The Politics Of Heaven: Women, Gender, And Empire In The Study Of Paul

Was Paul an opponent of imperialism or a participant in the patriarchal social codes of his day? Joseph A.Marchal moves beyond this too-simple dichotomy to examine the language of power and obedience, ethnicity, andgender in Paul s letters, arguing that understanding the way rhetorics of power overlap and intersect requires anuanced combination of feminist and post-colonial criticism and a "thick description" of colonized space.His analysis of gender and power dynamics in the Roman colony of Philippi is an exemplar of anew approach to reading Paul in his contexts, always attentive to the contexts of the contemporary interpreter as well. The Politics of Heaven offers new clarity and precision in the interpretation of the apostle and the social spaces in which he moved.