Books in the Paul in Critical Contexts series

James R. Harrison investigates how Paul's letter to the Romans might have been heard by an audience in Neronian Rome by examining the material and ideological culture of the city and setting prominent Pauline themes in juxtaposition with Roman ideological themes.

In Paul Decentered, Arminta M. Fox argues that the presence of women in the Christ communities of first-century Corinth changes how 2 Corinthians should be interpreted. By providing a feminist interpretation of 2 Corinthians, Fox counters standard readings that assume Paul's singular authority.

In Paul and Image, Philip Erwin challenges conventional interpretations of First Corinthians by focusing on the role that ancient Roman visual culture played in the lives of Paul and those of the people of Corinth.

In Witch Hunt in Galatia, Jeremy Wade Barrier reconstructs Galatians as part of Paul's effort to convince the Jews in Galatia to choose baptism through the "breath" (i.e. Spirit) of God over circumcision as a way to bring divine healing to their community.

The self-emptying of Christ (kenosis) in Philippians 2 has long been the focus of attention by Christian theologians and interpreters of Pauls Christology. David E. Fredrickson sheds dramatic new light on familiar texts by discussing the centuries-old language of love and longing in Greek and Roman epistolary literature, showing that a physics of desire was related to notions of power and dominance. Pauls kenotic Christology challenged not only received notions of the power of the gods but of the very nature of love itself as a component of human society.

In this provocative study, Joseph A. Marchal argues that biblical interpretation, but most especially Pauline studies, must engage the full range of critical challenges brought by feminist studies, postcolonial studies, and Roman imperial studies. A feminist, postcolonial analysis requires negotiating the gaps, overlaps, and tensions between these three "strands" by adopting an explicitly multi-axial focus and an interdisciplinary methodology. Using Philippians as a test case, the analysis covers issues of both ancient and contemporary import: from imitation and authority to travel and contact. As a result, Marchal provides strikingly new perspectives on Paul's letters and fresh challenges to the paradigms of Pauline interpretation.

Kahl brings to this insightful reading of Galatians a deep knowledge of the classical world and especially of Roman imperial ideology. The first wave of scholarship on the Roman imperial context of Pauls letters raised important questions that only thorough treatments of individual letters can answer. Kahl sets the letter to the Galatians in the context of Roman perceptions of vanquished peoples as represented in the Great Altar at Pergamum.

* A timely discussion of a key Pauline theme and its value for the global church * Challenges a consensus regarding the "politics" of 1 Corinthians

Philemon is the shortest letter in the Pauline collection, yet because it has to do with a slave separated from his master it has played an inordinate role in the toxic brew of slavery and racism in the United States. In Onesimus Our Brother, leading African American biblical scholars tease out the often unconscious assumptions about religion, race, and culture that permeate contemporary interpretation of the New Testament and of Paul in particular. The editors argue that Philemon is as important a letter from an African American perspective as Romans or Galatians have proven to be in Eurocentric interpretation. The essays gathered here continue to trouble scholarly waters, interacting with the legacies of Hegel, Freud, Habermas, Ricoeur, and James C. Scott, as well as the historical experience of African American communities. Contributors include the editors and Mitzi J. Smith, Margaret B. Wilkerson, James W. Perkinson, and Allen Dwight Callahan.

In this book, Adam G. White examines Paul's practice of community discipline in light of similar practices in the broader Graeco-Roman context and argues that what we see in Paul's communities is both similar and unique to contemporary practices.