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Prejudice & Christian Beginnings

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

Subtitled “Investigating Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies,” this compendium of essays brings cutting-edge New Testament and Jewish scholarship to the question of how race, gender and ethnicity were constructed in the early Roman Empire. I offer a critical summary.

Thus far, New Testament scholars have recognized the importance of race and gender as separate issues for interpretation. Conversing with contemporary secular race-theory, however, this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates how completely interlinked these fields were in the First Century. The opinion is widespread that the Graeco-Roman world was not particularly prejudiced with regard to race, and was patriarchal, but in places quite liberated, with regard to gender. The main value of this work is to deconstruct those views.

We are still reading race and gender in the New Testament through the lens of Nineteenth Century colonialism, or else not recognizing them as interpretative issues at all. The Hellenistic world at the time of Christ was complex and should not be taken uncritically. It was an Empire, the Roman Empire, and Roman pre-suppositions permeate the New Testament writings. Gender was constructed then as now, so was race, and the New Testament authors were people of their day. Finding a right hermeneutical route through these potential obstacles is of key importance.

Always with an eye to hermeneutical method, these eleven essays include, for example, what kinds of divisions were meant in Acts 2 by the phrase “from every race under heaven;” a reading of Romans from the ethnic point of view implied by “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile;” and a penetrating exploration of the way Protestantism was, and still potentially is, capable of incorporating racism, most notoriously in Nazi Germany. As regards gender, several writers demonstrate how Roman men were acute observers of class and race as well as gender. Early Christian writers such as Clement were not afraid of using the sexual invective of their day.

This is a book which aims to foster toleration and justice whilst laying-bare borrowed ideologies and presuppositions. It sets a new agenda for New Testament race and gender academia and is essential reading for anyone doing their studies in this area. It is heavily footnoted throughout, and some contributors need lessons in plain English, and therefore, given the quantity of reading required in ministry, I would not recommend this book for the busy pastor. Knowing it is here, however, is a necessity. The conclusions, for example, on ethnicity want to blow wide the particularism of Christ’s people as the only true ‘race’ destined for salvation; and at the same time, on the basis of this work, we would do well to question many of our assumptions on gender. These are issues which have implications. And we shall be hearing more, not less, from this line of scholarship as in the future the many race, gender and post-colonial readings of Scripture become boiled down and presented in commentaries.