Prosopopoiia (speech in character) in Romans 7?
I’ll comment on what I think about this later, and what exactly might be the implications of such a reading, but just wanted to throw the material out for preliminary reference:
Eurepides’ Medea:
“Ah, me! a wretched suffering woman I! O would that I could die!”
“Oh, oh! Would that Heaven’s levin bolt would cleave this head in twain! What gain is life to me? Woe, woe is me! O, to die and win release, quitting this loathed existence!”
“This one brief day forget thy children dear, and after that lament; for though thou wilt slay them yet they were thy darlings still, and I am a lady of sorrows.”
Seneca’s Medea:
“Why, soul, dost hesitate? Why are my cheeks wet with tears? Why do anger and love now hither, now thither draw my changeful heart? A double tide tosses me, uncertain of my course; as when rushing winds wage mad warfare, and from both sides conflicting floods lash the seas and the fluctuating waters boil, even so is my heart tossed. Anger puts love to flight, and love, anger. O wrath, yield thee to love.”
“Why dost thou delay now, O soul? Why hesitate, though thou canst do it? Now has my wrath died within me. I am sorry for my act, ashamed.”
“What, wretched woman, have I done? wretched, say I? Though I repent, yet have I done it!”
Romans 7
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate . . . So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
“For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”