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L. William countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today (rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). Pp. vi + 349. Paper $18.
This volume constitutes a modest revision of Countryman's 1987 work bearing the same title. The bibliography is helpfully updated, the prose is thoroughly reworked, and the content slightly expanded. Most noticeably, the book now includes a brief, thoughtful treatment of "other things" (see p. x): issues besides dirt and greed (such as erotic love and notions of liberation) that impact Christian sexual ethics (pp. 230-52). Beyond this, the overall structure and hypotheses of the book remain pretty much what they were twenty years ago. In part 1 ("Dirt"), C. reviews purity laws and concepts in the Hebrew Bible, ancient Jewish literature, and the NT. In part 2 ("Greed"), he focuses on sexual ethics, especially insofar as they relate to other norms of property and ownership. Part 3 ("Sex") contains further exegetical reflections on sexual ethics, along with a programmatic essay addressing contemporary concerns.
In part 1, C. largely sidesteps the work done in the past two decades (including my own) that attempts to elucidate the differences among varied types...