Since writing parts five and six of this ongoing article, Journeying with Paul, I have discovered that the order that I wrote things happening may have been a bit off from how it happened. In my writing I had Paul writing 2 Corinthians after he parted company with the men from Ephesus, which took place at the very end of Acts, but I have since discovered that he may actually have written both 2 Corinthians and Romans during the part of Scripture that is Acts 20:2, while Paul was in Greece, most likely in Corinth.
In writing Journeying with Paul, I have discovered that different people put a different timeline on Scripture. Some people say Paul did something at one time and someone else says he did it at another time, there is plenty of differences in those timelines. Even the Chronological Bibles in production today do not agree on when things happened. Some of them say one thing, some another. What we can be for sure of is that Romans was written from Corinth because Romans 23 says, Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. He went on to tell who Erastus was in the city. That gives us a way to discover where Paul was at the time. We are told in Romans Paul was staying with Gaius when he wrote Romans. Anything else, outside of timelines or locations given in Scripture, are speculation by men, even if they are scholars, and we really have no way of knowing who did what at what time unless Scripture gives us something to go on that pinpoints a place or space of time. After that it's pretty much anyone's guess on how or when this all, and many other things in Scripture, came about.
Once I realized, from Scripture, that I had made a mistake in my writing of what happened when, I debated on fixing my mistake, changing the way I had everything lined up and inserting what I had written into what I wrote on Acts 20 and I fully intended to do just that, even opened up my writing to make the changes, but I did some in depth study on the Scriptures in question, and on Paul, with my husband and we both came to the conclusion that what I've written is best left as it is. When I covered Acts 20 I did it all together, one book, without breaking it up to insert the books, or letters, of 2 Corinthians and Romans, I then covered 2 Corinthians and will now begin to cover Romans. I seriously considered rearranging what I've already written to show that the book, or letter, of 2 Corinthians and Romans should have been, or most likely were, written toward the beginning of Acts 20. Commentary that I read places these two books about at Acts 20:2-3 and they very well may have been written then. If so, I have my writings slightly out of order for the timeline of Paul's life. I have, however, decided to leave them as is because those timelines are, more often than not, speculation on what took place when. For instance, one commentary says that when Paul left Ephesus, he visit those places. Scripture, in that verse, does not tell us what those places were yet it was assumed in the commentary that he traveled a certain way and visited certain towns. This commentary was written by so-called scholars and yet the information they gave was not supported by Scripture, at least not by the part of Scripture they were commenting on and they gave no reference to other verses. So it would seem that these scholars made assumptions on things that very well may not have happened then placed those assumptions into the notes of Scripture as if this is what happened.
I finally came to the conclusion that I would leave what I have written as it is. If I have made a mistake...I'm a fallen person with a human understanding of Scripture. I'm working off the Bibles I own and a small amount of online research. I would like to point out here that I would advise anyone reading anything I write to double check what I write against Scripture, and in the case of Journeying with Paul, to check it against whatever sources you feel are credible, to make sure that what I've written is true and accurate. We should never take any person's word to be the way something is in Scripture. If we do not double check what we are reading or learning against Scripture than we are only being taught by men and not by the Lord's word. Please, please, double check what I write against your own copy of the Scriptures, literal translations of the Scriptures because any other translation will probably go against what I write, and form your own opinions. Journeying with Paul is not immune to that need for you to check it against Scripture, and in fact may have a higher need, do to the fact that there are discrepancies among scholars and in Bibles as to when and where something took place. When possible I have taken my information straight from Scripture but the letters are not inserted into Scripture in the places where they would have been written and therefore I must look to outside sources in order to place them in my writings. In doing so what I'm writing becomes subject not only to my own failings but also to the possible failings of any person writing out a timeline for placing those letters into Paul's life. Please, do your own research, form your own opinions, and if you have reason to believe I have written anything wrong, please leave me a comment and tell me what I wrote wrong and where you found your information that tells me it is wrong.
And now...back to Paul...
At some time after writing the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote to the ekklesia in Rome. But before I even get into Romans I find myself questioning what made Paul write this letter to those he did and to who, exactly, did the letter go to. Scripture, Romans 16, says that he sent the letter with Phoebe of Cenchrea but it doesn't, as far as I can tell, tell us who the recipient of the letter was, beyond saying the 'church' of Rome. The tone of the letter implies that it was written to believers in Rome but, unless I miss my guess, or rather, unless there is something in Scripture that I can't, at this time, grasp or remember, than I can't find a reason for such a deep and instructional letter to be written to Rome. This isn't a letter that was written ahead of him, introducing him, and telling them that he was going to bring them a Gospel they had never heard. This was a letter written to someone that had heard the Gospel and was giving the recipient instructions, deep instructions, and understandings, on the Christian life.
I just can't understand why Paul is writing such a deep and insightful letter to a group of people that he has never visited. How does he know that there is anyone in Rome to welcome and accept such a letter as he is writing? In Paul's first journey he took the Gospel to people that had never heard it before. In his other journey's he revisited the places where he had already been, giving further support and encouragement, and teachings, to the believers he had taken the Gospel to. Why, then, is he writing such a letter as Romans to people that we are never told were given the Gospel?
The tone of Romans shows that someone must have taken the Gospel to Rome, and that Paul was addressing the believers there, we just don't know who gave them the Gospel or who the believers were like we do in Paul's other letters.
As I write this, as I question these things, I know that those are details that do not matter. They have no bearing on salvation and if the Lord did not see fit to give us that information than it must not matter. So as I start into the letter Paul wrote to Romans, I must sit aside my questions and instead focus on what I do know. And that is that Paul hopes to go to Rome and then on to Spain, something we will learn in the letter to the Romans, and that he is most likely somewhere in Corinth as he writes the letter, once again surrounded by a city of sin, and living among a group a people that seem to be dear to him.
To be continued....
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