The result of over thirty years of research and lecturing, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes is a ground-breaking study of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. Bailey examines this canonical letter through the lenses of Paul's Jewish socio-cultural and rhetorical background and the Mediterranean context of the Corinthian recipients. In a set of connected essays, he draws the reader's attention to the letter's rootedness in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, the intentional theological structure of Paul's epistolary organization and the Near Eastern cultural practices that inflect Paul's rhetorical performance. All of this is brought to bear in teasing out the nature of Paul's response to the critical situations facing the Corinthian community: racial, ethnic and theological divisions, sexual misconduct, intimate interaction with pagan practices and disputes about church practices.
Author Biography
Kenneth E. Bailey (1930-2016) was an acclaimed author and lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament studies. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he served as Canon Theologian of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Bailey spent forty years living and teaching in seminaries and institutes in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus. For twenty of those years he was professor of New Testament and head of the Biblical Department of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut where he also founded and directed the Institute for Middle Eastern New Testament Studies. Bailey was also on the faculty of The Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research in Jerusalem. Traveling around the globe to lecture and teach, Bailey spoke in theological colleges and seminaries in England (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol) Ireland, Canada, Egypt, Finland, Latvia, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, and Jerusalem. He was active as a Bible teacher for conferences and continuing education events in the Middle East, Europe, and North America, and he taught at Columbia, Princeton, and Fuller Seminary. His many books, in Arabic and English, include Jesus Through Mediterranean Eyes and The Good Shepherd (SPCK, 2008 & 2015 respectively).
