As I am preparing to read Romans, I will spend a couple of days doing reading on this manuscript in terms of its background and origin, it’s author, and in getting a high-level sense of its purpose.

Before diving into Romans specifically though, it’s important to understand and maintain context around the epistles in general.  These letters make up 21 of the 27 books in the New Testament, and Paul probably wrote 13 of them.  Most of the letters, especially Paul’s, follow a similar pattern with an opening, a body, and a closing.  Typically, Paul’s letters are more technical and precise in explaining some theological ideas, then he turns to more practical application in the latter half of the writing.  Typically letters have a few theological ideas that are worked out throughout the letter using that transition from the technical to the application. As such, it is really important that we look at a specific text in the greater context of the overall letter as we seek to understand it, and that’s why reading through each letter before studying it in depth is important.

Another idea that is important to keep in mind is that the Gospels were written before the ascension, and mostly prior to the resurrection.  The epistles are written on the other side of the cross and resurrection, on our side of them.  Another way to think about this is to view the gospels as being mostly about the story of Jesus, and the epistles are mostly about how we are to respond to that story. The epistles, in a sense, help us understand how to work out that faith in our lives.

It is important to understand that, generally speaking, the epistles were written to a specific group of people, in a specific context, to address some specific issues.  It’s important to understand the author, the audience, and the issues before we try to take what’s being said and apply it to ourselves.

Some scholars have argued that the practice of writing a letter in someone else’s name, a practice called pseudonymity, was an accepted practice at this time.  Evidence supporting this claim has been proven lacking though, so this should not be a general concern; for the most part, the authors have been excepted as stated in these various letters.  There may be small passages or sections that were inserted or touched up here in there, but it’s nothing significant that should detract from the authenticity of these letters or that should distract us in our studying them.

I won’t spend much time on this here, it is probably worth a season of study and journaling and podcasting, so I will put it on my to do list, but it’s important to remind ourselves how the Bible was assembled.  Critics of the Christian Bible will sometimes point out that there was a group of people that put together the Bible originally. This is true, but, stated in this way, it is a little misleading.  there wasn’t a group of people that randomly selected from a whole bunch of manuscripts the group that we would put together to call “the Bible“.  Instead, there were a whole bunch of manuscripts floating around that were agreed to be authoritative, so this group of people simply placed them in a collection. There is a subtle difference between those two, but the subtle difference is a huge difference in terms of what it is suggesting.

For today, I am reminded of the fact that the Bible, itself, is perhaps one of the biggest and most overlooked miracles that we have.  It contains the work of over 40 authors collectively written over a period of time of about 1500 years, most of which never knew each other, all telling the same story, and all  linked together by a common theme - God.  How in the world did all of that come together apart from God’s orchestration?  Maybe I am just a cynic, but I think we aren’t smart enough to pull that off without our Creator!