How are the Gentiles included in Israel, the Old Testament people of God? Paul in Romans 11:16-24 uses the metaphor of an olive tree with a root to explain this relationship. This article looks at how this metaphor fits into Paul's whole argument of the restoration of Israel in Romans.

The article refutes the views that the biblical prophecies foretelling the restoration of Israel are currently being fulfilled, which is a dispensationalist view. The return of Israel as spoken of in passages such as Isaiah 11:11, Jeremiah 29:14, and Zechariah 8:1-8 is therefore established as referring to the return of Israel from the Babylonian exile.

Kinman wants to reconsider the exegesis of Luke 12:57-59. He provides reasons to question the consensus interpretation. His reasons are based on three factors that he considers: the literary setting of the passage in its context, the phenomenon of debt in Hellenistic law, and the language of the passage itself.