Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities

by David Horrell

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2020

Overview

Some of today’s problematic ideologies of racial and religious difference can be traced back to constructions of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. New Testament studies, which developed contemporaneously with Europe’s colonial expansion and racial ideologies, is, David Horrell argues, therefore an important site at which to probe critically these ideological constructions and their contemporary implications.

In Ethnicity and Inclusion, Horrell explores the ways in which “ethnic” (and “religious”) characteristics feature in key Jewish and early Christian texts, challenging the widely accepted dichotomy between a Judaism that is ethnically defined and a Christianity that is open and inclusive. Then, through an engagement with whiteness studies, he offers a critique of the implicit whiteness and Christianness that continue to dominate New Testament studies today, arguing that a diversity of embodied perspectives is epistemologically necessary.

Key Features

• Examines the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity
• Offers a critique of the implicit whiteness and Christianness that continue to dominate New Testament studies today
• Explores the ways in which ethnic characteristics feature in key Jewish and early Christian texts

Contents

I: Contexts of Research

• A Persistent Structural Dichotomy: Jewish Ethnic Particularism and Christian Inclusivism
• Ethnicity, Race, and Ancient Jewish and Christian Identities: Themes in Recent Research
• Ethnicity, Race, and Religion in Social-Scientific Perspective

II: Comparisons of Jewish and Early Christian Perspectives

• Shared Descent: Ancestry, Kinship, Marriage, and Family
• A Common Way of Life: Culture, Practice, and the Socialization of Children
• Homeland: Territory and Symbolic Constructions of Space
• Becoming a People: Self-Consciousness and Ethnicization
• Mission and Conversion: Joining the People

III: Reflections on Location and Epistemology

• Implicit Whiteness and Christian Superiority: The Epistemological Challenge

Product Details

• Title: Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities
• Author: David G. Horrell
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2020
• Pages: 504
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Theology

About David Horrell

David G. Horrell is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author of several books, including An Introduction to the Study of Paul (T&T Clark, Second Edition 2006) and Solidarity and Difference (T&T Clark, 2005). He was the editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament from 2002-2007. He is an active member of the British New Testament Society, having chaired the Social World of the New Testament Seminar from 2001-2006, and is also a member of the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and Society for New Testament Studies (SNTS). He completed his PhD at Cambridge on Paul's Corinthian letters and the letter known as 1 Clement.