So here are (will be) some notes on the Greek text of Romans coming up. This will kind of be like scrapbooking. Got it? OK, let's begin.
Here is something of a manifesto. I'll make it also my own. Ernst Käsemann on the task and duty of exegesis:
Comments? Email on a postcard to /dev/null or catch me on Twitter @jrhermeneutIt must be asserted, explicitly and pointedly, that Paul must be understood, historically and theologically, from the point of view of the Reformation's insight. Any other perspective comprehends at best parts of his thinking, but not its centre.
Admittedly, we can no longer assert this on the basis of an unbroken confessional tradition or the inner logic of a dogmatic system. Anyone slightly acquainted with the history of the more recent study of Paul knows that also here exegetical research has brought confessional traditions face to face with difficult problems and has profoundly shaken those traditions. That happened necessarily, in so far as no tradition simply lets itself be conserved. Every generation alters the heritage of its fathers as it undertakes to transfer it to its own historical situation. As a consequence, the theology of the cross has been made shallow, narrow, and hard by [Lutheran] Orthodoxy, Pietism, and the Enlightenment equally. That necessarily provoked exegesis to examine anew, from its side, the underlying facts. In its reaction to the prevailing church doctrine and congregational piety - exegesis arrived at other - often even contrary - possibilities of understanding [the Pauline data]. Exegesis has the right and duty to experiment, because otherwise there is no thinking. Thus the relationship between the life of the church and theological research - as in every genuine partnership - is fruitful only when it remains filled with tension. Dialogue has the task of leading its participants out of traditional perspectives [horizons] onto paths previously not travelled, without shying away from the inevitable conflicts. Here, as in life in general, nothing happens without sacrifice, error, and offence. Dogged defence of the status quo kills life and thought. It makes us inhuman, in that it keeps us from confronting the promise and the claim of our own present situation.
-- Translated from "Die Heilsbedeutung des Todes Jesu nach Paulus," Zur Bedeutung des Todes Jesu, Exegetische Beiträge, ed. F. Viering (Gütersloh: Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1967) p. 13, by JF Grothe and quoted in the preface to the latter's 2 volume commentary The Justification of the Ungodly: An Interpretation of Romans, p. iv-v.