This is a significantly revised version of Heath’s Cambridge PhD thesis. In it, she seeks to demonstrate that Paul operated with a “visual piety” that he understood had the power to transform relationships—both with God and with one’s neighbour. As such, Heath is aiming “to place St Paul on the map of Visual Studies, not only for scholars of visuality, but also for scholars of the Bible” (p. 10).

The book is divided into three parts. Part one situates her study in the context of the discipline of visuality. In this, Heath explores the underemployment of visuality as a discipline in biblical studies and argues for its potential significance. Part two of the book examines Greco-Roman and Jewish visual cultures, particularly where these are relevant to Paul. Finally, part three, the bulk of the book, examines Paul’s letters. Her focus here centres on the connection between transformation (or metamorphosis) and beholding. She does so through the lens of 2 Cor 3:18: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being metamorphosed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” This functions as the key text since in it Paul beings together the two themes of transformation (metamorphosis) and visuality (beholding). In this section of the book, Heath examines the verse in its literary context of 2 Corinthians, and also in its relationship to Romans. The two letters suggest comparison due to their resonances in language, themes and vocabulary (e.g., the verb μεταμορφόω occurring only in Paul in 2 Cor 3:18 and Rom 12:2).

Heath’s essential argument is that we should give more interpretive weight to Paul’s visual language. The contention of 2 Cor 3:18 that the one who beholds in a mirror (κατοπτριζόμενοι) is transformed must not simply be reduced to hearing or reading the gospel. Nor can this transformation by beholding concept be explained as simply a mystical encounter or ethical renewal. Rather, this beholding must maintain its innately visual character. The importance of this overtly visual beholding is found elsewhere in Paul. So, he directs the Corinthians’ gaze to his own flesh as a place where Jesus’s death is made manifest and his life as a place where Jesus’s life is revealed (2 Cor 4:10). In Romans, he points his readers to Jesus’s blood displayed on the ἱλαστήριον (Rom 3:25) and describes Abraham as “beholding his and Sarah’s necrotic flesh” (p. 241). These examples “provide visual points of focus for the reflective Christian to contemplate as markers in his or her world” (p. 241). These images focus on the Christian’s encounter with death and through “Paul’s teaching, the Christian eye learns to contemplate such deathly appearances in terms of Jesus’ own death” and of the life to come (p. 242). Heath contends that this mode of reading Paul actually lays a foundation for later developments in “Christian asceticism and the cult of relics” (p. 242).

This conclusion regarding how Paul may be seen as a right foundation for these later practices, I think, highlights my central concern with Heath’s overall thesis, namely that she downplays the connection between the visual motif in Paul and his proclamation of the gospel. So, while Paul does, indeed, direct his readers’ gaze to his own body in 2 Cor 4:10, he immediately puts this in the context of his speaking (4:13). Similarly, he also applies visual language to the hearing of the gospel in 4:1–6. So, the proclaimed (see 4:2, 5) gospel is veiled because unbelievers’ minds are blinded so they cannot see (with their minds) the light of the gospel. Thus, there is a blending of aural (proclamation) and visual (blinding) imagery that suggests a more complex relationship than Heath argues for.

Nevertheless, this is a stimulating and helpful study that explores an important but underdeveloped theme in a creative, fresh way. Too often it seems that studies on Paul offer either prosaic restatements of traditional readings or creative interpretations that have little or no connection with the text itself. Heath, however, offers a genuinely creative study that arises from Paul’s own words and has highlighted an important but vastly underexplored theme. As such, her work demands a wide reading, particularly among those working in the field of Pauline studies.

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