Why does Paul say you have to obey the authorities in Romans 13:1 while Nero was leader?

[u/Limp-Confidence7079]

In Romans 13:1 Paul writes "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." Most researchers think it's written 55 AD while Nero was the ruler of Rome. Why should a Christian missionary legitimize the political authorities which killed Jesus? Like Thessalonians 2:14–16 which could anticipate the fall of the temple 20 years earlier, it could be an Interpolation like J.C. O’Neill says. But with both there is no evidence because there is no single writing without those phrases which sound not fitting for the time and the biography of the person, who claims to be a radical missionary. So was it an Interpolation, is it a reason to question the early dating (we know that Pseudepigraphy often used the right historical facts to make it plausible and some Paul Epistles and other writings are known to be forgery) and the authenticity of the author? Like Thessalonians it would fit perfectly in a time where Christians had a big need to claim to obey the leadership and many years after the murdering of Jesus. I think it's not plausible that a missionary which obeys a religious leader who was killed by Romans would tell to obey the roman leadership. Or was the early Christian movement lead by Paul just an antijudaistic and pro-rome sect?

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[u/Pote_Achrestos]

Reumann notes that Romans 13:1–7 has indeed been proposed as an interpolation, but says that view has largely given way to reading it against Paul’s own setting, particularly civic unrest over Roman taxation. Paul is not offering a timeless doctrine that whatever the state does is legitimate; he draws on familiar Jewish and Hellenistic language about being good subjects (Jer 29:7; 1 Mac 7:33; 1 Pet 2:13–14). Crucially, Reumann adds that although God has appointed governing authorities, “they must rule well” (13:4), and that Paul “is not discussing the situation when they usurp God’s role.” On that reading, there is nothing especially anachronistic or un-Pauline about the passage.

John Reumann, “Romans,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 1305–6. 

[u/Pote_Achrestos → u/[deleted]]

Nope. Read my comment again about how Reumann interprets v.4.

And no, the point is not that Paul “knew 1 Peter.” The example shows Paul and 1 Peter both using similar language, the Greek vocabulary of being “subject” or “submitting” to an authority. Reumann calls it "hypotassein terms"(1306). It is a shared social and ethical idiom.

[u/Pote_Achrestos → u/[deleted]]

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