Reading Romans with Roman Eyes: Studies on the Social Perspective of Paul by James R. Harrison (review)

James R. Harrison, Professor of Biblical Studies and Research Director at the Sydney College of Divinity, is well known to students of the NT for his many publications on the social world of early Christianity. This latest contribution offers ten stimulating chapters (including an introduction and conclusion) that attempt to read Paul's letter to the church at Rome in the context of "Julio-Claudian culture and politics," a "highly contextualized 'reader-response' approach to Romans [that] provides us with new historical insights into the implications of the social thought of the apostle and, concomitantly, with appropriate caution, his theological and pastoral intentions" (p. x). Four of the chapters (4, 5, 7, 9) have been previously published and six are new. Together these materials provide an integrated and illuminating study of Romans, deeply informed by H.'s extensive engagement with epigraphic, archaeological, literary, and numismatic evidence, which he uses to describe the Roman context of Romans.

Harrison sets the stage with his "Introduction: Coming to Grips with an 'Oblique' Text–The Difficulty and Necessity of Engaging the Julio-Claudian Background of Romans." With a focus on "how Paul's original auditors would have responded to Romans" (p. 2), H. addresses the benefits of and challenges to his proposed "reader-response" approach. H. also briefly outlines his view of the circumstances and aims of Romans, provides short but informative overviews of scholarship on the Julio-Claudian and material contexts of Romans, and explicitly lays out a methodology for his reading of Romans. Importantly, H. is committed to (1) an integration of the Jewish and Roman "conversations" in Romans; (2) attention to the city of Rome itself, including its "design, development, and transitions that occurred in the city's buildings, private and public, and in its open spaces, including their public and recreational rituals, from the time of Augustus to Nero" (pp. 14–15); (3) focus on "literary, archaeological, inscriptional, iconographic, and numismatic evidence" (p. 15) as a means of engaging the social, religious, and political perspectives of first-century Roman readers of Paul's letter; and (4) a hope that sociohistorical study of Romans can inform understanding of the epistle's theology.

There follows a series of eight case studies that bear out H.'s methodological convictions. These chapters are (2) "Viewing Paul's Epistle to the Romans with Roman Eyes: A Visual Exegesis of the Artifacts of Rome"; (3) "Paul and Status Signifiers from Late Republican to Neronian Rome: An Epigraphic Reconsideration of the Social Constituency of the Roman Churches"; (4) "Paul's 'Indebtedness' to the Barbarian in Latin West Perspective"; (5) "A Neglected Area of Research in the Epistle to the Romans: The 'Social Relations' of Death at Rome"; (6) "Paul's 'Groaning' Creation and the Roman Understanding of Nature: A Contemporary Conversation in the Grounds of Livia's Villa and Nero's Garden"; (7) "Augustan Rome and the Body of Christ: A Comparison of the Social Vision of the Res Gestae and Paul's Letter to the Romans"; (8) "Paul the 'Zionist': Romans 9:33 and 11:26 in Their Jewish and Roman Context"; and (9) "Paul and the Roman Ideal of Glory in the Epistle to the Romans." In his "Conclusion," H. summarizes the contributions of his approach to Romans and identifies other themes in Romans that would benefit from attention to their Roman context, including "the motif of 'revenge' and 'enmity' in Romans against the republican backdrop of the civil war and the Julio-Claudian background of damnatio memoriaeand the imperial treason trials; the motif of 'mercy' against the Roman debate about humanitas, clementia, and misericordia; Roman civic ethics and the ethical responsibilities of believers articulated in the epistle; [and] Paul's understanding of sin in comparison to the Roman understanding of sin ( peccatum) and the motif of cyclical decline of the annalistic tradition" (p. 388).

It is impossible in a short review...