Download PAUL 15

DIGGING DEEPER
by John McRay
Center of the Empire
For years the apostle Paul had hoped to visit the church in Rome. In God's
providence, he did eventually reach the city, but not at all in the way he
anticipated.
paul spent the bulk of his ministry in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.
Although he thought often about visiting Rome, the largest and most influential
city of the day, the timing did not seem right until the end of his third missionary
journey. By then he had brought the gospel to all the major cities of Asia Minor,
Macedonia, and Greece.
In his letter to the Roman Christians, written from Corinth, Paul expressed three
reasons for planning a visit. First, he sought to impart some spiritual gift to them
(Rom. 1:11). Second, he wanted to have some fruit among them, to make converts
as he had among other Gentiles (v. 13). Third, he desired to leave the eastern part
of the empire, which he had by now evangelized.
“It has always been my ambition,” he wrote, “to preach the gospel where Christ
was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. . . .
This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you. But now that there is
no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for
many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while
passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have
enjoyed your company for a while” (Rom. 15:20-24).
The church in Rome evidently was established by Jews and proselytes who had
been converted in Jerusalem during the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:10). Paul’s
planned visit did not work out exactly as he expected. He eventually did reach
Rome, but as a prisoner.
An Appeal to Caesar
Paul hoped to go immediately to Rome after delivering a gift of money to the
Christians in Jerusalem. Instead, he was arrested in the temple precincts, falsely
accused of taking Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, into the sacred area of the
temple (Acts 21:29). To protect Paul from an assassination plot, Roman officials
sent him to Caesarea to await trial (Acts 23:12-24).
Paul remained in prison for two years, having occasional audiences with Felix,
the Roman procurator, who hoped that Paul would offer him a bribe to end the
confinement (Acts 24:26). At the end of two years, Porcius Festus replaced Felix. A
newly found coin dates the beginning of his office in the spring of A. D. 56.
After Festus heard Paul speak, he suggested that the apostle return to Jerusalem
and face charges there. Knowing that such a move would be suicide, Paul
exercised his right as a Roman citizen and appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11).
This guaranteed free passage to Rome and a hearing before the emperor.
The Julian Law gave Roman citizens several key rights, including a fair public
trial, exemption from certain ignominious forms of punishment (such as crucifixion), and protection against summary execution. It forbade any magistrate to
“kill, scourge, chain, or torture a Roman citizen, or even to sentence him in the
face of an appeal or prevent him from going to Rome to lodge his appeal there
within a fixed time.”
God used these circumstances to take Paul to Rome in a way he had not imagined and much later than he anticipated. But that is often the nature of
providence.
The City of Seven Hills
Paul's ship to Rome put into harbor at Puteoli on the western coast of Italy near
Pompeii. From there he traveled the last part of his journey by land. A contingent
from the church met him at Three Taverns just south of Rome and accompanied
him into the city (Acts 28:15).
Rome was built on seven hills along the east bank of the Tiber River, 22 miles
from its mouth. The Palatine and the Capitoline hills formed the center of the city;
the other hills proceeded eastward in an arc from the south to the north the
Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal.
The heart of the city lay in the area between the Palatine and Esquiline
Hills, occupied by the Roman Forum and the Imperial Fora. Here people gathered
to conduct commercial, political, and religious affairs. By the first century B.C.,
the Palatine had become the choicest residential area in Rome, home to such
notables as Cicero, Mark Antony, and Augustus Caesar.
Between the Palatine and Aventine Hills stood the Circus Maximus. Many of the
early Christians would eventually lose their lives in this stadium.
In the decades before Paul’s arrival, the city had experienced a flurry of building
activity producing many of the beautiful structures Paul saw. Julius Caesar had
reconstructed the Roman Forum and added the Basilica Julia to its western end.
Some scholars suggest that Paul heard his death sentence in this building. Caesar
also built the first of the imperial fora, The Forum of Caesar.
Paul saw the Pantheon in the heart of Rome, a temple built by Augustus’ architect Agrippa and dedicated to all the gods. Completely rebuilt by Hadrian between
A. D. 120 and 125, it stands today as one of the best preserved buildings from the
ancient Roman Empire. Augustus boasted that he found the city in stone and left it
in marble.
Prisoner of the Empire
Paul spent two years in Rome under house arrest. During this time (A. D. 56-58).
he had the privilege of receiving guests and teaching (Acts 28:30). But a few years
later, he apparently was arrested again and brought back to Rome. This time he
apparently was confined to prison while awaiting execution. “The time has come
for my departure,” he told Timothy in his last letter. "I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:6,7).
A two-level building on the north side of the forum, the Mamertine Prison, is the
traditional site of Peter’s imprisonment. It is possible that Paul, as well as Peter,
was incarcerated there.
Two churches in Rome mark other places of special interest in the study of Paul.
The Church of St. Clement is built over a first century house that many think
belonged to Clement of Rome. He was likely the man whom Paul mentioned in his
letter from Rome to the Philippians (4:3). Irenaeus, in the late second century,
described Clement as one of the early leaders in the church at Rome.
The other church of interest is the Church of St. Paul Outside the Walls, located
about a mile from the Gate of St. Paul, on the Via Ostiense. It is the largest church
in Rome after St. Peter’s. No significant excavation has been done here, but
scholars think it stands over the place where Lucina, a Roman matron, had buried
Paul’s body in her vineyard after his execution.
In the Fullness of Time
Two of the better known structures in Rome were not standing when Paul was
there. The emperor Vespasian started building the Colosseum in A.D. 72, less than
10 years after Paul’s martyrdom. It was completed by Vespasian’s successor,
Titus, in 80.
The second structure, the beautifully preserved Arch of Titus, was erected by
Domitian and the Senate in honor of Titus in A.D. 81, just after his death. Among
other events, it depicts his’ conquest of Jerusalem, showing his army carrying off
spoils of the temple: the menorah, the table of showbread, the sacred trumpets,
and tablets fastened on sticks. No Jew ever walks through this arch.
Even without these structures, the city was a magnificent place in Paul’s day,
filled with Roman arches, streets, and aqueducts, crowded with buildings constructed on Greek architectural patterns, and punctuated with Egyptian obelisks.
Augustus had moved the great obelisk of Rameses II from Heliopolis in Egypt to
Rome around 10 B.C. and put it atop the Circus Maximus, pointing to the heavens
like a giant needle.
But students of the New Testament remember Rome not so much for its magnificent architecture as for its central role in the spread of Christianity. The city
produced a vast empire of peace and prosperity in which the gospel could move
rapidly. Jewish emissaries such as Paul, using the Greek language, took the
message of Christ throughout the Greco-Roman world in a single generation.
This Roman era was part of God’s plan, Paul believed. “When the fullness of the
time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Gal. 4:4 NKJ V).
Dr. McRay teaches New Testament and
archaeology at Wheaton (Ill.) College
Graduate School, His latest book is
Archaeology and the New Testament
(Baker Books).