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The New Inheritance According to Paul

The Letter to the Romans re-enacts for all peoples the Israelite Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land—from slavery to freedom.

By N. T. Wright

Most of the major questions about Paul’s Letter to the Romans relate to Paul’s puzzling sequence of thought. Why, for instance, does Paul have so much to say about Abraham, Israel and the promises of God in chapters1–4 and 9–11, and so little in chapters 5–8? Is there a logical transition between chapters 1–4, 5–8 and 9–11? Traditional systematic readings of Romans played off chapters 1–4 (justification) against chapters 5–8 (sanctification), and often left chapters 9–11 to fend for themselves. More recently, in the study of patterns of religion, chapters 1–4 (and, to some extent, 9–11) are seen as […]

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Endnotes

1.

N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), ch. 10; Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Paul’s Use of the Exodus Tradition in Romans and Galatians, Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1994 (to be published in the JSNT monograph series by Sheffield Academic Press); Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” in David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson, eds., Pauline Theology Volume III: Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), pp. 30–67; Frank Thielman, “The Story of Israel and the Theology of Romans 5–8, ” Pauline Theology, pp. 169–195.

2.

For the background, compare with, for example, Sirach 44:21; Jubilees 19:21, looking back to Genesis 15:18; Exodus 23:31; Psalm 72:8; and Zechariah 9, 10.