To write about black crime fiction, as opposed to white or any other kind of crime fiction, is to write about a body of writing that does not exist, or rather does not exist in isolation from, and has not developed outside or beyond the parameters of, these other kinds of crime fiction. Crime fiction, like all cultural practice, informs and is informed by its cultural and political contexts; so that just as the idea that 'blackness' or 'whiteness' ever described natural essences or biologically pure categories has been well and truly dismissed, the idea that the term 'black' (or indeed 'white') crime fiction refers, or has ever referred, to a rigidly defined and uniform practice, needs to be resisted. But this is a chapter on black crime fiction, nonetheless, and its very existence in a book of this nature testifies to the continuing significance of race as a trope of difference both in Britain and the United States. After all, who could argue with any conviction that categories like 'black' or 'white' in the US and Europe are suddenly of no consequence, when much of the anecdotal evidence points to the contrary?

Detective fiction has played and continues to play a complex and curious role in relation to the broader field of literature. On the one hand, detective fiction, like other genre fictions, is seen as a popular and lesser subset of high or 'proper' literature. On the other, the literature of detection, with its complex double narrative in which an absent story, that of a crime, is gradually reconstructed in the second story (the investigation), its uses of suspense, and its power to give aesthetic shape to the most brute of matter, has been seen as paradigmatic of literary narrative itself. Tzvetan Todorov's 'The Typology of Detective Fiction', which remains one of the most significant contributions to the field, sought to uphold the distinction between 'genre fiction' and 'literature' (as a question of structure rather than of value). However, his identification of the two orders of story, inquest and crime, as equivalents to the Russian formalist distinction between sjuzet and fabula (often translated as 'discourse' and 'story' respectively), makes the detective story, as Peter Brooks writes, 'the narrative of narratives', its classical structure a laying-bare of the structure of all narrative in that it dramatises the role of sjuzet and fabula and the nature of their relation.

Like the poor, in the world of crime fiction cops have always been with us. From the beginning we find Sergeant Cuff, Inspector Bucket, M. Lecoq, to say nothing of Poe's Prefect, or Doyle's Lestrade. In the Golden Age they multiply - Inspectors Alleyn, Appleby, Grant, and Parker, to name only a few. Across the Atlantic, Ellery Queen's dad was a cop, and even Dashiell Hammett portrayed police officers in a sympathetic light in his early stories. But nobody claims that the presence of a police officer makes police fiction. Indeed, in most detective fiction written before 1950, police officers play a decidedly subordinate role - as foils or representatives of the state clearing the boards at the end. Even if main characters wear badges, the fact that they are cops has no impact on their characterisation; they act like any other amateur or private detective, unfettered by bureaucracy and law.

One of the decisive steps in developing narrative cinema took place through the realisation of a dramatic crime on screen. Edwin S. Porter's commercial success with The Great Train Robbery (1903) rests on his understanding of a variety of different genres whilst bending and extending their conventions in order to produce something new and exciting. Moreover, this was a narrative experience which was very much in keeping with the headlines of the day. His film is often thought of as the beginning of the Western genre, but it is the crime that provides the narrative impetus. This chapter will look at films and television programmes which foreground crime and detection relying on mystery and adventure archetypes, but it acknowledges that during the twentieth century crime features in practically all commercial genres. Therefore, the choice of films and television programmes focuses on transitions in the representation of crime and detection on screen as a means to understand the determinants of these changes.

Just as it is possible to expand the idea of detective fiction back to episodes in the Bible, oriental tales, and folk riddles, so too the short story can be dissolved into any form of brief tale. But, as Walter Allen suggests, the emergence of the nineteenth-century short story is, precisely, a modern phenomenon. By the same token, the appearance of a new and modern kind of protagonist from the mid-nineteenth century, who has come to be called 'the detective', marks a distinction from earlier mysteries. In both cases, Edgar Allan Poe plays a crucial innovative role.

While the form initiated by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) flourished in America, the short story failed to make as great an impression in Britain until the end of the century, held back by the success of the three-decker or serialised novel. However, when it did take off, this was in no small part due to the success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories in George Newnes’s Strand Magazine (founded in 1891).

Paul uses a cluster of related terms to refer to his initial missionary preaching and to the proclamation at the heart of his letters. The nouns 'gospel' (euaggelion), 'word' (logos or rhema), 'preaching' (akoe), 'proclamation' (kerygma), and 'witness' (martyrion) are often used almost synonymously, as are the corresponding verbs.

