Romans 6 plays an important role in this important letter from Paul, and yet the beginning of this chapter challenges the reader with a number of perplexing questions: How can one be baptised into Christ’s death? In what way are Christians buried with Christ? What does it mean to be ‘united’ with him in his death? To what does ‘our old person/self’ (6:6) refer? Sorin Sabou, in this published doctoral thesis from the London School of Theology, seeks to illuminate this passage anew by concentrating on the origin of Paul’s language of death and how it developed. What is central to Sabou’s thesis is that previous attempts at grasping the nature and thrust of Paul’s imagery have not sufficiently considered how metaphors work. In one sense, then, Sabou’s original contribution to the already vast amount of research on Romans 6 is his methodology.

Sabou begins with a lengthy discussion of how various scholars have tried to account for the origin of Paul’s metaphorical death language (chapter 1), finding fault with explanations that draw from backgrounds such as Hellenistic philosophy, the teaching of Jesus, the mystery religions, and Paul’s own personal experience. In his second chapter, Sabou briefly lays out his understanding of the function and operation of metaphors and their components before moving on to address the vehicle of the metaphor, in this case the language of death (chapter 3), and the qualifiers of the metaphor (chapter 4), which are those items in the argument that guide ‘the readers toward a good understanding of his language’ (94). He ends his investigation with a brief conclusion (chapter 5).

This study has much to commend itself. Sabou has put his finger on a pericope loaded with exegetical richness that is far from exhausted. His highlighting of the use of metaphors benefits from a surge of interest in this literary phenomenon from a number of biblical scholars in the last few decades. This allows Sabou to criticise previous discussions from a unique vantage point. He shows a deep level of interaction with both original and secondary literature. One noteworthy highlight from this book includes the explanation of Paul’s language of burial (Rom 6:4). Though most commentators simply conclude that burial signifies that one is absolutely dead, Sabou argues that this language is used even more particularly to communicate that one is buried with his or her own kin or dynasty. That means that if believers are buried with Christ, they belong to his family.

However, the reader should be aware of some concerns with this book. First, though it is perhaps a small matter, Sabou’s discussion of more recent linguistic and literary scholarship on ‘metaphor’ does not include the very influential research of the ‘conceptual metaphor’ theorists (Lakoff, Turner, and Johnson) whose work has been foundational for many biblical literary critics of the last decade or so. Second, a significant piece of his argument depends on Paul’s original creation of this metaphorical imagery here, a hypothesis that is very difficult to prove given the frequent allusions Paul makes to other texts (especially the LXX) and the significance of the teachings of Jesus for the early church in general. Third, and this is more a critique of style than content, Sabou’s prose is weighed down by a torrent of lengthy quotations that either need not be quoted or certainly not beyond a few lines or verses.

In the end, though, scholars and pastors will find gems of exegetical wisdom here, and Sabou guides the reader well through the various modern interpretations of this passage with skill. For those interested in metaphor theory, this study serves as a good illustration of how modern literary and linguistic research is being applied to biblical criticism.

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