Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Romans 2:17-29, You who boast in the law
Paul turns on an imagined Jewish teacher who boasts in the law yet steals, commits adultery and robs temples, so that God's name is blasphemed among the nations, and says true circumcision is of the heart.
Romans 2:17-29, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul speaks to an imagined Jewish teacher who is proud of the law and sure he can instruct others, and asks whether he lives by what he teaches. Citing Scripture, he says such failure brings God's name into disrepute among the nations. Circumcision is worth something to one who keeps the law, but Paul argues that what makes someone truly a Jew is an inner change worked by the Spirit, not a mark on the body.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/diaspora-jews\/","n":"Jews of the dispersion","s":"Most Jews of the first century lived outside the land, in cities from Parthia to Rome. They kept the law and their own synagogues, spoke Greek or Aramaic, and came up to Jerusalem for the feasts when they could.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/pagan-gods-and-idols\/","n":"Many gods and their images","s":"The Greek and Roman world was full of gods, each with temples, statues, priests and local stories. Jews and Christians called the images things made with hands, while holding that there were real powers behind them.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/blasphemy\/","n":"Blasphemy","s":"Speech that dishonored God, including claiming what belonged to God alone. Under the law the penalty was death.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/circumcision\/","n":"Circumcision and becoming a Jew","s":"Circumcision was the sign of God's covenant with Abraham and the mark of a Jewish man. A Gentile man who joined Israel was circumcised; the first great quarrel in the church was over whether Gentile believers had to be.","r":""}
Paul is using diatribe, a teaching style with an imaginary opponent and pointed questions; the opponent was a worst case, not typical Jewish behavior (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener). Temple robbery is read three ways. Keener calls it one of the most impious crimes and notes that pagans sometimes suspected Jews of it (Acts 19:37). The ESV Study Bible says "Robbing temples was a common crime in the ancient world," and that for a Jew it would add self-defilement to theft. Wright says Jews were often accused of it because, not believing in idols, they treated pagan temples as trivial. Rome remembered a real scandal. Josephus tells how four Jewish swindlers persuaded Fulvia, a noblewoman who had become a convert, to send purple and gold to the temple in Jerusalem and kept it, and how Tiberius banished the Jews of Rome: "Thus were these Jews banished out of the city by the wickedness of four men." The cultural backgrounds notes and Keener connect verse 24 with that memory. Circumcision of the heart goes back to Moses and the prophets (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4), and the cultural backgrounds notes suggest a wordplay, since praise sounds like the Hebrew name Judah.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Romans 2:1-29, 2:17-24, 2:21-23, 2:24 and 2:29
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Romans 2:17-24, 2:21-23, 2:24 and 2:25-29
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Romans 2:22
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part One, comment on Romans 2:17-24
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.5, trans. William Whiston
