Reviews for Women, Gender, and Community

The average rating for Women, Gender, and Community based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-01 00:00:00 Susan Fults Back a few years I heard a church historian describe Tertullian as the Church father we love to hate. He is a polarizing, controversial figure, and it appears that he always has been. And yet he is an influential one as well. But very little is known really about him. Dunn is rightly critical of the picture of him still in many books that is much more dependent on what Jerome says about him two centuries later than what Tertullian actually says. And so the introduction here is a needed and accessible corrective. While no work, including this, is beyond criticism, the introduction (56 pages) deserves five stars for how it introduces us to Tertullian, his world, and his thought. So why do I give only three stars? Well - the texts themselves. Dunn picked three frankly obscure texts. While this is more than a bit VALUABLE and INFORMATIVE, the question the rating asks is how much I LIKE it, and quite frankly I often didn't like it. The first treatise--Against the Jews--is an unfinished or at least unpolished work. While the topic is certainly one of interest today, I would have rather spent the time re-reading Justin Martyr's Dialogue, for example. As the notes say, this is not a good example of Tertullian's rhetorical gifts. Scorpion's Sting and Veiling of Virgin's are much better in this regard. And yet this just goes to show the vast difference between our rhetorical standards and his. These seem quite dense and show the famous difficulty at translating Tertullian. And it doesn't help my enjoyment that I disagree with him - especially on the veil, but even Scorpion's sting seems overstated. I miss the contributions that he offered in his discussion of Christ's Flesh and and so our resurrection hope. I miss his development of Trinitarian language. Heck, his presentation of the Lord's prayer, and various direct discussions of penitential practices are better served in other works. But much of this is already available in good 20th century editions by Evans. But these treatises ARE part of his legacy as well, and just plain simple honesty says we should face how Tertullian's insistence of the value of this fleshly world has implications we often do not like. Dunn has done us a service by making these available in English, as well as commentary that shows Tertullian's argument by showing how it fits with ancient rhetorical standards. The fact that these 1800 year old texts still provoke discussion on the meaning of the Incarnation shows their continuing value. And so while I don't exactly like them, I value them.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-09-28 00:00:00 Walter Stinnett A good introduction to Tertullian (this whole series has been good so far), with interesting notes and a clear survey of his life and thought. It also includes three texts that haven't been re-translated since the 19th century (Against the Jews, Antidote to the Scorpions Sting, On the Veiling of Virgins). My main problem with this book is that in his translations, Dunn purposely leaves difficult parts of Tertullian's Latin difficult in English. Which isn't a bad thing to do as a translator, it just isn't really appropriate for a book intended to introduce people to Tertullian.