In Acts, Paul and his travel companions are frequently arrested, imprisoned, beaten, and tortured. Large portions of Acts narrate trials where Paul is questioned and then defends himself against political leaders such as Felix, Festus, and King Agrippa. Jeremy Williams, in his monograph Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement, highlights these scenes with a focus on criminalization and contemporary issues such as race and justice. With research that is both relevant and sophisticated, Williams’ reading of Acts is innovative. And his analysis is not only focused on ancient texts, but also he carefully shows the similarities between the rhetoric of ancient criminalization and the criminalization of Black people in the West—specifically in the United States (16, 193). This book is a necessary read for New Testament scholars, and I think readers outside of the field of biblical studies would benefit from it as well because of Williams’ attention to contemporary concerns.
Williams jumps between the literary world of Acts and the contemporary United States in fluid, powerful ways. The book begins and ends with quotes from signs at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, which memorializes victims of racial terror lynchings. For example, he reads Luke-Acts alongside Chariton’s Callirhoe and illustrates how courts are rhetorically constructed in these ancient narratives to reinforce and validate the views of the author (143). This analysis of ancient criminalization is compared to the justice system in the US, in which certain people are criminalized through rhetoric and race. Williams includes examples from ancient material culture alongside contemporary poetry, quotes from museums, and descriptions of moments within US history such as the abolition movement. These additions further strengthen Williams’s literary analysis.
Part 1 of Williams’ book describes his theory and method which provide a background for his reading of Acts, found in Part 2. For his methodology, Williams develops a new strategy for reading called the Analysis for Rhetorical Criminalization (ARC), which is informed by Critical Race Theory, Womanist cultural criticism, and myth criticism. This is a particularly fruitful strategy, especially for Acts, as the main characters are constantly viewed as criminals by authorities. The rhetoric Williams highlights is implicitly about power; he carefully traces who is elevated by the text and who is not. For example, the ARC highlights the rhetoric used to identify and describe criminals, protect the image of the elite, and examine the penalties that are given to those who are deemed criminals. His analysis “exposes one of Act’s narrative goals: a critique of colonial Roman justice” (21). Accordingly, Acts intentionally portrays the Roman legal system negatively to reveal the unethical logics in the Roman justice system (174-175).
In part 2, he interprets passages from Acts through the ARC in order to show the benefits of such a reading. Williams compares Acts to passages from an ancient novel (Chariton’s Callirhoe), a Greek play (The Bacchae by Euripides), and legal texts (such as Justinian’s Digest and the Mishnah). This diverse set of texts supplements his analysis of Acts itself and solidifies his argument that the Roman justice system functioned in order to benefit the elite. The characters who are deemed criminals in the book of Acts are “criminalized by the text—rendered criminals in its prose” (3).
For each chapter in part 2, Williams provides new translations for sections of Acts based on the ARC. For example, he translates diōkō as “prosecute,” instead of the typical “persecute.” Stratiōtai, often translated as “soldiers,” Williams translates as “militarized police.” Similarly, stratēgoi, often translated as “captain” or “chief,” is “sheriffs.” Williams translates lēstēs as “thug” instead of “bandit” or “rebel” and demonstrates that lēstēs was used in Roman discourse to label a person as able to be criminalized. Therefore, the use of the term lēstēs rhetorically criminalized a character, and likewise, the type of person who was labeled a “thug” was implicated, even outside of the text. Williams’ translation choices bring a modern perspective to Acts, which forces the reader to consider the contemporary implications of these ancient stories. These are such interesting and thought-provoking translations that I would personally love to read a full translation of Acts by Williams. It would certainly impact the way we read and teach Acts in the classroom.
Finally, Williams’ attention to issues of slavery in Acts is another strength of this book. I especially appreciated his interpretation of the enslaved fortune-teller in Acts 16:16-18, who Williams names the “sassy, truth-telling, enslaved prophetess” (157). In addition, Williams emphasizes the importance of teaching the history of slavery, writing that “US students are woefully undereducated about the history of slavery, which makes them unable to identify and identify with those still affected by its legacy. It also makes them incapable of seeing the urgency of abolition work today” (193). Thus, the epilogue includes a challenge: that all the readers of this book become “truth-tellers that call out sites of unjust incarceration like Acts’ Paul” (191). Through this quote Williams is channeling the prophesy of the enslaved female prophet whose words ring out in Philippi. In Criminalization in Acts, Williams is himself a truth-teller as he bestows justice upon the book of Acts and to those who have been unjustly criminalized throughout history.
Christy Cobb is an associate professor of Christianity at the University of Denver.
Christy Cobb
Date Of Review:
November 15, 2024
