The Meanings and Morality of Scenting the Body

Art Scents ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 265-277
Author(s):  
Larry Shiner
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Early Christian

Chapter 13 begins with the views of Plato, Aristotle, Roman moralists, and the early Christian theologians on the ethics of wearing perfumes, views that have continued to reverberate down into the present. After briefly considering the absence of such moral suspicions in Asian and Arab-Islamic cultures, the chapter examines conflicting contemporary ideas about the meanings and morality of scenting the body. Dividing the contemporary meanings and motivations into externally and internally directed, the chapter first examines the objections to externally directed perfume wearing aimed at seduction, masking, or artifice. A second section considers such internally directed and motivated meanings as identity, pleasure, and spirituality.

And I Became Male

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Christian

This chapter discusses the metaphor of the martyr as athlete found both in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis and in many early Christian writers such as Tertullian. It focuses on key images and elements in Perpetua’s fourth vision in which she “becomes male,” and the theological, philosophical, theoretical, and social contexts that reveal Perpetua’s role as a woman and the portrayal of her as an athlete. It discusses the traits of endurance [patientia in Cicero and hypomonê in Greek texts] and suffering that are manifested in martyr athletes such as Perpetua and Blandina and Augustine’s discussion of the body in connection with female martyrs.

The Resurrection Body

2019 ◽  
pp. 660-674
Author(s):  
Taylor G. Petrey
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Early Christian

This chapter surveys the relevant ancient Christian and Jewish texts on the resurrection that discuss gender and sexuality and the scholarship about these topics. It provides particular emphasis on the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and the early Christian reception of their ideas in the second through fourth centuries. The saying of Jesus that those who are resurrected shall be “as angels” is central to early Christian theologies of the body and sexuality. Paul’s discussion of the nature of the resurrected body and the importance of the parts also informs how early Christians developed these ideas. The tension in early Christian writing about the resurrection was between those who emphasized continuity between the mortal and resurrected self, and those who emphasized a radical change between the two. Further, the chapter provides an overview to major scholarly methods and approaches to studying the resurrection, including feminist scholarship.

Contesting Aristotle: Science, Theology and the Resurrection of the Body in Methodius of Olympus’ De Resurrectione and the Dialogue of Adamantius

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Dawn LaValle Norman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Entire Text

Abstract The contest over the resurrection of the body used the scientific authority of Aristotle as ammunition on both sides. Past scholars have read Methodius of Olympus as displaying an anti-Aristotelian bias. In contrast, through close reading of the entire text with attention to characterization and development of argument, I prove that Methodius of Olympus’ dialogue the De Resurrectione utilizes Aristotelian biology as a morally neutral tool. To put this into higher relief, I compare Methodius’ dialogue with the anonymous Dialogue of Adamantius, a text directly dependent upon the Methodius’ De Resurrectione, but which rejects arguments based on scientific reasoning. Reading Methodius’ De Resurrectione with greater attention to the whole and putting it in the context of its nearest parallel text retells the traditional story of early Christian resistance to Aristotle. Methodius of Olympus’ characters, although they view scientific knowledge as subordinate to philosophy, see it as neutral in and of itself.

A New Type of Early Christian Ampulla

1971 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 243-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Body ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
General Similarity ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Common ◽  
Shape And Size ◽  
Late Roman

A Type of small pottery flask which has so far received little attention from students of the Early Christian period appears regularly on sites of sixth- to seventh-century date throughout the eastern Mediterranean. It is fusiform in shape, with a short tubular mouth marked off from the body by a slight ridge, and tapers at the bottom to a roughly truncated point (Fig. I). In view of its general similarity in shape to the common fusiform unguentarium of Hellenistic times I have suggested elsewhere the name Late Roman Unguentarium for the type. The height of complete speciments may be estimated at c. 18–21 cm.; occasionally one meets larger examples (with small flat bases). Such a flask was obviously not meant to be stood up on its base, but is of a convenient shape and size to be clasped in the hand. One may assume that it was provided with a stopper to keep in the contents (presumably of some perishable material, since no examples survive); the ridge below the mouth may have served to secure this.

scholarly journals How the Body of Lazarus Helps to Solve a Pauline Problem

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-603
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Strawbridge
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Locus Classicus

While the locus classicus for early Christian arguments concerning resurrection of the flesh is Paul's first Corinthian letter, the statement in 15.50 that ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ complicates early Christian understandings of resurrection and its form. Such explicit denial of fleshly inheritance and resurrection within Paul's writings leads to widely conflicting interpretations of this Corinthian passage. Consequently, early Christian writers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian and Augustine engaged other New Testament texts such as John 11 in order to subvert the claim of 1 Cor 15.50 and develop their argument for fleshly resurrection.

The Parousia of Paul at Iconium

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 225-251
Author(s):  
Trevor Luke
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Body ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Creative Production

AbstractThis article explores the parousia reception, instead of the arena, as a locus for spectacle production in the Roman Empire, specifically in certain passages of early Christian literature. Not only did Christians apply the familiar image of parousia to their eschatology, but they also produced new truths about empire and the location of legitimate authority through their creative production of distinctive parousia spectacles. Through these literary spectacles, old truths about the body and authority were challenged as Christians developed a cosmology for the parousia spectacle that both transformed parousia and also served as a new hermeneutic for interpreting such ceremonies. The arrival of Paul at Iconium represented a radical reinterpretation of parousia in that it shifted the locus of spectation from the emperor to the individual Christian. In producing and consuming their own parousia spectacles, Christians participated in imperial discourse.

“A Heart of Many Chambers”: The Theological Hermeneutics of Legal Multivocality

2015 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven D. Fraade
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
The One

Given the multiplicity of legal interpretations and opinions, the question of the place of legal debate within early rabbinic literature of late antiquity—both as textual practice and as hermeneutical and legal theory—has occupied a particularly busy space within recent scholarship. This question centers on several issues of broad significance for the history of rabbinic Judaism and its literature: Does this phenomenon (if we can speak of it in the singular) represent a defining characteristic of rabbinic culture overall, or rather an aspect better attributed to specific times, places, and rabbinic “schools”? Did it emerge and develop internally within rabbinic Judaism, or is it, on the one hand, the continuation of antecedents in the pre-rabbinic, late Second Temple period, or, on the other hand, the result of external influences or pressures (e.g., Greco-Roman or early Christian) of a later time? Does such legal multivocality reflect the actual nature of either/both rabbinic jurisprudence or/and pedagogy, or the editorial choices of the later anonymous redactors of the composite and anthological texts that have come down to us (or, as I shall demonstrate, both)? Finally, what are its hermeneutical and theological underpinnings (as well as sociopolitical ramifications)? While these four questions will frame what follows, it is the latter two that will particularly demand our attention. They will be addressed, whether explicitly or implicitly, in several comparative textual analyses that will constitute the body of this article.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document