text: The precise time at which it was written is not mentioned in the epistle, but it was obviously written when the collection for Jerusalem had been assembled and Paul was about to "go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints", that is, at the close of his second visit to Greece, during the winter preceding his last visit to that city. The majority of scholars writing on Romans propose the letter was written in late 55/early 56 or late 56/early 57. Early 55 and early 58 both have some support, while German New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann argues for a date as early as 51/52 (or 54/55), following on from Knox, who proposed 53/54. Lüdemann is the only serious challenge to the consensus of mid to late 50s.
  Textual variants
  Fourteen-chapter form
  There is strong, albeit indirect, evidence that a recension of Romans that lacked chapters 15 and 16 was widely used in the western half of the Roman Empire until the mid-4th century. This conclusion is partially based on the fact that a variety of Church Fathers, such as Origen and Tertullian, refer to a fourteen-chapter edition of Romans, either directly or indirectly. The fact that Paul's doxology is placed in various different places in different manuscripts of Romans only strengthens the case for an early fourteen-chapter recension. While there is some uncertainty, Harry Gamble concludes that the canonical sixteen-chapter recension is likely the earlier version of the text.