Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics ed. by Eric D. Barreto, Matthew L. Skinner, and Steve Walton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics ed. by Eric D. Barreto, Matthew L. Skinner, and Steve Walton Hanna Stenström THS eric d. barreto, matthew l. skinner, and steve walton (eds.), Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics (LNTS 559; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017). Pp. xvii + 186. $114. “Luke’s second volume tells a story about power.” These are the introductory words of Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics, which form the point of departure for the book. Acts tells a story about the power of God and stories about political power where Roman officials, and thereby the Roman Empire, play crucial roles (p. xi). In addition, Greco-Roman understanding(s) of masculinity—where power over non-men as well as self-control are fundamental—are operative throughout Acts, for example, in constructions of central characters and in constructions of Christian identity. “Masculinity” and “politics” are therefore suitable foci for reading Acts (p. xii) and are chosen as topics for this volume. The majority of the contributions are edited version of papers and responses presented in the Book of Acts section at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meetings in 2013 and 2014. The volume begins with customary information about abbreviations and contributors [End Page 558] followed by Eric D. Barreto’s “Introduction.” Barreto introduces the essays and the work’s topic and aims. The emphasis is on discourses of masculinity and politics in the text of Acts (pp. xi-xii) and in the context where Acts was written. The aim is not to open totally new ground but to continue work on Acts, politics, and masculinity with new methodological tools (p. xvii). Barreto emphasizes that the story about Acts and power continues. It continues when interpreters of Acts realize that, and how, their understandings of power, politics, and gender influence interpretations and when interpreters reflect on the possible contemporary relevance of Acts’ story of power (p. xii). The following essays are divided in two parts: “Warts and All? Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity” (four essays, no responses) and “Empowering, Engaging or Distancing? Acts in the Discourse of Politics” (three essays, two responses). Part 1 begins with Christina Petterson, “The Language of Gender in Acts.” Petterson explores how grammatical gender and gender as a social construct are interwoven in the narrative of Acts and mutually reinforce each other in the construction of masculine subjects. The theoretical framework of “language ideology” makes it possible to ask for connections between use of language and ideologies (of gender and class). The next three essays relate to earlier studies of Acts and Greco-Roman ideals of elite masculinity: Colleen M. Conway, “Taking the Measure of Masculinity in Acts”; Brittany E. Wilson, “Contextualizing Masculinity in the Book of Acts: Peter and Paul as Test Cases”; Christopher Stroup, “Making Jewish Men in a Greco-Roman World: Masculinity and the Circumcision of Timothy in Acts 16.1–5.” All three want to avoid the choice between alternatives: that Acts either embraces contemporary ideals of masculinity or rejects them in favor of an alternative masculinity. Conway argues that central male characters enact masculinity in spite of violations to their bodies that would normally have deprived them of their masculinity. Wilson claims that Luke formulates a “refiguration” of ancient elite understandings of a real man “in order to further his larger theme of God’s paradoxical power in Jesus” (p. 30). Stroump interprets the circumcision of Timothy in relation to Greco-Roman understandings of Jewish men as feminized through circumcision and to Jewish understandings of circumcision as a non-negotiable element in Jewish masculinity. Thereby, Timothy becomes the example of a new, Christian masculinity. Part 2 begins with Steve Walton, “The State They Were In: Luke’s View of the Roman Empire,” first published in 2002, an overview of scholarly understandings of the Roman Empire in Acts. Matthew L. Skinner (“Who Speaks for [or Against] Rome? Acts in Relation to the Empire”) offers an overview of scholarly understandings of the Roman Empire in Acts after 2002. The overviews are followed by a case study, Bruce W. Winter “Paul and Roman Law: ‘The Luck of the Draw...