This article was published in JBL 140/2 (2021) 369–390, copyright © 2021 by the Society of Biblical Literature. To purchase copies of this issue or to subscribe to JBL, please contact SBL Customer Service by phone at 866-727-9955 [toll-free in North America] or 404-727-9498, by fax at 404-727-2419, or visit the online SBL Store at www.sbl-site.org. Civilized Christ-Followers among Barbaric Cretans and Superstitious Judeans: Negotiating Ethnic Hierarchies in Titus 1:10–14 t. christopher hoklotubbe choklotubbe@cornellcollege.edu Cornell College, Mount Vernon, IA 52314 In Titus 1:10–14, “Paul” describes his opponents as belonging to the notorious circumcision faction, infatuated with “Judean myths,” and as embodying the worst qualities of Cretans. Such invective, which would be considered racist according to modern sensibilities, is made more intelligible when contextualized among ancient ethnographic discourses. In this study, I interpret Titus 1:10–14 in conversation with sociologists and postcolonial theorists who have detailed how subjugated groups both are shaped by and (re)shape an implicit ethnic hier- archy established by the dominant society. For example, accounts like Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks introduce us to how ethnic minorities appro- priate and denigrate the characteristics and practices of other ethnic groups in order to represent themselves as “civilized” before the colonial “gaze”—ofen at the expense of other ethnic groups with whom they are in competition for limited recognition and power. I also situate “Paul’s” attempt to represent Christ- followers as civilized possessors of paideia (in contrast to barbaric Cretans and superstitious Judeans) within the competitive cultural domain of the so-called Second Sophistic and imperial Roman representations of Christ-followers as barbaric, superstitious, and potentially seditious. In Titus 1:10–14, an anonymous author writing in the name of Paul deploys an invective against Cretans that trades in denigrating ethnic stereotypes. Insofar JBL 140, no. 2 (2021): 369–390 https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1402.2021.8 369 My core arguments in this article were first presented at the Annual Meeting of the New England and Eastern Canada Region of the Society of Biblical Literature at Brown University in April 2016. My deep gratitude extends to friends and reviewers who improved my argument, including Lisa Cleath, Nathan DesRosiers, Philip A. Harland, Karen L. King, Harry O. Maier, Roberto Mata, Gregory Mobley, Christopher Stroup, Daniel Ullucci, Lawrence M. Wills, and Korinna Zamfir. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.