Navigating Romans Through Cultures

by Yeo Khiok-khng

Publisher:

T&T Clark

, 2004

Overview

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.

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.

In their challenging readings of Romans, the contributors have wrestled with: an understanding of culture; the cultural background and mission of Paul; cultural and theological conflicts in the letter of Paul to the Romans; cultural interpretations of Paul; and navigating equipments in steering Romans through cultures.

Praise for the Print Edition

The value 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

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, Institute for Signifying Scriptures, Claremont Graduate University

This collection of essays on Romans is like none other that I know. Cultural readings from the ‘two-third’s world’—Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia—are presented in dialogue with ‘first-world’ scholars. The hermeneutical process comes alive in this extraordinary dialogue and the ‘meaning’ of the letter deepens and broadens with each exchange. The results are often radiant and will surely inspire and empower new engagements with the text.

—Jouette M. Bassler, Professor of New Testament, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Product Details

• Title: Navigating Romans Through Cultures: Challenging Readings by Charting a New Course
• Editor: Yeo Khiok-khng
• Publisher: T & T Clark
• Publication Date: 2004
• Pages: 326

About Yeo Khiok-khng

Yeo Khiok-khng is Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical, Graduate Faculty at Northwestern University, and Academic Director (International Leadership Group) of graduate programs in Christian Studies at Peking University. He is the author of several books on cross-cultural biblical interpretation, including Chairman Paul Meets the Apostle Paul: Christianity, Communism and the Hope of China.