The Law in Romans

Skimming through a book I picked up last year, Reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, I particularly enjoyed the essay by Francis Watson on the law. Here is Watson’s very first paragraph which is also a nice summary of the topic. 

“Paul uses the word nomos (‘law’) on seventy-two occasions in Romans, and in all but a few cases the reference is to the Torah, the law of Moses whose five books are foundational to Jewish Scripture. Thus the law was given though Moses (Rom 5:14), and before his time 'there was no law' (5:13). The law was entrusted specifically to the Jewish people (2:17), or 'Israel' (9:31), for whom it is a legitimate source of pride (2:24). Gentiles are basically ignorant of the law although they sometimes unknowingly observe it (2:14). The law is associated with wrath (4:13) and with sin or transgression (3:20; 4:15; 5:13; 7:7, 8). It is disassociated from the righteousness of God (3:21), promise (4:13–14), and grace (6:14, 15). Although its commandments are many, they can be summed up in a single negative or positive statement: 'You shall not desire' (7:7), or 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself (13:8–10).” 

Francis Watson, “The Law in Romans,” in Reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ed. Jerry L. Sumney, Resources for Biblical Studies 73, ed. Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 93.

Latest Issue of Review of Biblical Literature

The latest issue of Review of Biblical Literature is out. Reviews can be accessed by clicking the links below. 

Constantine R. Campbell
Colossians and Philemon: A Handbook on the Greek Text
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9361
Reviewed by Alan Cadwallader

Cynthia Edenburg and Juha Pakkala, eds.
Is Samuel among the Deuteronomists? Current Views on the Place of Samuel in a Deuteronomistic History
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9436
Reviewed by David G. Firth

Scott S. Elliott
Reconfiguring Mark’s Jesus: Narrative Criticism after Poststructuralism
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8958
Reviewed by Thomas P. Nelligan

Scott S. Elliott and Roland Boer, eds.
Ideology, Culture, and Translation
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8693
Reviewed by Todd Borger

Eun-Woo Lee
Crossing the Jordan: Diachrony Versus Synchrony in the Book of Joshua
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9301
Reviewed by Thomas Römer

Jack R. Lundbom
Jeremiah Closer Up: The Prophet and the Book
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8004
Reviewed by Richard G. Smith

Martin O’Kane, ed.
Bible, Art, Gallery
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8959
Reviewed by Bryan J. Cook

Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Do My Prophets No Harm: Revelation and Religious Liberty in the Bible
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8175
Reviewed by J. Gordon McConville

Michael E. Stone
Adam and Eve in the Armenian Tradition, Fifth through Seventeenth Centuries
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9448
Reviewed by Linda S. Schearing

Chris Tilling
Paul’s Divine Christology
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8855
Reviewed by Benjamin A. Edsall

Themelios 39.3

The latest edition of Themelios is out and available as a PDF or Logos version here. You can access individual articles via the links below.

D. A. Carson | EDITORIAL: The Underbelly of Revival? Five Reflections on Various Failures in the Young, Restless, and Reformed Movement

Michael J. Ovey | OFF THE RECORD: Is It a Mistake to Stay at the Crossroads?

Robert W. Yarbrough | Bye-bye Bible? Progress Report on the Death of Scripture

Andrew David Naselli | Three Reflections on Evangelical Academic Publishing

William R. Edwards | Participants in What We Proclaim: Recovering Paul’s Narrative of Pastoral Ministry

Steven L. Porter | The Gradual Nature of Sanctification: Σάρξ as Habituated, Relational Resistance to the Spirit

Stephen Witmer | PASTORAL PENSÉES: Keeping Eschatology and Ethics Together: The Teaching of Jesus, the Work of Albert Schweitzer, and the Task of Evangelical Pastor-Theologians

Free Audio Book: The Dawning of Indestructible Joy by John Piper

Christianaudio.com is offering John Piper's Advent devotional, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy, as their free audio download for the month of December. To read more about the book and to get your free audio download in either MP3 or M4B formats go here.

An Introduction to Advent

Whether you participate or just want to know what others are talking about, Mark Roberts has a fairly thorough blog post on Advent here.

Daniel 9:24-27 among the Interpreters

My Digital Seminary is running a series of question and answer posts on Daniel 9:24-27 (the well-known "Seventy-Week Prophecy") with various Bible scholars. I am not sure how many participants they will ultimately have, but here are those who have been posted so far.

Introduction
Thomas Ice
Robert Chisholm
Peter Gentry
Wendy Widder
Dale Ralph Davis

Studies in the Pauline Epistles: Essays in Honor of Douglas J. Moo

I noted yesterday that one noteworthy part of the recent 50th anniversary dinner and program celebrating the commissioning of the NIV was a presentation of a festschrift in honor of Doug Moo. The book is entitled Studies in the Pauline Epistles: Essays in Honor of Douglas J. Moo and was edited by Matthew S. Harmon and Jay E. Smith, two of Moo’s former students.
 

There are sixteen essays divided into three categories: Exegeting Paul, Paul’s Use of Scripture and the Jesus Tradition, and Pauline Scholarship and His Contemporary Significance. Authors include G. K. Beale, Craig Blomberg, Ardel Caneday, D. A. Carson, James D. G. Dunn, Matthew Harmon, Jonathan Moo, Grant R. Osborne, Thomas R. Schreiner, Mark Seifrid, Jay Smith, Verlyn Verbrugge, Chris Vlachos, Stephen Westerholm, N. T. Wright, and Robert Yarbrough.