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Columbia Dissertations and Theses > Doctoral Dissertations
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| Author(s): | Knust, Jennifer Wright |
| Title: | Abandoned to lust : the politics of sexual slander in early Christian discourse |
| Physical Description: | xi, 341 leaves, bound. |
| Issue Date: | 2001 |
| Description: | Department: Religion. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 2001. |
| Bookmark as: | http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:4349 |
| Full Text (ProQuest): | /ac/proxit.jsp?url=http://gateway.proquest.com/ope... |
| Abstract: | This project considers the significance of accusations of sexual licentiousness lodged by various early Christian authors against non-Christians and against fellow Christian rivals within the context of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish polemics. Following a discussion of methods and approaches, the dissertation begins with a survey of Greek and Roman invective traditions. A "good" man, Greek and Latin orators argued, will control himself and his family, but a "bad" or "slavish" man indulges in sexual excess and other extravagances. Such behavior makes him "soft" or "womanly," and unfit to rule. Early Christian authors picked up on these rhetorics, turning them to their advantage and combining them with Jewish claims about the fornications of the Gentiles. Authors such as Paul, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the second-century "apologists" suggested that Christians alone possess self-control. Indeed, non-Christians were said to be incapable of virtue, an argument that not only drew boundaries between "us" and "them" but also sought to undermine non-Christian claims about their own prestige and position. Assertions that empire and city are upheld by the virtue of ruler and subject were attacked with a counter-claim that Christians, and Christians alone overcome desire. This analysis of early Christian arguments regarding the sexual depravity of "the world" is followed by a discussion of Christian charges against fellow Christians. "False" Christians were accused of wicked desire, fornication, adultery, and demonic influence by authors such as John of Patmos, Justin Martyr, and Ireneaus of Lyons. These accusations, though frequently taken at face value, ought to be rendered suspect by the prevalence of similar charges in Greek invective, the metonymic equivalence of sexual depravity and apostasy in biblical and early Jewish writings, and the repeated insistence that Christian faith is marked, above all, by the control of desire. Having claimed self-control for themselves, the accusation of sexual licentiousness may have served as a particularly effective weapon for eliminating rival Christian viewpoints. Thus, assertions about the sexual self-control of the "true Christians" versus the utter degradation of non-Christians and the "heretics" can be read as part of a contentious project of self-definition among the earliest Christians. |
| Collection(s): | Doctoral Dissertations |
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