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Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts

Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts

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Hardback

£92.00

Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9781793637840
Number of Pages: 298
Width: 15.9 cm
Height: 23.9 cm

Examples of sexual violence and mentions of it appear with a disturbing level of frequency in the literature of early Christianity. This collection of essays explores these occurrences in canonical and noncanonical Christian texts from the first until the fifth centuries CE. Drawing from a range of interpretive lenses, scholars of early Christianity approach these writings with the goal of identifying how their authors employ the language of sexual assault, rape, and violence in order to formulate and support various rhetorical and theological claims. Individual chapters also address how and why these episodes of sexual violence have been ignored or, sometimes, read in a way that would make them less problematic. As a collection, Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts examines these texts carefully, ethically, and with an eye toward shining a light on the scourge of sexual violence that is so often manifest in both ancient and contemporary Christian communities.

Introduction

Christy Cobb and Eric Vanden Eykel

1. Sexual Slander and Moral Supremacy in the Elenchos

Tara Baldrick-Morrone

2. Danaids and Dirces in Roman Corinth: Sexualized Violence and Imperial Spectacle in 1 Clement

Chance E. Bonar

3. Euclia’s Story: Coordinated Sexual Assault, Violence, and Willfulness in the Acts of Andrew”

Christy Cobb

4. “Guardians of Chastity and Companions in Suffering”: The Didactic and Rhetorical Function of Rape Threats in Ambrose of Milan

Jennifer Collins-Elliott

5. Corinthian Concerns and Textual Assault

Arminta Fox

6. Sexual Violence, Martyrdom, and Enslavement in Augustine’s Letter 111

Midori Hartman

7. Virginity, Bestiality, and Virtue in Sozomen’s Account of the Attack of the Consecrated Virgins of Heliopolis

LaToya M. Leary Francis

8. Tertullian of Carthage, Sexualized Violence, and the “Abjection” of the Female Flesh

Travis W. Proctor

9. Paul Trading Barbs: Sexual Invective as Gendered Violence

Joshua M. Reno

10. Ambivalent Wedding Imagery in Matthew’s Jerusalem Narrative

Laura Robinson

11. Virgin Acts: Blinding, Castration, & the Violence of Male Chastity

Jeannie Sellick

12. Assaulting the Virgin: How the Protevangelium of James Hides Sexual Violence

Eric Vanden Eykel

13. Five Husbands: Slut-Shaming the Samaritan Woman

Meredith J. C. Warren

14. Revelation Naturalizes Sexual Violence and Readers Erase It: Unveiling the Son of God’s Rape of Jezebel

Stephen Young

About the Contributors

Christy Cobb, Eric Vanden Eykel

Christy Cobb is assistant professor of Christianity at University of Denver.

Eric Vanden Eykel is associate professor of religious studies at Ferrum College in Virginia.

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