“Given the abundance of work on ancient masculinities that has appeared in the neighboring field of classics in recent decades, it is surprising that scholars of early Christianity have had to wait so long for a book-length study of how Jesus’ masculinity is constructed and performed in the New Testament. But it has been worth the wait. Colleen Conway’s Behold the Man is erudite, original, provocative, and incisive. Not only should it be read by anyone interested in gender ind the New Testament, it should also be read by anyone interested in New Testament Christology. Picking up an old feminist thread with new conceptual tools, Conway shows how the study of Christology is illuminated by the study of masculinity, occasionally to the point of incineration.” –Stephen D. Moore, author of God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible and co-editor of New Testament Masculinities
“Colleen Conway shows how New Testament authors appropriated imperial gender rhetoric to outfit Jesus, stripped of claims to masculinity by his humiliating death, in the armor of Roman manhood. Essential reading on the gender dynamics of early Christianity.” –Jennifer Glancy, author of Slavery in Early Christianity
“In this theoretically sophisticated, historically sensitive, and engagingly written book, Colleen Conway highlights the complexities in early Christian presentations of the masculinity of Christ. Focusing on the writings of the Apostle Paul, the four canonical Gospels, and the book of Revelation, Conway shows how early Christian authors drew from common Greek and especially Roman notions of masculinity, sometimes by outright appropriation but also by means of ironic imitation or sly inversion. We see the ‘imperial’ Jesus of some gospel traditions and Paul, the ‘ascetic’ Jesus of Matthew and Paul, and the ‘militant’ Jesus of Revelation. The study is wide-ranging, well informed by recent scholarship, and eminently readable.” –Dale B. Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University, and author of Sex and the Single Savior
“Colleen Conway’s book Behold the Man shows that gender has been a central concern in representations of Jesus from the beginning. …Conway’s study is important because it reveals the complex strategies of masculinization employed by New Testament authors…Conway’s discussion of how masculinity was transmitted from culture to individual is an especially welcome addition to scholarship.” —Church History
“[Behold the Man] offers a fresh and profound examination of how the manliness of Jesus is deliberately affirmed in the NT, in dialogue with the cultural expectations of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world of the first century. …Conway’s study integrates the latest and best scholarship in her investigation.” —Interpretation
“Behold the Man is an ambitious book that traverses exciting new terrain … [It] applies new critical tools to long-standing questions concerning Jesus’ relationship to his surrounding culture, his relationship to God, and his relationship to humanity itself.” —Koinonia
About the Author
Colleen Conway is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. She is the author of Men and Women in the Fourth Gospel: Gender and Johannine Characterization.
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