Prisons, Policing, and Abolition in the New Testament

3 credits · Divinity School

This course examines how people in the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries CE experienced, described, and imagined criminal activity, judicial processes, imprisonment, and policing forces. The New Testament writers were part of this world, and they both influenced and were influenced by imperial, provincial, and local understandings of crime, prisons, policing, and even abolition. The course engages an interdisciplinary approach for exploring New Testament and Early Christian studies by applying resources from Roman legal studies, Jewish studies, critical criminology studies, Black studies and theology, and post-colonial theory. [3]