Studying Pauls Letters by Joseph A. Marchal

was historical criticism, which privileges interpreting biblical texts “in their historical contexts, in light of the literary and cultural conventions of their time.” 1 This approach emerged in the European Enlightenment largely among Protestant theologian-scholars seeking religious and intellectual freedom from church authorities. With these kinds of changes, your future self might no longer recognize your own story, or you may now remember your past differently.įor much of the twentieth century, virtually the sole approach to the academic study of the Bible in Europe and the U.S.

But if in the future your city is overrun by waste or a sanitation workers’ strike, your town might implicate you in its history of wasteful self-destruction or in its habit of paying low wages to essential but unskilled labor. What if society in the future is concerned about different realities than you are concerned about now? Your version of the day’s story probably does not mention that people picked up your garbage on the curb today. If you become a leading historian, someone might find this book filled with your marginal notes and argue that your love of history began when you read a book about Paul. Which moments will you tell about and which will you skip over? How do you decide what is worth telling about your day? Which objects that you used or touched should be associated with you and with this day? In the future, your story of this day might be changed because of things that happen.

Among other roles Marchal has served as the Chair of the Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible Section and currently co-chairs the Paul and Politics Seminar (of the Society of Biblical Literature).Imagine telling about your day today in one story. While he is currently preparing a second edited collection (on people's history approaches), he is most particularly focused upon finishing a larger study implementing newer queer approaches to interrogate and resituate the places Pauline epistles and interpretations deploy a series of strangely gendered figures. Most recently, he is the author of Philippians: Historical Problems, Hierarchical Visions, Hysterical Anxieties (Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), The Politics of Heaven: Women, Gender, and Empire in the Study of Paul (Fortress Press, 2008), and editor of Studying Paul's Letters: Contemporary Perspectives and Methods (Fortress, 2012).

His research and teaching focus upon biblical studies and critical theories of interpretation, especially feminist, postcolonial, and queer perspectives and practices. Marchal is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Women's and Gender Studies Affiliated Faculty, at Ball State University (USA).

Studying Pauls Letters by Joseph A. Marchal