From Pompeii to Rome: Paul's Letter and its Hearers

This project tests the idea that study of first-century Roman social structures can shed useful light on Paul's letter to the Romans. It begins by deriving a rudimentary model of Pompeian society from recent research on its housing. It then modifies this to provide social models, first, for Pauline churches in general, then for mid-first-century apartment-churches in Rome. Four methods are used to test this model as an interpretative tool for studying Paul's letter: consideration of issues in relation to social diversity among the hearers; contextualisation of identity language about holiness, and consideration of the relationship of this to holiness in the letter's theology; contextualisation of moral exhortations; contextualisation of rhetoric on unity.