Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement

by Jeremy L. Williams

Overview

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the Book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how Critical Race Theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enables a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and socio-political processes that criminalize. Williams' study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009366373
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/26/2023
Pages:	325
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Jeremy L. Williams earned his Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard University. He also graduated from Yale University Divinity School, where he received the Henry Hallam Tweedy Prize, the highest prize awarded to its graduates. He is a steering committee member of the Rhetoric in Early Christianity section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Table of Contents

I: 1. The analysis for rhetorical criminalization (ARC); 2. Analyzing structures in Ancient Roman and Jewish Criminalizing Discourses; 3. Analyzing stories and myths in Ancient Roman and Jewish criminalizing discourses; II: 4. 'I am a Human': criminal classification of humans and racializing assemblages in Acts; 5. 'Before the Court' and the confines of judicial structures in Acts and Callirhoe; 6. 'The Foundation of the Prison Shook' and the critical analysis of Apollo's, Dionysus', and Acts' myths; 7. 'Not Lawful for Romans' and the commitments of Roman elites in Acts.

Editorial Reviews

‘Societies routinely use language and policies about criminalization to protect their powerful members and degrade others. Jeremy Williams has given us a groundbreaking study for understanding how Acts depicts Jesus’s followers as a movement at odds with the elites and systems that held and guarded prerogatives in the Roman world. Through careful analysis of rhetoric used to criminalize people as deviants and corrective translations of key passages in Acts, this valuable book provides clarity to the theological and apologetic tendencies of the Bible’s narrative about the early church. Williams’s critical reflections on how Acts illuminates the rhetoric of criminality in American society and vice versa make this book even more of a ‘must read’ within academic and ecclesial circles.’ Matthew L. Skinner, Asher O. and Carrie Nasby Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary

‘As Acts scholarship has revisited critical inquiries about identity, politics, and imperial power while at the same time movements for justice have illuminated the dynamics of policing, Criminalization in the Acts of the Apostles lands at an ideal moment. Drawing upon sophisticated engagement with interlocking theories of racism, politics, and criminology alongside careful engagement with the text of and the scholarship around Acts, Jeremy Williams brings to light translational and interpretive possibilities that draw scholars to reimagine not just the narrative texture of Acts but the potent infrastructure underlying its storytelling about power, politics, and the divine. This book promises to help reshape our understanding of the literary world of Acts but also cause us to question anew the too often unstated and unexamined ideological stances of its interpreters.’ Eric D. Barreto, Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary

‘With research that is both relevant and sophisticated, Williams’ reading of Acts is innovative. And his analysis is not only focused on ancient texts, but also he carefully shows the similarities between the rhetoric of ancient criminalization and the criminalization of Black people in the West - specifically in the United States. This book is a necessary read for New Testament scholars, and I think readers outside of the field of biblical studies would benefit from it as well because of Williams’ attention to contemporary concerns.’ Christy Cobb, Reading Religion

From the Publisher