Children in the New Testament

This article situates recent scholarship related to children and metaphors of childhood within a global context. It attends to the importance of childist criticism, located primarily in Europe and the United States, in the growth of study of children in the New Testament in recent decades, while attending to parallel work on the role of children in the New Testament, particularly in relation to contextualized readings, in the global South. Specific attention is given to the use of language in defining children and childhood both within and outside the biblical context; overviews of biblical childhood; and the roles and representations of children in New Testament texts. The essay concludes by looking forward to future opportunities for research and collaboration.