Research Catalog

Reading renunciation : asceticism and Scripture in early Christianity

Title
Reading renunciation : asceticism and Scripture in early Christianity / Elizabeth A. Clark.
Author
Clark, Elizabeth A. (Elizabeth Ann), 1938-2021
Publication
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1999.

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TextUse in library BV5023 .C53 1999Off-site

Details

Description
420 pages; 23 cm
Summary
A study of how asceticism was promoted through Biblical interpretation, Reading Renunciation uses contemporary literary theory to unravel the writing strategies of the early Christian authors. Not a general discussion of early Christian teachings on celibacy and marriage, the book is a close examination, in the author's words, of how "the Fathers' axiology of abstinence informed their interpretation of Scriptural texts and incited the production of ascetic meaning." Elizabeth Clark begins with a survey of scholarship concerning early Christian asceticism that is designed to orient the nonspecialist. Section Two is organized around potentially troubling issues posed by Old Testament texts that demanded skillful handling by ascetically inclined Christian exegetes. The third section, "Reading Paul," focuses on the hermeneutical problems raised by I Corinthians 7, and the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles. Elizabeth Clark's remarkable work will be of interest to scholars of late antiquity, religion, literary theory, and history. -- Publisher's website.
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Criticism, interpretation, etc.
  • History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references ([375]-400) and indexes.
Contents
Asceticism in late ancient Christianity -- Reading in the early Christian world -- The profits and perils of figurative exegesis -- Exegetical and rhetorical strategies for ascetic reading -- Three models of reading renunciation -- From reproduction to defamilialization -- From ritual to Askēsis -- The exegesis of divorce -- I Corinthians 7 in early Christian exegesis -- From Paul to the pastorals.
ISBN
  • 0691005117
  • 9780691005119
  • 0691005125
  • 9780691005126
LCCN
98055313
OCLC
  • ocm40621781
  • 40621781
  • SCSB-800179
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library