How Dr. Faustus drew on Romans
A documented line of influence: Christopher Marlowe demonstrably engaged Paul’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
Relevance
6/10
On Dr. Faustus’s page
- Faustus opens by reading Romans 6:23 aloud from Jerome's Bible — "Stipendium peccati mors est," the wages of sin is death — and damns himself on it
- The trick is the truncation: he stops the verse exactly before its second half, the grace that would have answered him
- Knowing Paul's full sentence — death and the gift of eternal life — turns Faustus's despair into a deliberate, self-serving misreading
On Romans’s page
- Paul's line "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) is the verse Faustus damns himself by — Marlowe puts it in his scholar's mouth in the opening soliloquy
- The trap is in the cutting: Faustus reads only the first half and stops, the half before Paul's promise of "eternal life through Jesus Christ"
- The whole tragedy turns on a half-read scripture — go see what the rest of the verse says