Customer Reviews

A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles

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I thought that Stowers approach adds a dimension to the discussion about the new perspective on Paul. His attention to how a Greek speaking Gentile would read Paul's epistle is excellent. The book clearly highlights how modern tendencies to read the Bible in the "plain sense" can be hugely mistaken. His focus on who the epistle was written to and what cultural frame of reference they had is very clear. The focus on grammar and on cultural references of Gentiles exceeds simple lexical approaches. Romans was written by a Jew who straddled the growing divide between Judaism and Gentile believers in a Jewish messiah.

I really liked this book, it's full of notes about translational biases that color every approach to the epistle. I would add that Gaston's translation of Romans in his book Paul and Torah is a useful comparison. This book is not for the timid reader of Paul. You have to study it.

A Rereading of Romans is a truly eye-opening look at Paul's most influential letter. There are many commentaries out there on Romans that all say basically the same thing. Stowers' book is completely different. Stowers is one of the few authors to seriously ask how readers in Paul's time (before there were any "Christians" or "Christianity"--Paul never uses those words) would have understood this letter. Stowers shows how modern translations (and even the critical Greek text underlying the translations) have been affected by Christian traditions of interpretation. He demonstrates how various parts of the letter can be radically reinterpreted if read through the lens of ancient rhetorical tools available to Paul's original audience rather than through the (later) lenses of Christian systems of sin and salvation. The argumentation and documentation are thorough, which can make the book a little dense at times, but reading it is worth the effort. It is a remarkable book that deserves to be read by anyone really interested in Paul's letters or early Christianity more generally.