Romans 16:1

This chapter continues the final remarks which began at Romans 15:14, in which there are numerous, personal references to Christians in Rome from Paul and other Christians associated with him, with a concluding warning against divisive teachers, and a magnificent final doxology. No less than 24 persons were saluted by name, plus household groups of Aristobulus and of Narcissus, plus the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus.

It is strange, when first noted, that in only Romans and Colossians did Paul name so many people personally, and that in both instances these were churches which he had never visited. As Sanday noted:

A few critics headed by Baur have used this against the genuineness of the portion of the epistle in question. But reasoning like this may safely be dismissed, as these very portions are just those which it would be most senseless and aimless to forge, even if it were possible on other grounds to think of them as a forgery.[1]

Baur's weak logic in such a criticism was doubtless due to his ignorance of the attitude always found in a successful preacher like Paul, that attitude being a very sensitive concern for the feelings of all Christians with whom he associated. It was no doubt such a concern for the feelings of others that caused Paul to omit from his other epistles such a list of personal greetings as the one contained here; because, as every true minister of the gospel knows, the dispatch of a letter to a congregation where the whole membership is known and loved by the sender would never contain a list of greetings singling out only a few of them and slighting all the others. This is why no such extensive list of greetings is found in Paul's letters to the churches where he had labored and where his personal love and acquaintance extended to practically all of them. If some of the scholarly critics had a little more knowledge of the human factor in all spiritual work, the quality of their logic would improve.

In the epistles to the Romans and Colossians, however, Paul had no reason to regard the considerations mentioned above; and, consequently, he sent greetings to everyone he knew personally and to some who were known to him only by reputation.

As to the suggestion that this list of greetings could be a forgery (and for what earthly reason?), it is a fair example of the logic (?) of destructive critics of the New Testament. For some of them, one excuse is as good as another; and some of their allegations, as in the case here, are so unreasonable and far-fetched as to betray essential bias. What has happened in the advocacy of such illogical and untrustworthy objections to certain portions of God's word is a prior decision by the critic that a given passage, or letter, is not a valid historical document, and that it must be proved invalid by any means whatsoever that may be pressed into service supporting the bias. Baur's rejection of this chapter on the basis of the names in it is a glaring example of this.

The technical answer to Baur's thesis that the names here are a forgery lies in the total lack of any conceivable motive that could have induced it. If one can imagine that someone would spend one hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of counterfeiting a handful of pennies, then one is capable of supposing a forger for this list of names. If such a thing COULD happen, it would only prove that someone stood in desperate need of counterfeit pennies; but, in the analogy, it cannot be conceived how anyone could possibly need such a list of counterfeit names!

As Sanday observed, we may safely dismiss that kind of reasoning!