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The Body and Society
Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity
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The Body and Society
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is ideal for readers interested in religion and spirituality, early Christian history, theological studies, and the social dynamics of antiquity. Scholars and students exploring gender, asceticism, and the anthropology of religion will find it particularly illuminating.
Focuses on the practice of permanent sexual renunciation-continence, celibacy, and life-long virginity - in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries AD. This book questions how theological views on sexuality and the human body both mirrored and shaped the uneven relationships between men and women.
A new edition of the work that radically changed the way scholars think about the early Christian church.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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Description
First published in 1988, Peter Brown's The Body and Society was a groundbreaking study of the marriage and sexual practices of early Christians in the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. To mark the twentieth anniversary of its publication, Columbia will make available an edition that features a new introduction by the author. Brown will discuss the reception of the book since its debut in the scholarly community as well as the influential thought and literature it has produced.
The Body and Society focuses on the practice of permanent sexual renunciation—continence, celibacy, and life-long virginity—in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries AD. Brown follows early Christians' strange, disturbing preoccupations with sexuality and the body in great detail, tracing the reflection and controversy these notions generated among the period's great writers.
Brown questions how theological views on sexuality and the human body both mirrored and shaped not only the uneven relationships between men and women, but also the complex interactions between the Roman aristocracy and their slaves, and between the married and the celibate. Figures discussed include Tertullian, Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, the Desert Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, among others.
Topics covered include asceticism and society in the Eastern Empire; martyrdom and prophecy; Gnostic spiritual guidance; promiscuity among the men and women of the church; monks and marriage in Egypt; the ascetic life of women in fourth-century Jerusalem; and—in order to ground the subject in a historical context—the body and society in the early Middle Ages.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Reviewers have praised The Body and Society for its grace, clarity, and scholarly erudition. The New York Times Book Review commended its ability to unify diverse complex elements into a meaningful whole. W. H. C. Frend in the New York Review of Books highlighted the book as a tour de force demonstrating mastery of six centuries of history. Christianity Today called it a profound exploration of embodiment, celibacy, and chastity in early Christianity.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780231144070
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 03 July 2008
Country: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Edition: Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 0g
Pages: 568
About the Author
Peter Brown, formerly professor of classics and history at the University of California, Berkeley, is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University and the most prominent scholar of late antiquity (between 250 and 800 A.D.). He is the author of a dozen books, including Augustine of Hippo, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World, The Rise of Western Christendom, and Poverty and Leadership in the Late Roman Empire.
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