Criminalization as Contextual Prism: Rendering Acts for Contextual Biblical Criticism.

This article reviews Jeremy L. Williams's 2024 volume *Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles*, which introduces the Analysis for Rhetorical Criminalization (ARC) as a framework to interpret the New Testament book of Acts within its Roman imperial context. Williams situates criminalization as a soc...

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Publicado en:Religious Studies Review (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 49 - 55
Autor principal: Carter, A. Francis
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Mar2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2026
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        atl: Criminalization as Contextual Prism: Rendering Acts for Contextual Biblical Criticism.
      aug:
        au: Carter, A. Francis
        affil: Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa OK, 74116,
      su:
        Biblical criticism
        Imperialism
        Critical race theory
        Rhetorical analysis
        Crime
        Roman Empire, 30 B.C.-A.D. 476
      sug:
        subj:
          Biblical criticism
          Imperialism
          Critical race theory
          Rhetorical analysis
          Crime
          Roman Empire, 30 B.C.-A.D. 476
      keyword:
        Acts
        contextual biblical criticism
        criminalization
        Critical Race Theory
      ab: This article reviews Jeremy L. Williams's 2024 volume *Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles*, which introduces the Analysis for Rhetorical Criminalization (ARC) as a framework to interpret the New Testament book of Acts within its Roman imperial context. Williams situates criminalization as a socio-rhetorical process that labels certain behaviors as crimes, linking this to contemporary issues of racialized criminalization and power dynamics, particularly from a Black American perspective. The work engages interdisciplinary scholarship, including Critical Race Theory (CRT), to explore how Acts reflects imperial ideologies and discourses of punishment, while also highlighting tensions in Williams’s use of respectability politics and underutilization of CRT’s counternarrative approach. The volume challenges readers to reconsider Acts’ narrative and its implications for understanding historical and modern processes of criminalization, making it a significant contribution to biblical studies and contextual biblical criticism.
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    language: English
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