2022.12.11 | David G. Horrell. Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020.
Review by Jonathan Rowlands, St. Mellitus College
In Ethnicity and Inclusion, Horrell examines the ways in which the contested categories of ethnicity, race, and religion coalesce in and arise from conceptions of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. Seeking to focus “on the log in my own eye rather than the specks in others’ eyes” (pp. 2–3), Horrell brings these issues into conversation with the implicit whiteness (another contested term) of contemporary biblical scholarship. In so doing, he not only upturns claims about Judaism and early Christianity, but also offers sobering critique of NT studies itself. Horrell articulates the need to re-examine conceptions of race, ethnicity, religion, and identity in antiquity, as well as the ways in which these categories are apprehended in contemporary scholarship.
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Biblical and Early Christian Studies 