Romans 14:1-6

1-6. According to the great body of commentators, these rejecters of meats, sabbaths, and wine were Jews; but the difficulty is that Judaism taught no such rejection. To avoid this objection Alford supposes that they were very scrupulous Jews, who, like Daniel and his companions, ate vegetables alone to avoid the defilement arising from Gentile cookery. Similar was the case of Tobit, ( Tob 1:10-11 ,) and of certain Jewish priests sent prisoners to Rome, mentioned by Josephus, (Life, § 3.) But there seems this peculiarity in all these quoted cases, that the persons were under duress; whereas the weaklings of this chapter were regular residents at Rome, able to prepare their food in their own way. Moreover, no shadow of such a compulsory reason for this vegetarianism appears. The eating of herbs, the abstaining from wine, and the judging of days, were all three alike, it would seem, a matter of explicit doctrine.

Others identify them with the Essenes, (note on Matthew 3:7,) but these were residents not of cities, but of the deserts and rural sections. So was Banos, the ascetic teacher with whom Josephus for a while was disciple.

Our own opinion is that they were Gentile, as most of the Roman Church was. Their doctrine was a streak of Orientalism in Rome, where all opinions found a home. Those mystic Aryans, the Brahmans, had at this time infused something of their tenets from India into the West. The fundamental maxim was, (even as early as Simon Magus,) the absolute evil of matter. (Note on Acts 8:9.) Thence they abstained from every bodily luxury; they denied at Corinth the resurrection of the body; blending with Judaism, they forbade meats in Colosse; and they denied the reality of the body of Jesus in Asia Minor, where they were opposed by St. John. This heresy was yet in the germ at Rome, and hence was mildly treated by Paul.

It is, indeed, objected that those mystics were not the gentle weaklings here described, but proud pretenders to eminent perfection in their abstinences.

But, 1, It is not so clear (as our notes on Romans 14:3 may show) that these weak in faith were very gentle in their judgments; and, 2, The phrase in 1 Timothy 4:3, commanding to abstain from meats, shows a tendency to hold this abstinence to be a requisite of true Christian piety. As to their doctrines about days, see our notes on 5, 6.