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Sylvia C. Keesmaat

Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice Paperback – 21 May 2019

by Keesmaat (Author)

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Helps readers enter the world of ancient Rome and see how Paul's most radical letter transforms the lives of the most marginalized then and now.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Brazos Press
Publication date

21 May 2019
Dimensions

15.24 x 2.64 x 22.86 cm
ISBN-10

1587432846
ISBN-13

978-1587432842
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Product description

From the Back Cover

Reading the Bible from the Underside of Empire

"Sylvia and Brian are two of my favorite Bible scholars. Whether you're over-churched or under-churched, they stir in you a fresh curiosity for the Bible. This new book is perfect for scholars and new Bible readers alike, and for everyone in between."
--Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and cofounder of Red Letter Christians

"If you want to hear--and experience--Paul's letter to the Jewish and gentile Christ-followers in Rome as you never have, read this book. And re-read it. Keesmaat and Walsh bring the message of Romans into dialogue with our lives today, as we struggle to be faithful to the good news of Messiah Jesus in our own imperial context."
--J. Richard Middleton, Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College

"Keesmaat and Walsh write into the headwinds of Trumpism, deepening social disparity, ecological crisis, and endless war. Building on recent scholarship, this brilliant study engages the original audience, who labored under the shadow of empire, in a way that brings its message to life for similarly struggling North American Christians. The result is a fresh and committed reading by two of our generation's best interpreters of Word and world."
--Ched Myers, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries

"You (and I!) have never read Romans like this before. It has been weaponized by some and reduced to abstraction by others as has perhaps no other biblical book. Keesmaat and Walsh have disarmed such uses and returned it to the real, flesh-and-blood world."
--Greg Paul, Sanctuary Toronto community member and author of God in the Alley and Resurrecting Religion

"Keesmaat and Walsh use an artistic mix of story, poetry, imaginative discourse, and solid biblical and social-cultural-historical background that allows the reader to understand the book of Romans from an alternative, and I believe more accurate, point of view."
--Randy S. Woodley, author of Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision

About the Author

Sylvia C. Keesmaat (DPhil, University of Oxford) is adjunct professor of biblical studies at Trinity College and Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario, and biblical scholar in residence at St. James Anglican Church in Fenelon Falls. She is the author of Paul and His Story: (Re)Interpreting the Exodus Tradition, editor of The Advent of Justice, and coauthor, with Brian Walsh, of Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. Keesmaat and Walsh live on an off-grid permaculture farm in Cameron, Ontario, with a fluctuating number of animals and people.

Brian J. Walsh (PhD, McGill University) serves as a Christian Reformed campus minister at the University of Toronto and is an adjunct professor of theology at Trinity College and Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario. He has written numerous books, including Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination, The Transforming Vision, and Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be. He is the coauthor, with Sylvia Keesmaat, of Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. Walsh and Keesmaat live on a solar-powered permaculture farm in Cameron, Ontario.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brazos Press (21 May 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1587432846
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587432842
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.64 x 22.86 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 274,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 371 in Bible Study of Paul's Letters
- 568 in History of Religion & Politics
- 597 in Church & State Religious Studies

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Peter

Romans is not as simple as we like it to be!

Reviewed in Canada on 10 June 2020

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A well research written and presented book. Walsh and Keesmat introduced us to real people Jesus would have met and embraced. Romans is deeper than the verses we hear some people use to prove their own righteousness, so that they can put other people down. I think Jesus would approve of their study of this scripture.

Gregory J. Meyer

This is not a Commentary on Romans in any traditional sense

Reviewed in the United States on 7 November 2019

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Perhaps I am grading the book unfairly based on what I expected it to be, but I was hoping for at least a semi-academic analysis of Paul's letter to the Romans, illuminating the various ways in which it was crafted as an anti-empire polemic. Instead, it is more of a hypothetical exercise in how one would apply the book of Romans to modern-day colonialism if one starts from the assumption that it is an anti-empire polemic. I found myself wondering if I was expected to look up every footnote and read the articles in their entirety in order to understand how the authors arrived at their conclusions. They occasionally refer to passages in Romans, they quote a verse here and there, but the relevance of those verses to their argument is tentative at best, and it is nowhere near a comprehensive evaluation of the contents of the letter. When they do treat a passage in some depth (as they do for chapter 1 verses 26-27) it is a tantalizing peek into what this book could have been.

