Romans 16:25-27

The doxology. St. Paul's letters, as a rule, terminate with a benediction, and even apart from the questions of textual criticism, connected with it, this doxology has given rise to much discussion. The closest analogies to it are found in the doxology at the end of Ephesians 3, and in Jude (Jude 1:24-25); there is something similar in the last chapter of Hebrews (Hebrews 13:20 f.), though not quite at the end; Pauline doxologies as a rule are briefer (Romans 1:25; Romans 9:5; Romans 11:36; Philippians 4:20), and more closely related to what immediately precedes. This one, in which all the leading ideas of the Epistle to the Romans may be discovered, though in a style which reminds one uncomfortably of the Pastoral Epistles rather than of that to which it is appended, would seem more in place if it stood where [42] [43] and an immense number of MSS. place it after Romans 14:23. It may represent the first emergence and conscious apprehension of thoughts which were afterwards to become familiar; but it cannot be denied that the many distinct points of contact with later writings give it, in spite of all it has of imposing, a somewhat artificial character, and it may not belong to the Epistle to the Romans any more than the doxology in Matthew 6 belongs to the Lord's Prayer.

[42] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[43] Codex Angelicus (sæc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.