The Colonized Apostle

How did Roman imperial culture shape the environment in which Paul carried out his apostolate? How do the multiple legacies of modern colonialism and contemporary empire shape, illuminate, or obscure our readings of Paul's letters? In The Colonized Apostle, Christopher D. Stanley has gathered many of the foremost voices in postcolonial and empire-critical scholarship on Paul to provide a state-of-the-art guide to these questions. This latest addition to the Paul in Critical Contexts series includes essays introducing postcolonial criticism and applying its insights both to Paul's context in the Roman world and to the reevaluation of contemporary interpretation. Contributors include Susan Abraham, Jennifer Bird, Neil Elliott, L. Ann Jervis, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Brigitte Kahl, Jae Won Lee, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, Davina C. Lopez, Joseph A. Marchal, Stephen D. Moore, Laura S. Nasrallah, Jeremy A. Punt, Robert P. Seesengood, and Gordon M. Zerbe.

How did Roman imperial culture shape the environment in which Paul carried out his apostolate? How do the multiple legacies of modern colonialism and contemporary empire shape, illuminate, or obscure our readings of Paul's letters? In The Colonized Apostle, Christopher D. Stanley has gathered many of the foremost voices in postcolonial and empire-critical scholarship on Paul to provide a state-of-the-art guide to these questions.This latest addition to the Paul in Critical Contexts series includes essays introducing postcolonial criticism and applying its insights both to Paul's context in the Roman world and to the reevaluation of contemporary interpretation. Contributors include Susan Abraham, Jennifer Bird, Neil Elliott, L. Ann Jervis, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Brigitte Kahl, Jae Won Lee, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, Davina C. Lopez, Joseph A. Marchal, Stephen D. Moore, Laura S. Nasrallah, Jeremy A. Punt, Robert P. Seesengood, and Gordon M. Zerbe.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

This Festschrift dedicated to S. Scott Bartchy comes on the occasion of his retirement from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. This volume contains seventeen essays contributed by Professor Bartchy's esteemed colleagues, associates, friends, and former graduate students. Beginning with his groundbreaking work on Greco-Roman slavery, Bartchy's teaching and research have been marked both by his use of social-scientific methods for studying the New Testament and by an interest in the social history of early Christianity, including the role of women in the early Christian assemblies, the Christian critique of traditional views of male honor, and the practice of table fellowship and its implications for Christian social relations. To honor Bartchy's legacy, the editors thought it appropriate to organize this collection according to the relational categories suggested by Galatians 3:28. Each essay pertains, therefore, to the social dynamics between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freeborn, or males and females in the early church and beyond. The volume's subtitle reflects Scott's many accomplishments as a jazz musician and sounds a note of unity in diversity that characterizes the diverse perspectives and themes found in the essays of this volume.

Paul the apostle is usually imagined as a man of prestige and power – comfortably conversing with philosophers, seeking an audience with the emperor, and composing compelling letters for Christians throughout the Mediterranean. Yet this portrait of a safe and conventional figure at the origins of Christianity airbrushes out many strange things about him. This volume repositions Paul as a man at the periphery of power. Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle explores the ways that Paul has been “domesticated” in both popular and scholarly imagination. By isolating selected crises of the apostle’s life and legacy and examining the social and material dimensions of his world, these essays collectively chip away at the received image of his strength and status. The result is a series of glimpses of Paul that frame the apostle as surprisingly marginal and weak within Roman society. Published in honour of New Testament scholar Leif E. Vaage, Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle presents Paul as a man operating from a position of desperation, making virtue out of necessity as he attempted to claw his way up in the dog-eat-dog world of the ancient Mediterranean.

Acts of the Apostles presents Roman officials and militarized police criminalizing, prosecuting, and incarcerating a movement of Jesus followers. This book brings Acts into conversation with ancient and modern understandings of crime by tending to laws and by exploring how different writers portray the criminalized.

This book argues that the presence of women in the Christ communities of first-century Corinth changes how 2 Corinthians should be interpreted. Using a feminist approach to interpret the text, Arminta M. Fox presents readings that are ethically and historically viable. She examines how questions of community identity and leadership are situated within broader discourses of power in the Roman imperial and patriarchal contexts of the first-century Mediterranean world. By assuming the dialogical presence of strong and diverse women leaders in the community, Fox develops counter-readings to ones that assume Paul's singular authority.