'll have links to them on our Tumblr, but you can find the Ascension of Isaiah on early Christian writings, which is a resource we're going to be using a lot on this show. So maybe bookmark it. And then you'll be able to find the Prayer of Manasseh and the NRSV version of the Bible on Bible Gateway.

C:And then looking off into the future, I think we're going to come back and we're going to do the Gospels next. And I think maybe we'll do all four in a row, in chronological order.

B:Yeah, we could do that.

C:The reason we're going to go ahead and knock those out now is because I really want to get to the Apocryphal Gospels.

B:Yeah.

C:I want to get to the Gospel of Mary. I want to get to the Gospel of James. I want to get to Q because I don't even know about Q.

B:Yeah, okay. Absolutely.

C:And I've already bought a book with those in it, and I feel I'm antsy to get through it. So if you want to read even further ahead: the Gospels, we're going to start with Mark and then work our way through. but yeah that's going to do it for this week's episode of Apocrypals. For Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Benito, peace be with you.

B:And also with you.

[Music: "Monkey Gone to Heaven" by Pixies]