(October 28, 2015 at 9:58 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:(October 28, 2015 at 9:45 am)Drich Wrote: It was commonly believed that the messiah was deliver the jewish people from the Roman authority, and at the time (After jesus before the destruction of the temple) tensions between jews and the romans were high. The romans sought any means to keep the jews under control, and the new christians (who were still considered to be jews by much of rome) were (leadership not the followers at that time) were targets for the Jews and the romans. Which is why Paul was imprisioned so many times beaten and stoned, and ultimatly imprisoned by rome/nero and executed/beheaded.
So if literal flogging, prison, stoning, and being beheaded is not to be considered 'dangerous' by you then on that note I will have to conceed to your point.
I have no complaints about the majority of your reply except for this bit, and only because it's a red herring that doesn't address the original question. You're quite right about the tension between the Romans and the Jews, but that still doesn't make Paul's statements in the epistles, circa 45 CE, automatically or inherently dangerous to him, let alone a "death sentence". We certainly have evidence that, 20 years later, the Christians were being persecuted in places like Rome, on the orders of Emperor Nero who sought to blame their minority for his own actions as a political distraction... many, many Christians were executed in that decade by Nero's orders.
But that doesn't point to him being in danger from the Romans when he wrote that, nor of the Jews outside the centers of their power in Jerusalem. The Romans were actually known for their tolerance of "wrong" religions that came in from the border provinces, and allowed free practice thereof, so long as you accepted Roman rule. That's why Tacitus makes a derogatory comment about religions coming to Rome to "find their centre", when he is describing the deaths of the Christians Nero had murdered-by-trial.
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind". - Annals of Tacitus, 15:44
(Emphasis mine, of course.)
Simple question, Was Paul's unwavering dedication to God and his position in the Church the reason Nero had Him Beheaded?
That said I will conceed, at the time Paul wrote romans the danger to him was not as great to being identified as an apostle as it was when he finally died. My point however was he did endure several (Passion of the Christ) style floggings, several stents in prison, being stoned all by Rome, for pushing this religion all between the time the letter was written and when he died 20 years later. Signing his name to this letter and clearly pointing out what he believed made him a threat to rome because Rome decided that this for of judaism was what was causing the civil unrest in that region. Which painted a small target on Paul and it grew till he was beheaded by Nero.
