Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul's Greatest Letter

by Tom Wright

many in Paul’s day believed that the city of Rome had a secret name. Nobody was supposed to utter it, in case the city, its secret being revealed, might be exposed to hostile attack. That may sound like something out of ‘Harry Potter’; but actually quite a bit of Harry Potter, not least the spells, is rooted in the classical world. There is good evidence that many not only assumed that Rome had a secret name but believed that the name in question was in fact ‘Rome’ backwards. Rome in Latin is Roma: so, spelled backwards, it is Amor. And Amor is the Latin for ‘love’. You see, the Romans believed (well, this is what they told themselves from time to time – how many actually believed it it’s hard to know) that they were descended from Aeneas, who escaped from the sack of Troy, as in Virgil’s epic, The Aeneid. And Aeneas was reputedly the son of Venus, the love-goddess. So it’s quite possible that Paul, reaching the height of his theological rhetoric, writing to people fluent in both Latin and Greek, would want to reclaim Love, agapē in Greek, Amor in Latin, not as the secret name of the pagan city but as the deepest truth about the creator God. Remember the subversive way in which Paul opens the letter. He speaks of God’s gospel, the ‘good news’ – and ‘good news’ was a word associated at the time with the achievements of Caesar Augustus, hailed as the son of the divine Julius, the kyrios, the Lord. But this good news is the real thing; and it has come about through the real ‘...