Discussions of a small symposium held at Harvard University Divinity School in spring 2007.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Exploring the intersections of race, gender, status, and ethnicity in early Christian studies / Elisabeth Sch ssler Fiorenza -- Part I: Race, gender, and ethnicity in early Christianity : theorizing the field of inquiry -- Be not afraid of the dark : critical race theory and classical studies / Shelley P. Haley -- The Knidian Aphrodite in the Roman Empire and Hiram Powers's Greek slave : on ethnicity, gender, and desire / Laura Nasrallah -- "From every nation under heaven" : Jewish ethnicities in the Greco-Roman world / Cynthia M. Baker -- Mimicry and colonial differences : gender, ethnicity, and empire in the interpretation of Pauline imitation / Joseph A. Marchal -- "To the Jew first and also to the Greek" : reading Romans as ethnic construction / Sze-kar Wan -- Part II: Race, gender, and ethnicity : shaping the discipline of early Christian studies -- God's own people : specters of race, ethnicity, and gender in early Christian studies / Denise Kimber Buell -- Race, aesthetics, and gospel scholarship : embracing and subverting the aesthetic ideology / Shawn Kelley -- Race as incarnational theology : affinities between German Protestantism and racial theory / Susannah Heschel -- Religion, ethnicity, and ethnoreligion : trajectories of a discourse in German-speaking historical Jesus scholarship / Gabriella Gelardini -- "No modern Joshua-- " nationalization, Scriptures, and race / Vincent L. Wimbush -- Poetics of minority biblical criticism : identification and theorization / Fernando F. Segovia.