Romans setting & dates

The setting

Romans is unique among Paul’s major letters in being written to a church in a city he had never visited: Rome, the capital of the empire and the hub of the ancient world. Paul most likely wrote from Corinth, in the Roman province of Achaia (Greece), toward the close of his third missionary journey, while gathering a collection for the poor believers in Jerusalem. The letter itself sketches the geography of Paul’s hopes and plans: he writes from the east, where he says he has “fulfilled the ministry of the gospel” from Jerusalem “as far as Illyricum” (the region along the Adriatic), and he looks westward, intending to visit Rome on his way to a new mission field in Spain, at the far edge of the known world.

The church in Rome to which he wrote was a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers living at the heart of imperial power, and the closing chapter’s long list of names gives a vivid glimpse of that community: men and women, slaves and free, Jews and Greeks, laboring together in the gospel. The letter was carried the roughly eight hundred miles from Corinth to Rome by Phoebe, a deacon of the nearby port church of Cenchreae. Thus Romans reaches from the eastern Mediterranean, where Paul had long labored, toward the western capital and beyond, embodying the gospel’s advance “to the ends of the earth.”

Where the letter went

Open in Google Maps

Timeline

• c. AD 47-57 - Paul’s missionary journeys spread the gospel from Jerusalem toward Illyricum.
• c. AD 57 - Paul writes Romans from Corinth near the end of his third journey, before carrying a collection to Jerusalem.
• The letter’s aim - To introduce his gospel to Rome and enlist the church’s support for a mission to Spain.
• c. AD 60-62 - Paul finally reaches Rome, though as a prisoner (Acts 28), and ministers there.
• The Reformation (16th century) - Romans, rediscovered afresh, ignites the recovery of justification by faith.