Author’s Preface
Author’s Preface
It is fitting, at the outset of this Tyndale Commentary on Romans, to remind ourselves of William Tyndale’s own estimate of the letter as ‘the principal and most excellent part of the New Testament’ and ‘a light and a way in unto the whole scripture’ He goes on:
No man verily can read it too oft or study it too well; for the more it is studied the easier it is, the more it is chewed the pleasanter it is, and the more groundly it is searched the preciouser things are found in it, so great treasure of spiritual things lieth hid therein.1
Readers or interpreters of Paul, especially when they find themselves strongly attracted by his personality and reasoning power, are frequently tempted to tone down those features in his writings which are felt to be uncongenial, not to say scandalous, to modern tastes. It is possible to go along with Paul so far, and then try to go farther, not by accepting more of his teaching, but by unconsciously modifying his concepts so as to bring them into closer conformity with current thought. But a man of Paul’s calibre must be allowed to be himself and to speak his own language. Well-meant attempts to make him prophesy a little more smoothly than in fact he does can but diminish his stature, not enhance it. We of the twentieth century shall grasp his abiding message all the more intelligently as we permit him to deliver it in his own uncompromising first-century terms.
I have used the opportunity provided by this revised edition not only to replace the AV by the RSV as the basis of the commentary, but also to incorporate the results of twenty years’ further thought and study. I am greatly indebted to the excellent commentaries which have appeared since my first edition was published in 1963; among these the works of Ernst Käsemann and C. E. B. Cranfield call for specially honourable mention.
F. F. Bruce