Romans - Print

Romans (New Testament Library)

By Beverly Roberts Gaventa

Hard cover  590pp
4.1cm H x 23.0cm L x 15.4cm W (0.84 kgs)
ISBN 9780664221003
Westminster John Knox Press (2024)

[Allow 4 weeks]

Romans offers a fresh account of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, attending to the dynamic character of the event of Jesus as Paul presents it in this overture to his planned visit to Rome, touching on vital concerns, including the Jewishness of Paul, apocalypse, the cosmic horizon of the gospel, and the role of women in emerging Roman Christianity.

In this new contribution to the New Testament Library, renowned New Testament scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa offers a fresh account of Paul’s Letter to the Romans as an event, both in the sense that it reflects a particular historical moment in Paul’s labours and in the sense that it reflects the event God brings about in the gospel Paul represents.

Attention to that dual sense of event means that Gaventa attends to the literary, historical, and theological features of the letter.

Throughout the commentary, Gaventa keeps in view central questions of what Paul hoped the letter might accomplish among its listeners in Rome and how his auditors might have heard it when read by Phoebe.

In posing potential answers to these questions, Gaventa touches on vital themes such as the intrusion of the gospel of Jesus Christ that prompts Paul to write in the first place, what that event reveals about the situation of all creation, how it relates to both Israel and the Gentiles, and what its implications are for life in faith.

The New Testament Library series offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, providing fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, careful attention to their literary design, and a theologically perceptive exposition of the biblical text. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

“After decades of carefully viewing Paul’s Letter to the Romans through a jeweller’s loupe, the celebrated New Testament scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa now holds this great document up for all to see. She turns it like a diamond in the light, allowing the literary structure, the rhetorical force, the theological depth, the social import, and other facets of Romans to flash in all their brilliance. Readers of this superb commentary will be engaged by the scholarly discussion of this letter over the centuries and they will also feel the beauty and power of Romans itself, both for its own day and in ours. In Gaventa’s hands, the text of Romans is luminescent, by its own light but also through the brighter light of the gospel that shines through it.” Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

“The fruit of a life shaped by conversation with Paul and his interpreters, Beverly Gaventa’s magisterial commentary on Romans constantly surprises the reader with new insights into a letter that never gets old. With her characteristic clarity and close attention to the text, Gaventa ushers her readers into a thoroughgoing apocalyptic reading of Romans marked by theological passion and pastoral acumen. This is a must-read for every serious student of Paul and Paul’s gospel.” Susan Eastman, Associate Research Professor Emerita of New Testament, Duke Divinity School