Navigating Romans Through Cultures: Challenging Readings by Charting a New Course

(Paperback)

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Navigating Romans Through Cultures contains eight chapters of critical and contextualized readings of Paul's letter to the Romans by scholars from Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Asia. It provides an interpretive voyage into how the gospel of Paul, as contained in his letter to the Romans, fulfills its original vision of "making known the gospel of Christ in all nations" (Rom 16:26). The challenge of the contributors is to express Paul's gospel in terms of their own cultures. The book is the latest installment in the Romans Through History and Culture series, edited by Daniel Patte and Cristina Grenholm. This journey around the world took no less than four years. Each contributor is familiar with the culture they worked with, since many lived in that culture. Each "travel-log" is not just a report of how we steer the ship (letter to the Romans) through the water of a particular culture (or a sea of cultures for many of us); it is also a life changing critical reflection on our reading and interpretative process. Thus charting a new course involves more than offering new ways of reading Romans; it also involves clarifying the rationales for this new reading, in the light of the contextual, analytical, and hermeneutical frames of Scripture Criticism.

Reviews

"An exciting and challenging experiment in biblical scholarship. With the symphonic discursive play of many creative and accomplished critics, this volume represents a fascinating contribution to ongoing efforts to add new and challenging sounds' to critical interpretation." - Vincent L. Wimbush; Professor of Religion; Director, Institute for Signifying Scriptures; Claremont Graduate University; Claremont CA
"...it is an all too rare attempt for biblical scholars of a shared postmodern stripe to being to put their interpretive money where their theoretical mouths are. Thus, for readers sensitive to the importance of contextualised interpretations which seek to incarnate Paul's gospel within the contexts of various cultures, this book will be seen as a welcome contribution and helpful template for similar projects; yet it is also a sober harbinger of how difficult this task truly isparticularly for those who are still being weaned from historical-criticism's breast." - The Bible and Critical Theory, Vol. 1 No. 4, 2005
"Navigating Romans through Cultures is a well-conceived volume that reflects the outcome of a worthy project in its maturing phase. Part of the fascination of this book is the very high level of self-conscious reflection with which it is presented. I found the contextual location of each contributor interesting and refreshing....one wishes to congratulate Patte and colleagues for initiating this project. If the present volume represents a navigation of the ship of Romans through different cultures, the image of Professor Patte as Ulysses, bent on an eventful home journey, comes to mind. This project has all the promise of a viable movement beyond courses plotted by the reductionist religionsgesichtliche school and also the culturally shy course of Karl Barth."- J.A. Loubster, Society of Biblical Literature, 2006
"This fascinating volume at the cutting edge of cultural interpretation includes contextual readings of Romans from five continents that move biblical studies beyond the boundaries of mainstream scholarship. It is one of the first collections to display diverse global perspectives on a single New Testament work-an excellent model for classes doing intercultural criticism. These essays will surely enliven the interpretive imagination of scholars, teachers, students, and pastors." -David Rhoads, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago * Blurb from reviewer *
"...a seasoned crop of NY and specifically Pauline scholars, take a bold step to engage the double life contexts of Paul and of the readers themselves, in their reading of the Letter to the Romans. Their collective readings from a wide range of perspectives and contexts are a landmark in life-centered readings of the Bible. ...inspires, invites and challenges its readers to engage in their own navigatory reading of the Bible within their own God-given contexts, while maintaining a clear focus on the goal to attain, namely, the person and communal appropriation of God's own gospel for humanity." -Teresa Okure, SHCJ, Professor of New Testament and Gender Hermeneutics Head, Department of Biblical Studies Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria * Blurb from reviewer *
"This volume, as part of a new interpretive series, is an exciting and challenging experiment in biblical scholarship. I like especially the symphonic quality of the work, its representation of the interplay between different critical methods and approaches and different social-cultural perspectives from much of the world. With the symphonic discursive play of many creative and accomplished critics, this volume represents a fascinating contribution to ongoing efforts to add new and challenging 'sounds' to critical interpretation." -Vincent L. Wimbush, Professor of Religion, Director of Institute for Signifying Scriptures, Claremont Graduate University * Blurb from reviewer *
'The vaule of this collection is twofold: its consistent attention to specific texts from Romans and the lively responses from (mainly Western-based) colleagues. This book should be sought out by all those following the progress of Daniel Patte's and Christina Greenholm's SBL seminar and those keen to impress upon their students the variety of perspectives from which Paul can fruitfully be read,not least in non-Western contexts.' Angus Paddison * Journal for the Study of the New Testament *
Listed in the August edition of Missiology as one of the eight important books on missiology. * Missiology *

Author Bio

Yeo Khiok-khng (K.K.) is Harry R. Kendall Chair of New Testament Interpretation at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary and Graduate Faculty at Northwestern University.