The style is engaging -- a little bit of first-century fictional character role-play, a little bit of poetry, a little bit of personal testimony about their relationships with marginalized people groups, and a little bit of straightforward analysis. Painting a picture what life is like as an oppressed minority (either in 1st century Rome or 21st century Canada) is one thing the book does well.

The most frustrating thing is that I suspect they might be right in their speculations. One gets the sense that there is some solid scholarship underlying it all, but is not provided much insight into it. Rather than trying to prove the case they are making, the authors seem to be asking the reader more-or-less to take their word for it, I, for one, am not nearly familiar enough with them or their prior work to give them that much benefit of the doubt.

In summary, the book reads more like an exercise in creative imagination than biblical scholarship. So if you're interested in exploring how Paul might be calling us to sustainable farming and protecting endangered species, how he might be warning us against the dangers of cell phone addiction and free-market capitalism, you will like this book. If you are more interested in how the authors made the leap from the bare text of the letter to the conclusions they draw, you will be (as I was) disappointed.

17 people found this helpful

Gerry Morelli

Feels Agenda Driven

Reviewed in the United States on 12 February 2020

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A friend I really appreciate told me this was a great book and the authors are really wonderful people, so out of respect for him I bought it. I enjoyed the authors' compassion toward the marginalized and the misunderstood, and the writing style is enjoyable, but there is so much that is out of place.

The opening chapter starts with the conclusion that justice against Rome is the main point. The book uses that conclusion to replace "righteousness" with "justice" in about every instance in the text, because the Greek word can mean both, depending on context of course. And so everything in the letter is about justice.

The authors write "targums", paraphrase with commentary, for Romans chapter 1. I was amazed by the amount of agenda they added to what Paul was saying, and the critical tone is a huge stretch to find in Paul's letter.

I was troubled by the final chapter on salvation, and came away wondering if salvation means primarily deliverance from Rome and worldly oppression. p369 "For both Iris and Nereus salvation meant an end to the imperial rule of death. It meant resurrection, and it meant life: life for those who were enslaved, life for those who were hungry, life for the poor who were naked, life for those who were dying because of the economic and political violence of the empire." Of course Jesus does that by bringing us into his kingdom, but there was barely a mention of the reason for the cross, of personal responsibility for sin. In fact, the index does not even mention cross, atonement, and other words you would expect from an exposition of Romans, because those topics are not important in this discussion. Throughout the book repentance means turning from ignoring social justice.

I expected a higher view of scripture, and was disappointed by the opinion on p.326: "Paul is not spinning abstract, timeless, and objective theological principles in these verses or in the rest of his letter. He is addressing a real community that is deeply divided." I have a hard time giving weight to commentary coming from this viewpoint.

3 people found this helpful

Stephen P. Hale

Top-Notch Exegesis

Reviewed in the United States on 8 July 2021

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It is the exegesis that makes this book excellent.

Other reviewers have criticized this book for beginning with 21st century social issues. While I admit that is the first thing to show up in the boom (it’s how Chapter One begins), that isn’t where their exegesis begins. The exegesis begins in Chapter Two.

Their exegesis begins in the same place any good interpreter begins: understanding the context in which the letter (ie Romans) was written. This is what makes this work so strong exegetically: very few have put any work into understanding the people Paul was actually writing to in Romans.

The authors begin in a way common in modern historiography and biblical scholarship: they reconstruct what that community would have looked like based on our best scholarship at the moment. They do this in a way that makes things quite accessible to the average person while incorporating the best current scholarship.

This is so transparent, one wonders why negative reviewers aren’t noticing this.

After this, the authors read Romans through the eyes of these reconstructed parishioners of the Roman church.

This, in turn, allows for us to ask “what does Romans mean to modern readers?” The authors are quite clear about this cycle. However, I wonder why it needs to be explained; it is precisely what I was taught to do in my freshman Intro to Biblical Interpretation class at BIOLA. There’s nothing “liberal” or unfaithful in their exegetical method.

Oh! The work depends on The New Perspective on Paul and the Third Quest For the Historical Jesus. Both of these are as mainstream as mainstream gets in New Testament studies, but a few outliers still disagree with one or the other. If you are one of those outliers, you won’t care for this book.

Kindle Customer

Lost potential

Reviewed in the United States on 12 April 2021

Verified Purchase

This is the theology book that gets interrupted by personal agenda. There is just enough politics in here to convince a first semester college student and enough to show the author won't be able to defend their position. maybe that is why we have so many college students acting out of emotion with no knowledge to back it up

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