Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race Gender and Ethnicity in Early Christianity

While scholars of the New Testament and its Roman environment have recently focused attention on ethnicity and gender the two questions have often been discussed separately and without reference to the contemporary critical study of race theory. This interdisciplinary volume addresses this lack by drawing together new essays by prominent scholars in the fields of New Testament classics and Jewish studies. These essays examine the intersection of three worlds: first the construction of gender and race under the Roman Empire; second the crucible of nineteenth-century thinking about race and empire in which New Testament and classical studies were given definitive form; and third the contemporary theoretical frameworks and methods that hold greatest promise for a renewed understanding of the New Testament and early Christian history.