November 14, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS – One of the most urgent tasks in contemporary discussions and controversies over sexuality, in churches and in wider society, is to put the biblical resources into their proper social and cultural contexts.

In Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, Revised Edition, L. William Countryman accomplishes this task in an exemplary way, showing how biblical conceptions regarding proper sexual behavior arose from concerns for purity and from cultures in which women and children were often conceived as property. What biblical texts say about sex often arises from concerns about dirt and greed.

This new revised edition, of the landmark 1988 text, includes updated text and notes throughout, taking advantage of recent studies of sexual ethics and, where, appropriate, criticizing them. A new chapter evaluates recent proposals for a normative "ethic of creation," and in a concluding chapter Countryman offers his own positive statement of a New Testament ethic. The result is an invaluable resource for anyone who seeks to understand what the New Testament says about sex.

Contents:
Preface and Introduction
Part 1: Dirt
1. What is Purity
2. Israel's Basic Purity Law
3. Purity in First-Century Judaism
4. Purity and Christianity-a First-Century Historian's Interpretation
5. Purity in the Gospels
6. Paul and Purity
7. The New Testament and Sexual Purity
Part 2: Greed
8. Women and Children as Property in the Ancient Mediterranean World
9. Household and Sexual Property in the Gospels
10. Paul and Sexual Property
11. The New Testament on Sexual Property
Part 3: Sex
12. Are Other Principles of Sexual Ethics at Work in the New Testament?
13. New Testament Sexual Ethics and Today's World
Bibliography and Indexes

Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, Revised Edition, By L. William Countryman, Item No: 978-0-8006-6224-0, Format: Paperback, 350 pages, 6 x 9 inches, Price: $18.00.

To order Dirt, Greed, and Sex please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at http://www.fortresspress.com/.

Fortress Press