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Abject Joy is a social history of prison in the Greek and Roman world that takes Paul's letter to the Philippians as its focal instance--or, to put it the other way around, a study of Paul's letter to the Philippians that takes the reality of prison as its starting point. Examining ancient perceptions of confinement, and placing this ancient evidence in dialogue with modern prison writing and ethnography, it describes Paul's urgent and unexpectedly joyful letter as a witness to the perplexing art of survival under constraint.
List of contents
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Translations and Abbreviations
- Introduction: Paul, Prison, and the Social History of Emotions
- Prison and the Pauline Legend
- Prison Letters and Pauline Incomparability
- "The Characteristic Emotion of the Sage"
- The Body of Paul and the History of Emotions
- Outline, and a Note on Comparison
- 1. Far More Imprisonments: Punitive Custody in the Letters of Paul
- Paul and Other Imprisoned Apostles
- Magistrates and Jurisdictions
- Paul in Local Custody
- Writing in Chains
- Plausible Accusations
- Conclusion
- 2. To Die Is Gain: Subjection, Glory, and Paul's Wish for Death
- Prison before the Prison
- Everyday Violence
- Confinement and Subjugation
- A Noble Death?
- To Depart and Be with Christ
- To Die Is Gain
- Conclusion
- 3. Speaking with All Boldness: Prison in the Roman Social Imagination
- Prisoners of War
- Ill-Fated Aristocrats
- Nonelite Malefactors
- Philosophers, Astrologers, and Other Divine Heralds
- For the Defense of the Gospel
- Conclusion
- 4. I Have Learned to Be Content: Performing the Autarkic Self
- You Can't Always Get What You Want
- Thanks Anyway
- Agency and Abasement
- Performing Indifference
- Conclusion
- 5. Rejoice with Me: The Epistolary Cultivation of Collective Emotion
- Paul Unaffected
- My Joy and Crown
- Joy, Hardship, and Solidarity
- Socioaffective Emotion Regulation
- Conclusion
- Conclusion: The Body of Our Humiliation
- Bibliography
About the author
Ryan S. Schellenberg is Associate Professor of New Testament at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. His research seeks to ground reconstructions of early Christ groups in lived human experience by placing the ancient evidence in dialogue with contemporary ethnography. Schellenberg's previous book, Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education, was awarded the 2015 F. W. Beare Award for an outstanding book in New Testament and Christian Origins by the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.
Summary
No extant text gives so vivid a glimpse into the experience of an ancient prisoner as Paul's letter to the Philippians. As a letter from prison, however, it is not what one would expect. For although it is true that Paul, like some other ancient prisoners, speaks in Philippians of his yearning for death, what he expresses most conspicuously is contentment and even joy. Setting aside pious banalities that contrast true joy with happiness, and leaving behind too heroic depictions that take their cue from Acts, Abject Joy offers a reading of Paul's letter as both a means and an artifact of his provisional attempt to make do. By outlining the uses of punitive custody in the administration of Rome's eastern provinces and describing the prison's complex place in the social and moral imagination of the Greek and Roman world, Ryan Schellenberg provides a richly drawn account of Paul's nonelite social context, where bodies and their affects were shaped by acute contingency and habitual susceptibility to violent subjugation. Informed by recent work in the history of emotions, and with comparison to modern prison writing and ethnography provoking new questions and insights, Schellenberg describes Paul's letter as an affective technology, wielded at once on Paul himself and on his addressees, that works to strengthen his grasp on the very joy he names.
Abject Joy: Paul, Prison, and the Art of Making Do by Ryan S. Schellenberg is a social history of prison in the Greek and Roman world that takes Paul's letter to the Philippians as its focal instance--or, to put it the other way around, a study of Paul's letter to the Philippians that takes the reality of prison as its starting point. Examining ancient perceptions of confinement, and placing this ancient evidence in dialogue with modern prison writing and ethnography, it describes Paul's urgent and unexpectedly joyful letter as a witness to the perplexing art of survival under constraint.
Additional text
Schellenberg's treatment of Philippians is a welcome contribution to the literature on this letter. His careful work of redirecting ...provides new entry points for engaging with this rich and textured artifact left to us by the apostle's ministry of writing from prison.
