Research Productive Despite Interruptions
Despite attending three meetings--weekly chapel, a residents' meeting, and a lecture at the Faculty of Divinity--I suppose that I should assess today as fairly productive. I read two books that make quite different claims concerning Paul's Letter to the Romans.
- Chae, Daniel Jong Sang. Paul as Apostle to the Gentiles: His Apostolic Self-Awareness and its Influence on the Soteriological Argument in Romans. Paternoster Biblical and Theological Monographs. Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster, 1997.
- Kim, Johann D. God, Israel, and the Gentiles: Rhetoric and Situation in Romans 9-11. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 176. Atlanta, Georgia: SBL, 2000.
I have also dipped into Demetrius K. Williams' Enemies of the Cross of Christ: The Terminology of the Cross and Conflict in Philippians. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Series 223. Sheffield. 2002. Another monograph that caught my eye from the shelf as I was reaching for another book is the engaging dissertation by Jung Hoon Kim, The Significance of Clothing Imagery in the Pauline Corpus. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 268. London: T. & T. Clark, 2004. I have worked my way through much of it. I find it particularly heartening in that the conclusions that Kim has drawn, on well-reasoned exegesis, are the same to which I have come on much less detailed and developed exegetical work. His carefully reason monograph confirms what I have been claiming concerning Paul's unclothing and clothing imagery, such as the apostle's affirmation (Col 3:9-10) and admonition (Eph 4:20-24) to put off the old man and to put on the new man. Other noteworthy passages are Romans 13:11-14 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-54. I have contended, as Kim well shows, that the imagery derives originally from the nakedness/unashamed imagery of Genesis 2:24-25 and the ashamed/clothed imagery of Genesis 3:1-8 and Genesis 3:21-24.
