04_Reasoner_388-404 28/10/14 10:43 Pagina 403 THE REDEMPTIVE INVERSIONS OF JEREMIAH IN ROMANS 9–11 403 regard to judgment (indeed he accuses God of deceive [sic] the op- timists, 4:10), nor of trying to persuade Baruch to suppress that ear- lier, judgmental scroll that became the core of chapters 1–20. It is all out there in this awesome divine shift” 47. V. The Reconfiguration of Scripture in Romans 9–11 The exegesis of scripture in Romans 9–11 is not simply a recita- tion of proof texts to support Paul’s understanding of the mystery of Israel, as if all he needed to do were enter these proof texts into his computer as an elaborate password that will give him a com- plete purchase on God’s plan for Israel. Whether intentional or not in the letter’s composition, a reader’s recognition of the reversals of Jeremiah 1–20 provide increased understanding of these central chapters in Romans and the whole letter’s argument. The significance of these chapters’ relationship to Jeremiah, en- capsulated in the inversion of the olive tree whose branches are burned up into the cultivated olive tree with plenty of fatness, whose branches are cut off but can easily be re-grafted onto the tree, is that Paul’s positive approach to corporeal Israel is under- scored. It becomes very difficult to view Israel here as simply a re- defined Israel, a cipher for the church. The chapters offer a reading of Jeremiah that bring one to the vision of God’s mercy even now (accepting with Barth the second nu/n in Rom 11,31) on Paul’s kins- folk according to the flesh 48. Baxter and Ziesler’s exegetical in- 47 HOLLADAY, letter of March 2, 2004, his emphases. 48 The external evidence is fairly strong, with ‫ א‬B D*, but I do admit that the significant witnesses P 46 and 1739 lack it. K. BARTH, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. E.C. Hoskyns; London 1933; reprint ed., 1980) 420, renders 11,31 as “even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shewn to you they also may now obtain mercy” and comments on the second “now”: “What can this mean, but that now — the eternal ‘Now’ which de- thrones ‘Here’ but exalts ‘There’, and displays both ‘Here’ and ‘There’ the free- dom and the majesty of God — now the elect are sureties for the reprobate, that they, bearing the burden of the elect, may participate also in the mercy which belongs to the elect. And so the new invisible title of all humanity is made manifest in the ‘Now’ of revelation” (421). BRYAN follows BARTH here, quoting his Church Dogmatics 2.2.305 regarding the same verse: “What this striking second νυν (sic) makes quite impossible for Christian anti-Semitism (he that has ears to hear, let him hear) is the relegation of the Jewish question into the realm of eschatology” (BRYAN, A Preface to Romans 183, see also 193).