Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics

Since the 1950s, homoerotic readings of the pericope in which Jesus heals a Roman centurion's slave have been built upon the specific Greek word pais, which can refer to youth, slave, or the junior partner in a sexual relationship between two men; Luke's characterization of the young man as "dear" (entimos) to the centurion; and commonplace homoeroticism in the Roman army. In this book Christopher B. Zeichmann traces shifts in queer readings of the text and the influences of the sexual, pol...