Stevens invokes a powerful synthesis of recent Pauline studies by insisting the category of Israel is the hermeneutical key to all of Romans. Through Jesus the Messiah and the power of the Spirit, Paul saw fulfilled Isaiah's vision of Israel's destiny to the nations to bring the good news of salvation. Recapturing Isaiah's vision broke the spell for Paul of the Great Assembly's postexilic take on Israel. Paul's apostleship first and foremost was to Israel, not gentiles exclusively. Paul used his expose of the gospel of God in Romans to challenge believers in Rome to embrace their place in the messianic Israel of God.
Gerald L. Stevens is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Stevens’s thirty-three years of teaching have included teaching awards, research grants, and educational travel. He recently published Divine Wrath in Paul. His other Pickwick commentaries include Acts: A New Vision of the People of God and Revelation: The Past and Future of John’s Apocalypse.
“In this truly excellent and remarkably readable commentary, Gerald Stevens challenges readers to rethink Paul’s Letter to the Romans from the ground up. In particular, Stevens’s contention that Romans is ‘all about Israel,’ and that Paul sees himself as the apostle to the ‘nations’ (and not just the ‘gentiles’) shows an amazing amount of explanatory power—on page after page. Add to this a wealth of archaeological photographs, crystal clear illustrations and charts, and extensive engagement with Pauline scholarship, and the result is a tour de force reading of Romans that sheds profound light on Paul’s identity and mission. This is the work of a master teacher and exegete.”
—Brant Pitre, professor, Augustine Institute, Graduate School of Theology, and coauthor of Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology
“‘Romans is all about Israel’: that is the radical thesis of Gerald Stevens in his carefully researched analysis of Paul’s letter. Dealing both with issues of interpretation and an assessment of the issues Paul himself raises, the book develops its case by explaining not only how Paul defines ‘Israel,’ but also how he feels about Israel. Often lively in his interaction with other scholars, archaeologically aware as well as exegetically engaged, the author invites the reader to look beyond presuppositions about Paul, so that the apostle can again address humanity with the prospect that ‘all Israel shall be saved’ (Rom 11:26).”
—Bruce Chilton, director, Institute of Advanced Theology, and professor, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
“Are we misreading Romans with gentile eyes? Stevens suggests Paul’s Letter to the Romans is all about Israel and her mission to the nations. Staying out of the ditches of old dispensationalism and Dunn’s reductionism to boundary markers, Stevens marks a middle ground, interacting with contemporary scholarship, often not mincing his words. Stevens argues Paul saw himself as Israel’s ambassador to the nations in the Isaianic sense. Thus, Paul’s ‘I’ in Romans 7 isn’t individual and autobiographical, but like is often argued for Isaiah’s Servant, the ‘I’ is Israel. Stevens walks the reader passage by passage through Romans as a letter about Israel. With over two hundred figures and illustrations and an intimate familiarity with biblical geography, this is not a typical commentary. Stevens argues we are misreading Romans with our gentile eyes.”
—E. Randolph Richards, provost, Palm Beach Atlantic University, and author of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes
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