The book presents a "radical" new interpretation of Paul's letter to the Romans. The author reads Romans as addressed exclusively to gentiles, since Paul presents himself unequivocally as "apostle to the gentiles" (Rom 11:13). He perceives Romans to be (primarily) a dialogue between Paul and a gentile interlocutor who "calls himself a Jew" (Rom 2:17) even though he is a gentile. This gentile interlocutor represents the Roman audience. By reading Romans in this way, the study creates a continuous and unified interpretation.

This exciting new interpretation of Paul's Letter to the Romans approaches Paul's 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 Paul's self-designation in 11:13 as "apostle to the gentiles" as so determining for Paul's mission that the audience of the letter is perceived to be exclusively gentile. The study finds confirmation of this reading-strategy in the letter's 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.

Autorentext

Jacob P.B. Mortensen received his Masters Degree in Theology and a secondary Master in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. He finished his doctoral studies in 2014 from Aarhus University.
He is currently executing post-doctoral research on the Gospel of Mark at Aarhus University and has published articles on Philosophy of Religion, Old Testament Theology, the Pseudepigrapha, Greco-Roman rhetoric and, primarily, New Testament subjects.

Inhalt
1 State of Research - the radical new perspective 2 Terminology: jews, gentiles, Christians, or something else? 3 Introductory Questions - Gentile addressees 4 A fictive gentile interlocutor 5 Romans 1:18-32 6 Romans 2:1-29 7 Romans 3:1-31 8 Romans 4:1-25 9 Romans 5:1-21 10 Romans 6:1-7:6 11 Romans 7:7-25 12 Romans 8:1-39 13 Romans 9-11 14 Romans 12-15 and the relation between the theological and the paraenetic part of the letter