The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT)) Hardcover – September 30, 1996

I have approximately 20 commentaries on Romans and have been teaching Romans in my church for the past year. Moo's commentary is clearly the best that I have found on Romans.The greatest strength I have found is that Moo does a solid job of exegesis and sticks to the actual text. Opinions are voiced, but only after throughtful exegesis. The book is rather technical, but easily readable. It's one of the few commentaries where both scholars and novices can come away with something substantial. Moo also does a good job of keeping passages in their proper context to give an accurate interpretation. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but I respect his opinion and agree with at least 90%.By the way, I was at first leary of purchasing this book because it was part of the NICNT. I have several of the revised volumes from this series and most of the older volumes. On both series, quality is very spotty. Several great books and several that are so lame that they are useless. This is not only a great Romans commentary, but I believe this is the best volume in the NICNT series.

This is an fantastic commentary. Moo does an amazing job of making you ask different questions, think deeper, and pull more truth out of the text. He fairly presents other opinions of the text, then explains (I believe in a very respectful way) why he prefers one rendering to another. He does this with the NPP understanding of Romans all through the book. Moo has since this publication wrote a commentary on Galatians (for the Baker Exegetical Commentary series), and in an interview talking about it, mentioned revisiting this Romans commentary to "change/add a few things". I personally cannot wait for that. Also I will say that I loved Moo's constantly weighing and measuring the different opinions about certain texts, I find this refreshing as most commentaries just tell you what something means rather that helping you along to get there.I read a lot of reviews, and if you are looking for commentaries, you probably want what I want. Which is the most in scholarship and biblical understanding for the least amount of money. I would highly recommend this commentary, and I would add that if you only have enough money for a used version, just get it. Chances are that you will probably be highlighting and underling the same stuff as the previous owner any way!

Great commentary. It is written in a way that allows the reader to go as deep as he wants to go. There is a summary for each chapter, and verse by verse commentary. This is written in laymen’s English for the most part, maybe college level. Then the entire commentary is heavily footnoted, which allows the reader to go deeper into each verse and Greek. I, for the most part read the verse by verse commentary and went into the footnotes occasionally. As I increase my knowledge of Greek and have more time, I hope to go thru Romans and this commentary again, and dig deeper in the footnotes and Romans. A great commentary that I hope to use throughout my christian life.

Moo's careful and thorough exploration of both exegetical and interpretive matters is producing a joyful engagement -- I am very appreciative that this volume is published. It differs from, and is of such high quality to be on a par with J.D.G.Dunn's two-volume work, and I'm thankful I've obtained it. Likely I will be exploring in this commentary for years to come, God willing!

The rating is not fair since I have not thoroughly read through this commentary. I am working through Romans 8 and the text, "the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" was not clear to me. Since I am from a Pentecostal background, I have heard that praying in other tongues is one expression of the Holy Spirit at work in communication through us to the Father. While it is true that not all have the "gift of tongues" which Paul in I Cor. 12:30 says,this "gift" of tongues is obviously the spoken utterance in the gathering of the saints. But what misses the mark is Paul's reference to himself, that he speaks in tongues "more than them all". For those of us who do speak in tongues as a part of our regular communication within our personal prayer life, we understand it is very different in meaning from the "gift of tongues" which is to be used within the assembly of believers. A very competent interpretation of this portion of Scripture can be read in Gordon Fee's book, "God's Empowering Presence", pp. 575 - 586.

Ater years of reading popular studies on Romans, I finally decided to take it upon myself and really find out what this crown jewel of the bible is all about. I shopped carefully and decided upon Moo's commentary. It took me a year to plough through it, not because it was difficult to understand, but because my fallen nature could not grasp the profound truths Moo was communicating from this epistle. Moo drew up alongside me and became my Philip. I was now so profoundly affected by Romans that I began teaching it to others. Those I taught were so profoundly affected by Romans that several brought Moo on their own and are now teaching Romans themselves. Now I truly know what Paul means when he says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. I don't know who this Moo guy is, but someday I'd like to snag him and tell him what a great job he did writing this magnum opus. God bless that man.

Moo is very very detailed and deep. 3 other friends and myself all bought different commentaries on Romans to study and compare, and moo by far goes deeper (and much longer) than the other authors. Good study and very insightful, but not the most concise.

This is a very thorough and understandable guide to Romans. It is so comprehensive that I would recommend anyone teaching a course on Romans spend a month with this book prior to beginning the course. I have gained amazing insight to the meaning of the Epistle, to life at the time the Epistle was written, and to the state of the church at the time the Epistle was written.