ROMANS
INTRODUCTORY STUDIES
K.P. Donfried’s The Roman’s Debate (Augsburg, 1977), a collection of essays on the purpose of Romans, is a good introduction to this epistle.
COMMENTARIES
The best commentary is the new International Critical Commentary (ICC) by C.E.B. Cranfield in two volumes (T & T Clark, 1975-79). This provides careful and thoughtful exegesis of the Greek text, diligently weighing alternative positions and providing the preacher with theological analysis and challenging ideas for exposition. An abbreviated edition has been published recently, (T & T Clark, 1985) which makes Cranfield’s work more accessible to the general reader. Cranfield replaces the older work by Sanday and Headlam (1895) in the ICC series, which still has many helpful insights but, in many respects, is out of date.
F.F. Bruce has written a stimulating and helpful introduction and commentary on Romans in the Tyndale series (new paperback edition, 1983).
John Murray’s The Epistle to the Romans (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1968) is a solid but uninspiring piece of work, which tends to view Paul too readily in terms of traditional reformed theology rather than looking afresh at the New Testament in the light of contemporary scholarship.
A book like Romans is so important within the Canon of Scripture that it is worth buying and working through a new commentary each year to gain fresh insights into the mind of Paul. Commentaries such as those by F.J. Leenhardt (Lutterworth, 1961) or C.K. Barrett (Black, 1957) or E. Kasemann (English Translation, SCM, 1980) may not be the best foundational commentaries but they will challenge you to rethink your views and to expound Paul with new insight. John Stott’s Men Made New (IVP, 1966) provides helpful exposition of Romans 5-8, focussing on some of the thorny theological problems and application associated with these chapters.
JOSHUA
The Book of Joshua with its reports of the destruction of towns and cities as the people of Israel conquered Canaan raises moral questions for some people, and historical questions for others. It is important to let the Bible challenge our sense of what is ‘moral’, and it is important not to be side tracked from what the Bible says about events of history by the views of historians. I make these remarks because most commentaries on the book of Joshua spend a lot of space on the historical questions-that is, relating the incidents of the book to what we know from archaeological discoveries. M.H. Woudstra, in The Book of Joshua, [The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1981)] regards such matters as possibly helpful, but gives them little attention. He thinks that the book was written fairly close in time to the events it describes, and is therefore a fairly straightforward account. Woudstra’s commentary is likewise uncomplicated.
