Through a nontechnical collection of short essays in Reading
Romans in Context. Paul and Second Temple Judaism the message of Paul in his
epistle to the Romans is set against the background to texts of the Second Temple
period. Each of the authors is an expert in the field he or she treats.
Each chapter pairs a major unit of Paul’s letter with
one or more sections of a thematically related Jewish text. It intro-duces and explores
the theological message of the com-parative text and shows how the ideas unfolded
in these texts illuminate our understanding of Paul’s major letter.
Again and again the difference between Paul and the com-parative
texts appears to be Paul’s insight that the law as such can not produce obedient
people. The only source of real obedience is the gospel of Christ applied by
the Holy Spirit. Actually the articles in this bundle refute the new perspective on Paul.
Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich and Jason Maston
(ed.) Reading Romans in Context. Paul and Second Temple Judaism (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), paperback 192 pp., $19,99 (ISBN 9780310517955)