Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Romans reading list

Last month I requested reading recommendations that will help me prepare to teach Romans this fall. Since I naively hope to get a lot of reading done after I leave this afternoon to visit family, I thought I'd post my list here:
  1. Romans. So far I have done more listening to my own recording of the Greek text than reading the printed text.
  2. Paul. It's a new concept, I'm sure, but what better way to prepare to teach one of Paul's letters than to read the Pauline corpus?
  3. Barth. I'm slowly working through Karl Barth's commentary on Romans. Though I'm disappointed that I can't follow Barth all the way much of the time, I find his vision of God enriching. I have also been impressed by the way Barth anticipates so much of modern scholarship on Romans. N.T. Wright's jabs at Barth in his own Romans commentary are amusing when you realize that Wright follows Barth on the subjective genitive in the πίστις Χρίστου debate, and that Barth (if I recall) insists, like Wright, on Christ as Israel in whom all the promises are fulfilled.
  4. Wright. I thought N.T. Wright's new book, Justification, would be a good, easy-reading, polemical way to get into some of the current debate around Paul's theology. This will be for the airplane ride to Toronto (and back, if necessary).
  5. Watson. I purchased but did not read Francis Watson's Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) last summer. I've heard it is excellent, it deals extensively with Romans, and it will enable me to say that I'm attending to sociological and not just theological approaches to the book.
  6. Others lower on the priority list, in part because I'll have to read library copies: If I have time, I'd like to read Daniel Kirk's Unlocking Romans: Resurrection And The Justification Of God and Simon Gathercole's Where Is Boasting?. As for Lampe, on first perusal, it looks like a quick skim will give the gist of the argument; no need to labour through the whole tome.


(Stay tuned: Though I'm not taking my computer along, and I won't be blogging while I'm away, I have a couple posts schedule for tomorrow and the next day--including the long-lost sequel to History, Criticism and Christian Conviction Part I.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mark D. Nanos Mystery of Romans
Alan Segal Paul the Convert.