Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 16

Runar Thorsteinsson is an Icelandic scholar who earned his PhD in Sweden in 2003, and subsequently did scholarly work in Lund, Linköping, and Copenhagen. Thorsteinsson does not explicitly associate himself with the radical perspective. However, his contribution to the study of Romans reaches beyond his main thesis and central topic, Paul’s interlocutor in Romans 2. In many ways, Thorsteinsson’s book is a narrow study of a minor part of Romans. Nevertheless, Thorsteinsson manages to contextualize Paul’s letter within ancient epistolography, and draw valuable parallels, especially to Cicero and Seneca.1 In extension of the contextualization of Romans in ancient epistolography, Thorsteinsson focuses meticulously on the implied audience (as differentiated from the real audience) of Romans as Gentile. Thorsteinsson has no doubts that Paul envisaged the implied audience as Gentile, whether or not there were actually any Jews in the ‘real’ Roman congregation.

The main thrust of Thorsteinsson’s argument revolves around the interpretation of Paul’s statement in 2:17: ‘But if you call yourself a Jew’ (Εἰ δὲ σὺ Ἰουδαῖος ἐπονομάζῃ). Thorsteinsson convincingly bridges between the identity of the interlocutor in 2:1 and the stereotypical description of Gentiles in 1:18–32 by way of his discussion of Διὸ. But the major point he intends to prove is that the identity of the interlocutor remains the same from 1:18 to 2:16, and then further on, in 2:17ff. He convincingly proves the progressive unity of 2:1–16 as addressed to a Gentile, and the next step concerns the move to 2:17ff., where the identity of the interlocutor must be attached to a Gentile who wants to, or has, converted to Judaism (a God-fearer or a proselyte). The possibility of this reading comes down to the interpretation of the expression ‘if you call yourself a Jew’, and the meaning of the verb ἐπονομάζῃ (2:17). There is plenty of evidence for taking the verb to mean falsely calling oneself something which one is not. Thus, the deciding factor for or against this interpretation of the identity of the interlocutor as a Jew or a Gentile must rest upon his characterization in the remaining discourse of Romans. Thorsteinsson provides a few pointers in this direction, but merely as an outlook or perspective. In a review of Thorsteinsson’s book, Stanley Stowers concludes with these words: ‘I admit that 2:17 is ambiguous and there is an argument that should be entertained for a Gentile who wants to be a Jew’.2