I have gained the following information from E-sword. You can do it too.
The Approximate Date:
We can fix the approximate date with fair certainty within reasonable limits. We gather from Rom_15:19 that Paul, when he wrote, was in the act of closing his work in the East and was looking definitely westward. But he was first about (Rom_15:25, Rom_15:26) to revisit Jerusalem with his collection, mainly made in Macedonia and Achaia, for the “poor saints.” Placing these allusions side by side with the narrative of Acts, we may date Romans very nearly at the same time as 2 Corinthians, just before the visit to Jerusalem narrated in Acts 20, etc. The year may be fixed with great probability as 58 AD. More recent schemes would move the date back to 56 AD. Broadly speaking, it was about 30 years at the most after the Crucifixion.
The Place of Writing:
With confidence we may name Corinth as the place of writing. Paul was at the time in some “city” (Rom_16:23). He was staying with one Gaius, or Caius (same place) , and we find in 1Co_1:14 a Gaius, closely connected with Paul, and a Corinthian. He commends to the Romans the deaconess Phoebe, attached to “the church at Cenchrea” (Rom_16:1), presumably a place near that from which he was writing; and Cenchrea was the southern part of Corinth.
The Destination:
The first advent of Christianity to Rome is unrecorded, and we know very little of its early progress. Visiting Romans appear at Pentecost (Act_2:10), and no doubt some of these returned home believers. In Act_18:2 we have Aquila and Priscilla, Jews, evidently Christians, “lately come from Italy,” and probably from Rome. But we know practically nothing else of the story previous to this Epistle, which is addressed to a mission church obviously important and already spiritually advanced. As to Rome itself, we may picture it at the date of the Epistle as containing, with its suburbs, a closely massed population of perhaps 800,000 people; a motley host of many races, with a strong oriental element, among which the Jews were present as a marked influence, despised and sometimes dreaded, but always attracting curiosity.
The Language:
The Epistle was written in Greek, the “common dialect,” the Greek of universal communication of that age. One naturally asks, why not in Latin, when the message was addressed to the supreme Latin city? The large majority of Christian converts beyond doubt came from the lower middle and lowest classes, not least from the slave class. These strata of society were supplied greatly from immigrants, much as in parts of East London now aliens make the main population. Not Latin but Greek, then lingua franca of the Mediterranean, would be the daily speech of these people.
Ian’s note:
Normally Paul writes to churches that he has relationship with, to encourage them, build them in their faith or address issues they face. In this case however Paul writes to a church he has not visited yet and gives them comprehensive input on matters of Christian doctrine and practice. As we learned in Gem 131, Romans is a remarkable letter and has enthralled believers for centuries and one that has been recommended by many leaders of Christendom to be learned by heart. A letter of which we should take careful note. We will start doing that tomorrow.
I have included help for those of you having trouble getting E-Sword working properly. I trust it will help. See below. When I have my new website up and running it will include a place for such help in a separate tab.
Make friends before you need them.
William Cameron Townsend
Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.
Robert Schuller
Help in Using E-Sword
If you have nothing in the top segment of the picture above apart from Strong’s it means extra available resources have not been loaded. You will need to load them.
You will note I have BDB (Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon), Easton, Fausett, Hitchcock, ISBE, NASEC, RMAC, Smith, Strongs & Thayers all loaded. If you have not loaded these dictionaries from the website then they won’t be available to you. You will need to download them first.
Go to the Website – www.e-Sword.net and click <downloads> on the top menu, Then choose <dictionaries> from the next menu. From the next list choose the dictionaries you want. I would suggest you choose Easton, Fausett, ISBE and Thayers at least. Once these are loaded the dictionary window will work for you.
ISBE will work for you if you are in the text of E-Sword for any version and double click on the word. But if you want the other lexicons to work then generally you will need to choose a version with a plus sign (+). Like KJV+ which is keyed to the Strong’s Cross Reference numbers. Either you double click on the word or you select the Strong’s number and it will display the information in the dictionary window. If you select the tab related to the dictionaries you have loaded, E-Sword will display the entry for each dictionary.