five points

a) the epistles are works that are intended to settle questions of identity construction in emerging communities.
b) these questions of identity construction often settle on binary oppoistions though the questions originally placed are intensely ambigious, and often hybridic
c) the problem in settling these binaries or even constructing hybrids  (i.e Queer/Rigidly Phallocentric, Active Sexual/Passive Sexual, Animal/Human, Leader/Follower, Woman/Leader, Hairy/Not Hairy,
Jewish/Something Else) is that one side wins--which means that their is a haunting--that the "lesser pairs" leave residue of conquest. 

d) these residue of conflict often suggest that non-cannonical sources work as "steam valves" that allow for alternative discourses 

e) the question becomes a rzhimoatic one, then---how to absorb or construct narratives that refuse those heirarchies?