Compare and contrast Meyer and Stowers - Essay Example

COMPARE AND CONTRAST MEYER AND STOWERS Stanley Stowers writes his essay considering different perspectives. These perspectives includedifferent ways in which Romans was read in different places, using rhetorical conventions and generic texts, discovering cultural codes, and showing audience and author’s textual strategies. This approach is to help avoid a common decisive factor among readers. Contrary to this writing, Paul Meyer gives his point of view and understanding of Paul’s work as written in the book of Romans.

His book is mostly based on answering questions that have been difficult to understand1. For example, his first chapters are an answer to a question concerning spirit and law. He has an answer to his readers about if it was from works of the Law that people received the spirit or from the proclamation of faith. In the essay, the worm at the Core of the Apple, there is a provision of an excellent concise statement and defense of the majority position. According to Stowers, gentiles and Jews play different essential roles in the constitution of ethnicity.

He states in Paul’s world that it is difficult to distinguish between ethnicity from religion. This is because they are not ethnic groups but a constitution of Paul’s most central religious distinctions. According to him, Gentiles are ethnic-religious other of the Jews just as the Barbarian is ethnic-religious other of Greeks. However, Wayne Meeks describes the gentiles as a non-Jewish group of people who have the opportunity of getting preaching from Paul. According to him, there are many controversies as to why Paul is preaching to Non-Jews.

This proves that Wayne does not view the Gentiles as a constituent group of the Jews, a different perspective from the one of Stowers. In all the texts, the writers have proven that there were differences among the communities in the time of Paul reaching. It is elaborated that the gentiles were viewed as a lesser group when compared to the Jews, but Paul used his preaching techniques to show that they were equal. Although the Jews have an expectation that Paul is supposed to administer to them, they are disappointed because his mission is to all people including the gentiles.

According to Romans 5:12-20, Paul explains that one man’s actions can bring significant effects to many others. He proves his statement by using Adam and Jesus. He shows how Adam’s sin had affected the whole world and how Jesus saved many people. There is a similarity in the description of the start of Paul’s mission. All the texts have a correlation that it started from Isaiah’s prophesies. Paul Meyer writes that Paul mission is described in Isaiah 49:5-9, which states that one who was set apart from the mother’s womb and was called though his grace has the privileged of having the revelation of God’s son in him2.

This revelation leads the proclaimed individual to preach to the gentiles. This is a true proclamation according to Paul’s missions. Similarly, Stanley Stowers argues that Paul’s mission was a confirmation of Isaiah’s mission because he points out that his mission is to the Gentles. This statement is a confirmation of a number of verses found in the writings of Isaiah. Comparisons between the texts give a number of both similarities and differences. However, the writers have significantly assisted their readers in understanding the writings about Paul.

References Meyer, Pul. The Worm at the Core of the Apple. London: Norton Publishers, 1972.