NT332 A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans
Overview
Understanding the rhetorical craft that Paul employs is essential for interpreting the Letter to the Romans. No less important is understanding the specific issues Paul’s Roman audience was facing and how he uses his arguments to resonate profoundly with them. In this course, Dr. Ben Witherington III provides a socio-rhetorical analysis of this letter, examining the social setting of Paul’s writing and exploring the culture of first-century Rome. He investigates the rhetoric Paul uses, and he considers the flow of Paul’s arguments to reveal the letter’s themes of the righteousness of God and the reconciliation of humanity—Jew and Gentile—in Christ.
Top Highlights
“Paul has a very specific, clear sense of the parameters of his ministry. His job was to go to the Gentiles and proclaim it all over the eastern end of the empire. And, by ad 57, he has been at this for well over a decade, and he feels like that has accomplished much of what God wanted him to do.” (source)
“the Holy Spirit enters your life at conversion and is with you throughout your Christian life.” (source)
“Well, Paul is trying to change the whole gestalt and understanding of the nature of religion. The real Spirit of the real God is, in fact, giving you a family relationship with God—a love relationship with God—so that the Holy Spirit will prompt you to pray not to some distant fearful deity but cry out ‘Abba, Father’ to this Deity, the one who is your Father in heaven.” (source)
“I cannot emphasize enough that Paul believed, as Jesus did, ‘if anyone would come after me they must take up their cross and follow me.’ They must be prepared for suffering. They are not to seek it out, but they should be prepared for it because, in fact, that is the condition of those in a fallen world who choose to follow Christ the crucified.” (source)
“So when I say ‘socio’ in socio-rhetorical, I’m mainly talking about social history. What was the social reality of the ancient world, and how did it differ from ours?” (source)
- Title: NT332 A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans
- Author: Ben Witherington III
- Series: Logos Mobile Education
- Publisher: Lexham Press
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Courseware
- Subjects: Bible. N.T. Romans › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Bible. N.T. Romans › Socio-rhetorical criticism; Bible. N.T. Romans › Commentaries; Education › Bible. N.T. Romans--Criticism, interpretation, etc; Bible. Education › N.T. Romans--Socio-rhetorical criticism; Education › Bible. N.T. Romans--Commentaries
- Resource ID: LLS:NT332WITHERINGTON
- Resource Type: Courseware Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2020-09-03T18:53:45Z
Ben Witherington III (PhD, University of Durham) is Jean R. Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. A prominent evangelical scholar, he is also on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Witherington has written over forty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. His other works include The Indelible Image, Women and the Genesis of Christianity, The Gospel Code, A Week in the Life of Corinth and commentaries on the entire New Testament. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications and is a frequent contributor to Patheos and Beliefnet. Witherington is an elected member of the prestigious Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. He is a John Wesley Fellow for Life, a research fellow at Cambridge University and a member of numerous professional organizations, including the Society of Biblical Literature, Society for the Study of the New Testament and the Institute for Biblical Research. He previously taught at institutions like Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. An ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church and a popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings around the world. He has led numerous study tours through the lands of the Bible and is known for bringing the text to life through incisive historical and cultural analysis. Along with many interviews on radio and television networks across the country, Witherington has been seen in programs such as 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline and the Peter Jennings ABC special Jesus and Paul—The Word and the Witness