The Celibate Athlete

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-490
Author(s):  
Jared Secord
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Sexual Abstinence ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Lifestyle Choice ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Literature

In this article, I propose a new way of interpreting athletic metaphors in early Christian literature. I argue that the metaphorical figure of the athlete would have evoked for ancient readers not simply the ideas of competitive struggle, but also the idea of sexual abstinence, a lifestyle choice closely associated with athletes in the Greco-Roman world. The article collects and discusses evidence for the practice of athletic celibacy, drawing together a disparate collection of medical and philosophical literature, with Christian sources, from the second and third centuries CE. It demonstrates that athletic celibacy was a familiar concept in this period, and that many observers were interested in the methods that athletes used to control their sexual urges, including applying lead plates to their loin muscles. The treatment of this evidence suggests that there was greater interest in sexual abstinence among non-Christians than has previously been understood, and that athletes were implicated in controversies about whether or not total abstention from sex was a healthy lifestyle choice. As such, I argue that it is plausible to regard the athletic imagery of early Christians not only as a metaphorical comparison between two kinds of strident individuals, but also as advocacy for the celibate life as the most healthful lifestyle.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
New Religion

This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.

Shedding Light on Early Christian Domestic Cult: Characteristics and New Perspectives in the Context of Archaeological Findings

2017 ◽  
Vol 18-19 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-236
Author(s):  
Verena Fugger
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Archaeological Perspective ◽  
Domestic Cult

Abstract Focusing primarily on findings from late antique housing structures in Asia Minor this paper approaches the complex phenomenon of early Christian domestic cult from an archaeological perspective. In correlation to pagan house sanctuaries from the east and west of the Greco-Roman world, Christian domestic cult sites are analyzed according to architectural and decorative features as well as to their spatial distribution in the house. Thereby the synopsis of already well known monuments and recent archaeological findings reveals a great diversity of different characteristics of Christian domestic cult sites which has not been taken into account yet.

scholarly journals Diakonos and prostatis: Women’s patronage in Early Christianity

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
Patronage System

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life.

Sin in the New Testament

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Siker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Message

This book examines what the different New Testament writings have to say about sin within the broader historical and theological contexts of first-century Christianity. These contexts include both the immediate world of Judaism out of which early Christianity emerged, as well as the larger Greco-Roman world into which Christianity quickly spread as an increasingly Gentile religious movement. The Jewish sacrificial system associated with the Jerusalem Temple was important for dealing with human sin, and early Christians appropriated the language and imagery of sacrifice in describing the salvific importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Greco-Roman understandings of sin as error or ignorance played an important role in the spreading of the Christian message to the Gentile world. The book details the distinctive portraits of sin in each of the canonical Gospels in relation to the life and ministry of Jesus. Beyond the Gospels the book develops how the letters of Paul and other early Christian writers address the reality of sin, again primarily in relation to the revelatory ministry of Jesus.

The Tragic Christian Self

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-135
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
Literary Culture ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Rhetorical Construction ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Autobiographical Poetry

This chapter capitalizes on a substantial body of recent research on the literary and rhetorical construction of “lives” (especially “holy lives” in hagiography) and “selves” (moral subjects and agents) in the late-ancient Greco-Roman World. It explores a whole other form of tragical mimesis in early Christian literary culture, namely, the rhetorical and theological profiling of the Christian self as a “tragic self,” a self consciously aware of its own finitude, mortality, and vulnerability to tragic circumstance. The bulk of the chapter closely examines three powerful autobiographical profiles of the tragic Christian self articulated by three of the most prolific late-ancient Christian authors: Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. While each writer, especially Gregory Nazianzen in his autobiographical poetry, rhetorically reconstructed his own life as an unfolding tragedy, each also developed an objective profile of the tragic Christian self that could apply more broadly to Christian experience of life in the flesh. Though these writers all revere the goodness and beauty of creation, and the integrity of the imago Dei, and though they fervently assert the providence and wisdom of the Creator, there is neither naïvety nor quixotism about the arena of creation in which life is lived, endured, enjoyed, the arena where confrontation of evil and suffering is endemic.

Laying Out the Fleece

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Near East ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Different Cultures

Chapter 3 approaches Gideon’s story in three different ways: the role of divine signs in the ancient Near East; the portrait of Gideon as a hesitant solider in need of divine assurance in the biblical stories of Judg 6:36–40, 7:1–8, and 7:9–15; and the ways that early Christian exegetes interpreted Gideon’s requests for divine assurance. The chapter continues to trace how masculinity is constructed in different cultures, including the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity, where men were encouraged to fight spiritual battles rather than physical battles. These interpretations serve as a powerful reminder that masculinity is always “in crisis,” tending toward transformation and change, depending on cultural context.

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