Brian J. Robinson teaches classes on religious studies and hellenistic Jewish and early Christianity literature at Azusa Pacific University and California Lutheran University.
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[T]he book will be valuable to a wide variety of scholars, regardless of whether their approach to biblical texts is confessional or not. . . . Robinson engages in a remarkable analysis of the complicit masculinity of three men who were roughly contemporaries of Paul: Flavius Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and Favorinus of Arelate. Particularly enlightening among them is the discussion of Favorinus, who rarely figures into New Testament scholarship in any capacity. . . . the present book. . . will be of interest to graduate students, scholars, and theological libraries.-- "Religion and Gender" Arguably, Paul is the most fully-fleshed out man in the New Testament; as such, a book-length analysis of how Paul constructs and performs his masculinity is long overdue. Brian Robinson fills this need admirably. His erudition on ancient protocols of masculinity is impressive; his analysis of Paul's performance of gender in 1 Corinthians is thoroughly informed by feminist and queer Pauline scholarship; and the Paul with which he presents us ultimately is both thought-provokingly unfamiliar and compellingly rendered.--Stephen D. Moore, Edmund S. Janes Professor of New Testament Studies, The Theological School, Drew University Brian Robinson's Being Subordinate Men: Paul's Rhetoric of Gender and Power in 1 Corinthians compares cultural notions of masculinity in the ancient world with Paul's rhetoric in 1 Corinthians, and shows that Paul deliberately undermines ancient masculine ideals about crafting powerful public personas explicitly tied to the performance of masculinity. Robinson maintains that Paul repeatedly chooses to portray himself in modes that signal weakness and a subordinate status that embodies the way of Jesus. This is a prophetic book, ahead of its time and tailor-made for reading in the #Metoo moment.--Love L. Sechrest, Associate Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary Paul's masculinity is often taken for granted as consistently authoritative and hierarchical. In this nuanced study, Brian Robinson explores different rhetorical valences and effects of ancient discourses on maleness, revealing a more textured array of options for interpretation of the Corinthian correspondence than a binary construction of gender affords. Readers interested in both the intersection of critical theory and biblical interpretation and in the resonances of Paul's letters with contemporary social issues and concerns will find much with which to dialog.--Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College