Romans 1:18-32, Images of the immortal God

Paul's argument resembles one in the Wisdom of Solomon, and Stoics argued that God's nature was evident in creation, an argument Diaspora Jews used to win pagans to the one God (Keener). Greeks and Romans gave their chief gods human form and mocked Egyptians for gods shaped like animals; to Jews idolatry was among the worst sins and a mark of Gentiles (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener). Yet Paul's wording borrows what Scripture said about Israel's own idolatry (Psalm 106:20; Jeremiah 2:11), which sets up the turn to his Jewish hearers in chapter 2 (Keener and his notes). For verses 26-27 the cultural backgrounds article Homosexual Activity in Antiquity, with Keener, gives the setting: among Greeks, male same-sex relations most often involved adolescent boys, and seldom to the exclusion of women; elite Romans had taken up the practice; some Greek and especially Roman moralists called it against nature; Greek-speaking Jews joined that charge to the argument from creation; and Jewish sources treated it as a Gentile sin. The article reads Paul as starting from sins his Jewish hearers already counted Gentile, then moving to a list that takes in everyone. Such vice lists were common (Keener).