Wansink’s volume, originally a PhD thesis under Wayne Meeks, is best divided into two parts: the first, an examination of literature from the Greco-Roman world surrounding prisons and the concept of imprisonment (covering sources from many different backgrounds over an 800 year span); and the second, an analysis of several features of Philippians and Philemon (as the two traditionally genuine Pauline letters among the Prison Epistles), in light of the ‘rhetoric of imprisonment’.

The first part of this volume is eye-opening, and should be read by any who wish to understanding something about prisons in the ancient world. Wansink is thorough in his examination of the sources and very good at knitting the many different types of literature into a consistent narrative. Reading his descriptions, one catches many glimpses of the potential exegetical pay-off of such material. However, this being said, there are aspects of his analysis of the ancient sources which perhaps need a little more attention.

The first of these is that, in his survey of literature spanning the entire Greco-Roman period, he naturally must take into many Christian works which post-date the Pauline epistles in question throughout the rest of the book. Although he does introduce a caveat to this fact, noting that each species of literature he uses as evidence has its own Tendenz, he does not develop this in his examination of the sources. There are further problems with drawing historical data from other types of literature discussed, such as the ancient romance or novel, but the most telling difficulties are with the late Christian literature. A second area of concern is the very fact that the Pauline corpus and Acts are left almost entirely out of the discussion of ancient prisons. This is reflective of the trend in NT criticism to disparage the usefulness of NT sources, but harmful, in the end, to Wansink’s otherwise very helpful epitome of ancient prisons.

Especially convincing in the second half of the book are Wansink’s discussions of Phil. 1:19–26 and the background and occasion of Philemon. Anyone dealing with these two areas in future will need to avail themselves of Wansink’s arguments here. Problems with the second half revolve mostly around the fact that this study is not as well organised, nor long enough, nor edited as well as it could have been (lack of attention to precision in grammatical and text-critical arguments is especially jarring), and so, several arguments or avenues of interest are not played out as fully as readers may hope. It is also unfortunate that the two halves of the book are not more closely related—the promise of exegetical pay-off, mentioned above, is not fulfilled as often as one might hope.

In closing, the very weaknesses of this study make it obvious that further investigation needs to be carried out in this area. Three specific topics come to mind: (1) an examination of the implications of the rhetoric of imprisonment for Ephesians, Colossians, and even 2 Timothy (these are briefly examined in the conclusion to the book, but one gets the definite impression that presupposition, rather than research, is operative there): (2) a full discussion of the relationship between honour/shame and imprisonment (Wansink briefly touches on this [pp. 135–36]. but not in nearly enough depth); and, finally, (3) a discussion of the relationship between the sort of open, house-arrest imprisonment that Paul is said to have experienced in Rome to the material Wansink examines concerning less open imprisonment.