This exciting new interpretation of Paul's Letter to the Romans approaches Paul's most famous letter from one of the newest scholarly positions within Pauline Studies: The Radical New Perspective on Paul (also known as Paul within Judaism). As a point of departure, the author takes Paul's self-designation in 11:13 as "apostle to the gentiles" as so determining for Paul's mission that the audience of the letter is perceived to be exclusively gentile. The study finds confirmation of this reading-strategy in the letter's construction of the interlocutor from chapter 2 onwards. Even in 2:17, where Paul describes the interlocutor as someone who "calls himself a Jew," it requests to perceive this person as a gentile who presents himself as a Jew and not an ethnic Jew. If the interlocutor is perceived in this way throughout the letter, the dialogue between Paul and the interlocutor can be perceived as a continuous, unified and developing dialogue. In this way, this interpretation of Romans sketches out a position against a more disparate and fragmentary interpretation of Romans.

Jacob P.B. Mortensen received his Masters Degree in Theology and a secondary Master in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. He finished his doctoral studies in 2014 from Aarhus University. He is currently executing post-doctoral research on the Gospel of Mark at Aarhus University and has published articles on Philosophy of Religion, Old Testament Theology, the Pseudepigrapha, Greco-Roman rhetoric and, primarily, New Testament subjects.