Thorsteinsson's study of Romans poses a thoroughly argued challenge to Pauline scholarship. His argument has the potential of invalidating the reading of Romans 2 hat has contributed to a perception of Paul as utterly negative towards his fellow Jews and first-century Judaism. Among matters of scholarly dispute is the function and identity of Paul's interlocutor(s) in chapter 2 of Romans. Scholars agree universally that the individual addressed in 2:17-29 is a Jew, but with respect to the identity of the interlocutor of 2:1-5, there is no consensus. The majority of scholars hold that the interlocutor is a Jew throughout the chapter. A weighty minority argues that the individual addressed in 2:1-5 is a Gentile and that there is a shift of interlocutor in 2:17. In his investigation into the pros and cons of these positions, Thorsteinsson endeavors to challenge both majority and minority. Basic to his approach is to allow the larger context and framework of the letter to be of help in assessing the function and identity of Paul's partner(s) in dialogue. Thus the epistolary structure and setting of Romans, the relationship between Paul and his audience, the identity of the audience, and the dialogical style of the letter are used to ascertain the function and identity of Paul's interlocutor(s) in Romans 2. By engaging an imaginary interlocutor, Paul utilizes a well-established epistolary technique in Greco-Roman antiquity. Thorsteinsson concludes that Paul wrote Romans to a particular group of people in a specific, contemporaneous situation. The letter's message arose out of Paul's missionary obligation to proclaim God's "good news" to Gentiles in Rome. The minority view that Paul's interlocutor in 2:1-5 is a Gentile is combined with the majority opinion that there is but one interlocutor throughout the chapter. In sum, "the common opinion that Romans 2 contains Paul's piercing critique of his fellow Jew should be rejected. The individual censured in the chapter is not a Jew . . . " but a Gentile who claims to be a Jew.

Thorsteinsson's study of Romans poses a thoroughly argued challenge to Pauline scholarship. His argument has the potential of invalidating the reading of Romans 2 hat has contributed to a perception of Paul as utterly negative towards his fellow Jews and first-century Judaism. Among matters of scholarly dispute is the function and identity of Paul's interlocutor(s) in chapter 2 of Romans. Scholars agree universally that the individual addressed in 2:17-29 is a Jew, but with respect to the identity of the interlocutor of 2:1-5, there is no consensus. The majority of scholars hold that the interlocutor is a Jew throughout the chapter. A weighty minority argues that the individual addressed in 2:1-5 is a Gentile and that there is a shift of interlocutor in 2:17. In his investigation into the pros and cons of these positions, Thorsteinsson endeavors to challenge both majority and minority. Basic to his approach is to allow the larger context and framework of the letter to be of help in assessing the function and identity of Paul's partner(s) in dialogue. Thus the epistolary structure and setting of Romans, the relationship between Paul and his audience, the identity of the audience, and the dialogical style of the letter are used to ascertain the function and identity of Paul's interlocutor(s) in Romans 2. By engaging an imaginary interlocutor, Paul utilizes a well-established epistolary technique in Greco-Roman antiquity. Thorsteinsson concludes that Paul wrote Romans to a particular group of people in a specific, contemporaneous situation. The letter's message arose out of Paul's missionary obligation to proclaim God's "good news" to Gentiles in Rome. The minority view that Paul's interlocutor in 2:1-5 is a Gentile is combined with the majority opinion that there is but one interlocutor throughout the chapter. In sum, "the common opinion that Romans 2 contains Paul's piercing critique of his fellow Jew should be rejected. The individual censured in the chapter is not a Jew . . . " but a Gentile who claims to be a Jew.

Decades ago, Werner G. Kummel described the historical problem of Romans as its “double character”: concerned with issues of Torah and the destiny of Israel, the letter is explicitly addressed not to Jews but to Gentiles. At stake in the numerous answers given to that question is nothing less than the purpose of Paul’s most important letter. In The So-Called Jew in Romans, nine Pauline scholars focus their attention on the rhetoric of diatribe and characterization in the opening argumentation that figure appears or is implied. Each component of Paul’s argument is closely examined with particular attention to the theological problems that arise in each. In addition to the editors, chapters of the letter, asking what Paul means by the “so-called Jew” in Romans 2 and where else in the letter’s contributors are Runar M. Thorsteinsson, Magnus Zetterholm, Joshua D. Garroway, Matthew V. Novenson, and Michele Murraywith a response by Joshua W. Jipp.

This exciting new interpretation of Pauls Letter to the Romans approaches Pauls most famous letter from one of the newest scholarly positions within Pauline Studies: The Radical New Perspective on Paul (also known as Paul within Judaism). As a point of departure, the author takes Pauls self-designation in 11:13 as apostle to the gentiles as so determining for Pauls mission that the audience of the letter is perceived to be exclusively gentile. The study finds confirmation of this reading-strategy in the letters construction of the interlocutor from chapter 2 onwards. Even in 2:17, where Paul describes the interlocutor as someone who calls himself a Jew, it requests to perceive this person as a gentile who presents himself as a Jew and not an ethnic Jew. If the interlocutor is perceived in this way throughout the letter, the dialogue between Paul and the interlocutor can be perceived as a continuous, unified and developing dialogue. In this way, this interpretation of Romans sketches out a position against a more disparate and fragmentary interpretation of Romans.

The Apostle Paul was the greatest early missionary of the Christian gospel. He was also, by his own admission, an Israelite. How can both these realities coexist in one individual? This book argues that Paul viewed his mission to the Gentiles, in and of itself, as the primary expression of his Jewish identity. The concept of Israel’s divine vocation is used to shed fresh light on a number of much-debated passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans.

In these chapters, a group of renowned international scholars seek to describe Paul and his work from “within Judaism,” rather than on the assumption, still current after thirty years of the “New Perspective,” that in practice Paul left behind aspects of Jewish living after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah). After an introduction that surveys recent study of Paul and highlights the centrality of questions about Paul’s Judaism, chapters explore the implications of reading Paul’s instructions as aimed at Christ-following non-Jews, teaching them how to live in ways consistent with Judaism while remaining non-Jews. The contributors take different methodological points of departure: historical, ideological-critical, gender-critical, and empire-critical, and examine issues of terminology and of interfaith relations. Surprising common ground among the contributors presents a coherent alternative to the “New Perspective.” The volume concludes with a critical evaluation of the Paul within Judaism perspective by Terence L. Donaldson, a well-known voice representative of the best insights of the New Perspective.

We increasingly recognize that Paul did not write his letter to the Romans primarily out of doctrinal concerns. Paul B. Fowler presses that insight home in this attentive, yet eminently readable, study of the letter’s structure. The principles of Fowler’s reading are that rhetorical questions in Romans 3‒11 structure the argument, not as responses to criticism but as Paul’s careful guiding of the reader, and that these chapters, like the paraenesis in Romans 12‒15, address specific circumstances in Rome. Careful attention to the rhetorical structure of the letter points to tensions between Jew and Gentile that aggravate the already precarious situation of the Roman congregation. In the course of his argument, Fowler explodes the common conceptions that Paul employs diatribal technique to answer objections and that he is primarily engaged in a debate with Jews. In short, Fowler demonstrates that the apostle is not writing defensively, but responding with sensitivity to the volatile atmosphere caused by Claudius’s expulsion of some Jews from Rome. The book includes an appendix on rhetorical devices and another on epistolary formulas in Paul’s letters.