PREFATORY NOTE WHILE a number of commentaries on Romans have been consulted in the preparation of this volume, the writer desires especially to acknowledge his indebtedness to the International Critical Commentary by Sanday and Headlam, which he has found of exceptional value in its references to contemporary Jewish thought and literature, its quotations from monumental inscriptions, and its discussion of the meaning of words. As the text of the Revised Version has been assumed as the basis of the commentary, only variant readings or renderings of very great interest or importance have been discussed. The aim throughout has been to render the thought of Paul not only intelligible but worthy of all acceptation' even by minds that have been influenced by modern intellectual tendencies. THE EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE ROMANS INTRODUCTION I. THE APOSTLE PAUL. I. THERE are three factors in Paul's personal development up to the time of his conversion to which, according to his own testimony, importance must be assigned. First of all, he was a Jew by race, a Hebrew in his speech (using Aramaic and not Greek only, as many of the Jews living abroad did), a Pharisee in religion. From youth brought up in Jerusalem in the school of Gamaliel, he was zealous for the law of Moses, the customs and ordinances of Judaism, eager in his pursuit of the righteousness which was regarded as the condition of gaining the favour of God and a share in the blessings of the Messianic kingdom, and thoroughly taught and trained in the knowledge of the Old Testament as understood by the scribes, whose conception of the authority of the Scriptures he maintained, and whose methods of interpretation he practised, even after he became a Christian apostle. Secondly, he was also a Roman citizen, freeborn, and of this fact he was proud; and although the wider outlook over mankind which Roman citizenship offered was probably in his Pharisaic days never consciously assumed, yet when the limitations of Pharisaism had once for all been transcended, his ideas both as regards the range and the method of his |