The most important of these terms is undoubtedly the noun 'gospel', which is used 48 times in the undisputed letters; the verb 'to proclaim good news' is used 19 times. Paul probably inherited the distinctive early Christian use of 'gospel' from those who were followers of Jesus before his own call or conversion. Indeed the noun may well have been used by Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem and Antioch very soon after Easter.

The noun ‘gospel’ is rarely used in the Old Testament, and never in a religious context with reference to God’s good news. So early Christian use of this noun must be understood against the backdrop of current usage in the cities in which Christianity first took root. Literary evidence and inscriptions both confirm that the term ‘gospel’ was closely associated with the imperial cult in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. One particular inscription provides striking evidence.

Written to a Christian community with whom Paul has had a long and happy relationship, the letter to the Philippians is characterized by joy - a remarkable fact, since it was sent from prison, where its author was held on a capital charge. The letter expresses confidence about Paul's own future since, whether he lives or dies, Christ is with him (1:19-26), and about the Philippians, whom he describes as his joy and his crown (4:1), concerning whom he will boast on the day of judgment (2:16).

CONTEXT

Paul’s authorship of this letter has rarely been doubted. It was written to Christians in Philippi, a fairly small city of about 10,000 inhabitants in eastern Macedonia. In the first century ad, Philippi was important as an agricultural centre; it was a Roman colony, which meant that its citizens enjoyed considerable legal and property rights, and the city’s administration was modelled on that of Rome. Communications were reasonably easy by the standards of that time, since the city was conveniently placed on the Via Egnatia, along which one could travel westwards to the Adriatic coast, while the port of Neapolis lay ten miles to the south.

Among the major distinctives of Ephesians within the Pauline letter collection, there are two that make the most immediate impression. In terms of content, the concentrated attention it gives to the phenomenon of the church stands out, so that it is not at all surprising that this letter has been a key resource for theological reflection on the corporate nature of Christian existence. In terms of form, it is noticeable that discussion of the church appears in both halves of a document that does not have the usual Pauline letter body. Instead, between its letter opening (1:1, 2) and closing (6:21-4), Ephesians is divided into two lengthy parts – an expansion of the usual thanksgiving section that runs from 1:3 to 3:21, and an extended paraenesis or section of ethical exhortation that stretches from 4:1 to 6:20. In the former the letter's recipients are reminded of the privileges they enjoy as believers in Christ and members of the church and of their significant role in God's plan for the cosmos. In the latter they are summoned, in the light of their privileged status, to conduct their lives in an appropriate fashion in the church and in the world.

Ephesians is also distinctive as the most general of the Pauline letters. Since the usual strategy for interpreting Paul’s letters builds on the recognition that he carries out the pastoral application of his gospel in interaction with the particular circumstances and needs of his readers, Ephesians proves initially frustrating. It gives us extremely little information about its recipients or their specific circumstances.

Victorian leaders in church and state are typically memorialized in rarely read volumes of Life and Letters. Paul too is known today from an account of his life and a collection of his letters, but the book in which both are preserved will continue to be read for as long as Christianity endures. Paul's impact on this religion and the cultures it has largely shaped began with his mission and the thought it stimulated but has been mediated by the records of both and magnified by their location in the New Testament. Elijah's cruse offers an image of scripture steadily nourishing faith communities without exhausting its deposit of oil; the financial metaphor of a legacy providing not only a regular income but varying dividends that sometimes exceed the original investment hints at Paul's revolutionary potential.

Religions depend on and live from their traditions, some especially from their scriptural traditions. Contemporary Christianity is heir to what Paul achieved historically and owes much to the example of his life, the teaching and inspiration of his letters, and their impact on other influential figures in Christian history.

COLOSSIANS: GENERAL SITUATION

Author and readers

Colossians purports to be written as a letter by the apostle Paul, along with Timothy (1:1), through the services of a scribe (4:18). This letter is addressed to the Christians in Colossae, a city in Phrygia located inland from Ephesus on the south side of the river Lycus in western Asia Minor. Paul himself did not found the Colossian church (2:1); the letter suggests that his link to the Christians there may have developed through Epaphras, who had worked among them (1:7-8) and from whom he sends them greetings (4:12). According to the text, Paul composed the letter while in prison (4:3, 18; see 4:10; 1:24).

Date

If the letter was composed or endorsed by Paul, then it was written during one of Paul’s imprisonments, that is, either in Ephesus (during the mid 50s CE) or in Rome (which would imply a date around 60 CE, just prior to the earthquake which struck the Lycus region in 60–1 CE).

