Week 43 Romans
Last December I decided to read the whole bible – OT & NT.
Lots of people prefer reading just the NT. Nothing much wrong with that.
But I spent last winter and spring in the OT and now that I’m reading Romans I’m glad I did. That NT-letter is OT-heavy.
I wondered how heavy so went back to do a quick survey of the first eleven chapters:
There are more than fifty OT quotations.
There are more than seventy references to OT law.
There are whole blocs of text written directly to Jewish people: 2:17-29, 3:1-20, chapter four is about Abraham, 5:12-21 (maybe), chapter seven is for people who know the OT law, most of nine-ten-eleven sound like they’re written to Jewish people.
Paul figures his readers know OT events and people: creation, Adam, Abraham, Sarah, Sodom-Gomorrah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Benjamin, Esau, the pharaoh, Moses, David, Isaiah, Hosea, Elijah & Mount Carmel are all named.
The point? Romans carries a lot of OT freight.
So if someone asked me what parts of Romans they could read that were pretty much OT-knowledge-free I would say only chapters five, six, and eight, plus bits-&-pieces. A person reading Romans is handicapped without any OT knowledge.
Personal note: Reading the OT helped me understand Romans better. How much better? A bit better – instead of being super-difficult to understand I’d rate Romans as just-plain-difficult. Added note: the numbers above are mine, meaning they’re pretty accurate but don’t take them to-the-bank.