Romans: The Divine Marriage—A Biblical Theological Commentary . By

ROMANS: THE DIVINE MARRIAGE—A BIBLICAL THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY. By Tom Holland. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011. Pp. xiv + 558. Paper, $56.00. This commentary is as an extension of Holland’s earlier monograph, Contours of Pauline Theology (2004). As in his earlier work, what Holland does well, he does very well—namely, interpreting Paul’s letter in light of the LXX. On the other hand, implausible readings abound in the exegesis, as Holland forces Paul into a model of “Jewishness” that filters out any influence of non-Jewish thinking—as if a diaspora Jew like Paul could escape all forms of Hellenism. The author does not seem to be familiar with recent scholarly proposals to go “beyond the Judaism/Hellenism divide,” perhaps most famously endorsed by T. Engberg-Pedersen et al. We are therefore left with a reversion to the strictly Jewish conceptualization of Paul’s thinking popularized by Schweitzer. The liabilities of such an approach become most apparent when Holland suggests that, due to the apostle’s New Exodus paradigm, Paul’s doulos (“slave”) metaphor in Romans 6 depicts the believer as a free servant to God/ righteousness, even though Paul also uses doulos both to portray unbelievers as slaves to sin and to contrast eleutheros (“free”) language. Thus, while the book will be useful to those seeking to enrich their understanding of Paul’s biblical roots, it must be engaged critically. John K. Goodrich Moody Bible Institute