Throughout his career Paul was confronted with a number of complex moral and practical problems in the fledgling Christian communities which threatened their very survival. The early church regularly struggled with questions concerning Jews and Gentiles, male and female roles, sex and marriage, rich and poor, church order and worship, politics and slavery. To put it simply, the study of Paul's ethics considers his responses to these issues. These can in the main be found in the form of three types of paraenesis or moral exhortation scattered throughout his letters: traditional paraenesis, involving general moral themes such as holiness and love (e.g. Rom. 12:1-13:14); situational paraenesis, consisting of advice and exhortation on specific matters of pressing concern (e.g. 1 Cor. 5:1-11:1); and ecclesiastical paraenesis, directed to the institutional needs of the church and the ministry (e.g. 1 Cor. 11:2-14:40).

Paul’s moral teaching, however, cannot be isolated from the rest of his instruction. Doctrine and ethics are intimately related in Paul’s letters. It is commonly observed that some of the letters exhibit a basically two-fold structure (e.g. Romans, Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians), the first predominantly pertaining to matters of belief, the second primarily to Christian conduct. However, this is an oversimplification, for application is not postponed until the second half of Romans, for instance, being implicit in the exposition in chs. 1–2 and explicit in chs. 6 and 8.

The term 'Pastoral Epistles' applies to a group of three letters within the New Testament, namely, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. Already in the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) referred to 1 Timothy as 'a pastoral rule, which the apostle [Paul] committed to Timothy'. The designation of all three letters as the 'Pastoral Epistles', however, came much later. That is usually attributed to the German scholar Paul Anton (1661-1730), who used the term collectively in lectures and writings in the eighteenth century. The term is descriptive of the aim and contents of the three letters. Among other things, they provide instructions for pastoral oversight of congregations, and they speak of the qualities and duties of church leaders.

THE PASTORALS IN THE EARLY CHURCH

Each of the Pastorals begins by identifying Paul the apostle as its author. Each one goes on to represent itself as a communication from Paul to either Timothy or Titus, persons entrusted with obligations to teach and provide leadership within churches committed to their care. The letters provide further instructions in carrying out those obligations in the present and on into the future.

Paul's beliefs about Jesus were at the centre of his religious commitment, and any attempt to understand Paul's religious thought (or 'theology') has to make central what he believed about Jesus Christ. If considered apart from his religious life, however, these christological beliefs can come across as lifeless intellectual categories or even historical curiosities. In a proper portrayal, his christology should be seen in the context of his religious life, within which a passionate devotion to Christ is central.

One cannot read passages such as Phil. 3:7–11, for example, without sensing the depth of religious feeling towards Christ that seems to have characterized Paul’s Christian life. In this passage, Paul compares unfavourably all of his pre-conversion religious efforts and gains over against ‘the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’. He then posits as his aims to ‘gain Christ’ and ‘to know Christ’, amplified here in terms of intense aspirations to know ‘the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death’.

METHODOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS

Despite the objections of a small but vocal minority, it seems certain that Paul was not only Jewish but also a Pharisee, just as he himself claims:

Paul tells us himself that he was a Pharisee and that in his previous, pre-Christian life being a Pharisee was a prestigious attainment, which gave him the respect of his brothers in faith. He also says that he was a zealous Pharisee, pursuing or even persecuting the early Christian church, and that while he was a Pharisee, he felt himself to be blameless and righteous.

A ‘TROUBLER OF ISRAEL’

Paul has always been an uncomfortable and controversial figure in the history of Christianity. The accusation against the prophet Elijah by Israel's King Ahab, 'you troubler of Israel' (1 Ks. 18:17), could be levelled against Paul more fittingly than any other of the first Christians. He first appears on the public stage of first-century history as a Jewish 'zealot' (Acts 22:3), one who measured his 'zeal' by his attempt to violently 'destroy' (Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6) the embryonic movement within Second Temple Judaism, then best characterized as 'the sect of the Nazarenes' (Acts 24:5, 14; 28:22), two generations later as 'Christianity'. Following his conversion, when he turned round and joined those whom he had persecuted (Acts 9; Gal. 1:13-16), and when he then embarked on a highly personal mission to win Gentiles to the gospel of Christ (Rom. 11:13; 15:18-20), he displayed the same sort of passionate commitment, even 'zeal' (2 Cor. 11:2) on behalf of his converts and churches.

Such out-and-out commitment to his cause created tremendous resentment among his fellow Jews, including, not least, those Jews who, like him, had also come to believe in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. One of the chief reasons why we still have so many of his letters is that his teaching was quickly challenged by varying opponents from both within and without the churches he established; it was characteristic of Paul that he did not hesitate to respond vigorously to such challenges.