Review of David Odell-Scott (ed.),Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians. Romans Through History and Cultures Series 7

This is not a fair review. What I mean is that I was annoyed to begin with and it just got worse through the book. So please keep this in mind as you read the cranky review. First problem is that throughout the articles are inserted letters (H, A, HA, C, AH, HC, oh and CH). These letters refer to the bottom page, where the letter is repeated along with another version of the sentence that followed the letter in the main text. I got that bit. However, I wasn’t sure what the point was, and I was given no explanation of this mystery in the book. Add to that the fact that each article has endnotes and the confusion escalates. I'm reading, reach the endnote marker, my eye has registered something on the bottom of the page in small print, I look down ... bugger it’s that H/C/HA/C/AH/HC/CH thing again. So I flip back to the endnotes, and three of the longest essays with most endnotes are incongruent with the reference (Jennings, Ehrensberger and Gignac), which basically made me want to fling the book at something hard. This leads to my second frustration: the sloppiness of the book. It reads as published proofs (first proofs, mind you). Some articles use Greek lettering, some transcribe, and Anderson’s article has (inadvertently, I presume) been converted from Greek to Latin lettering, giving us gems such as ofi’’ and epiqumia, ginwskw and my favourite, epiqumhsei in big bold lettering. Add to this that some of the articles overlap (Gignac and Sigurdson), some are very short (Cobb’s article is 5 pages, Lull’s is 7) others are loooong (Gignac’s is 51 pages, Ehrensberger’s is 40 pages), which makes for a very uneven reading experience. And most of the articles could have done with an editor’s hand to kill darlings (that is, the favourite turns of phrase that turn up far too often) and pick up on repeated arguments. BOOK REVIEWS