P aul's letter to the Romans is the first of his letters in the canonical order of the New Testament. It is also the most theological and the most difficult to understand. This is because the existence and nature of the cultural matrix to which Romans is a logical response-and within which it makes sense-has been obscured through the centuries. Scholarly books on Romans, such as The Romans Debate, edited by Karl P Donfried, and Ernst Kasemann's Commentary on Romans, acknowledge that this "missing link" has been sought to no avail. This book purports to have found it.

The premise of this work is that Paul's letter to the Romans, and his theology with respect to the Jewish (Pharisaic) law and the significance of the Christ event, was a response to a pre- and first-century cross-cultural belief in reincarnation -a worldview consistent with the caste system of social organization then in existence If this interpretive matrix is presumed when reading Romans, most if not all of the much-debated issues posed in books such as The Romans Debate.

Commentary on Romans and other works and articles on the subject are resolved.

from the Introduction