Richard N. Longenecker, Introducing Roman s: Critical Issues in Paul’s MostFamous Letter. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Every commentary, if it’s worth the effort of reading, is based on serious, honest, diligent, in depth e xegetical and histori cal work. To be sure, not everything done in the ‘workshop’ of scholarship needs to be put on display in the ‘window’ of the final publication. But all that hard w ork does show up in the fruits of comprehensibilityand clarity. Muddled ‘workshopping ’ equals muddled presentation. And poor presentation can generally be traced back to poor preparation. I say all that to say that here Longenecker has demonstrated here the depth and thoroughness of his learning as he prepares his own commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. His examination of the ‘critical’ (or pe rhaps better, ‘essential ’) issues behind Paul’s work are –if I may–an open window on the workshop of a true craftsman. He will not be accused of poor preparati on by anyone who makes the effort to work through the vast Amazonian forest of this volume where, around everyturn and under every rock and behind every tree there are new sights and old combined in majestic order. Here, in part one, L. discusses ‘Important Matters Largely Uncontested Today’ like authorship, integri ty, occasion, and date. Part two he calls ‘ Two Pivotal Issue s’ which are addressees and pur pose. Part three, ‘Con ventions, Procedu res and Themes’ is more technically oriented than the previous two parts and is organized around Greco- Roman rhetorical and literary conventions and Jewish and Jewish Christian procedures and themes. Part four returns to more gener al territory with L. describingissues related to text and textual history and, most interestingly (at least t o me), major interpretive approaches prominent today. This latter subsection deserves a bit more explanation, since here L. enters into the debate on such matters as ‘the righteousness of God’ and ‘rig hteousness’; justification and faith; ‘in Christ’ and ‘Christ byhis spirit in us’; the constantly raised and still unsettled ‘πιστιςιησουχριστου’question; the so called ‘new perspective’ on Palestinian Judaism and Paul; ‘honor’ and ‘shame’ [apparently in honor of the ‘Context Group’]; and ‘reconciliation’ and ‘peace’. If all that soun ds like rather a lot, it is.The final section of L. incredibly useful volume is devoted to a look at the focus, structure and argument of Romans. The tome concludes with a brief bibliography (brief in the sense that it only includes a tiny fraction of the materials that have been written about this biblical book), and indices.
