Reading Romans After The Book Of Acts -- By: Gregory Goswell

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 62:2 (Jun 2019)
Article: Reading Romans After The Book Of Acts
Author: Gregory Goswell


Reading Romans After The Book Of Acts

Gregory Goswell*

* Gregory Goswell is academic dean, lecturer in OT, and postgraduate coordinator at Christ College, 1 Clarence St., Burwood NSW 2134, Australia. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: The Acts-Romans sequence, such as found in the Latin manuscript tradition and familiar to readers of the English Bible, is hermeneutically significant and fruitful. Early readers had good reason to place the books together, for the visit of Paul to Rome (Acts 28) is the one anticipated in the next chapter (Romans 1). The Letter to the Romans appears to pick up and develop key themes in the preceding book, and prefixing Romans with Acts promotes a certain reading strategy for the head-letter of the Pauline corpus. The adjoining of Acts and Romans suggests that the accusations made against Paul in the final chapters of Acts (and summed up in Acts 21:28) set the agenda for Romans, in which Paul shows that he does not speak against the people, the law, and the temple. Paul’s gospel proclaims that God will be faithful to the promises made to Abraham, so that Jewish privileges are preserved, the law is exonerated, and a community consisting of believing Jews and believing Gentiles is brought into being.

Key Words: Paul, Romans, Acts, Jew, Gentile, temple, canon logic

No doubt scholars will continue to debate the purpose of Romans, why Paul wrote the letter and how its contents reflect its purpose, but for a complex and sophisticated work like the Letter to the Romans it would be a mistake to think that only one purpose was in the mind of its author.1 The historical setting of its composition is not the only possible context that matters for the interpretation of a literary work, and in the case of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, it has another Sitz im Leben due to its place within the canonical setting provided by the other books among which it stands. This phenomenon is an aspect of the biblical “paratext” (a term coined by Gérard Genette),2 which includes features such as book titles, book order, and internal divisions within books (e.g. paragraphs). These paratextual elements provide a frame of reference for the text and set up certain expectations for subsequent readers.3 In other words, an effect is produced on readers when biblical books are placed in a particular sequence,4 for this suggests that neighboring bo...

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