Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity

Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Nathan D. Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
By exploring gender and identity in fourth-century Cappadocia, where bishops used a rhetoric of contest to align with classical Greek masculinity, this book contributes to discussions about how gender, identity formation, and materiality shaped episcopal office and theology in late antiquity.

Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity

Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Nathan D. Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
By exploring gender and identity in fourth-century Cappadocia, where bishops used a rhetoric of contest to align with classical Greek masculinity, this book contributes to discussions about how gender, identity formation, and materiality shaped episcopal office and theology in late antiquity.

Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity

Christianity and the Contest for Manhood in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Nathan D. Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009093142
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In this book, Nathan Howard explores gender and identity formation in fourth-century Cappadocia, where pro-Nicene bishops used a rhetoric of contest that aligned with conventions of classical Greek masculinity. Howard demonstrates that epistolary exhibitions served as 'a locus for' asserting manhood in the fourth century. These performances illustrate how a culture of orality that had defined manhood among civic elites was reframed as a contest whereby one accrued status through merits of composition. Howard shows how the Cappadocians' rhetoric also reordered the body and materiality as components of a maleness over which they moderated. He interrogates fourth-century theological conflict as part of a rhetorical battle over claims to manhood that supported the Cappadocians' theology and cast doubt on non-Trinitarian rivals, whom they cast as effeminate and disingenuous. Investigating accounts of pro-Nicene protagonists overcoming struggles, Howard establishes that tropes based on classical standards of gender contributed to the formation of Trinitarian orthodoxy.

The Manly Eunuch

The Manly Eunuch PDF Author: Mathew Kuefler
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226457390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The question of masculinity formed a key part of the intellectual life of late antiquity and was crucial to the development of Christian society. This idea is at the heart of Mathew Kuefler's new book, which revisits the Roman Empire during the third and fifth centuries of the common era. Kuefler argues that the collapse of the Roman army, an increasingly autocratic government, and growing restrictions on the traditional rights of men within marriage and sexuality all led to an endemic crisis in masculinity: men of Roman aristocracy, who had always felt themselves to be soldiers, statesmen, and the heads of households, became, by their own definition, unmanly. The cultural and demographic success of Christianity during this epoch lay in the ability of its leaders to recognize and respond to this crisis. Drawing on the tradition of gender ambiguity in early Christian teachings, which included Jesus's exhortation that his followers "make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven," Christian writers and thinkers crafted a new masculine ideal, one that took advantage of the changing social realities in Rome, inverted the Roman model of manliness, and helped solidify Christian ideology by reinstating the masculinity of its adherents.

From Shame to Sin

From Shame to Sin PDF Author: Kyle Harper
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.

Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism

Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism PDF Author: Bjorn Krondorfer
Publisher: SCM Press
ISBN: 0334049024
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Bjorn Krondorfer, one of the leading scholars in this field, has collected 35 key texts that have shaped this field within the wider area of the study of gender, religion and culture. The texts in this critical reader engage actively and critically with the position of men in society and church, men's privileged relation to the sacred and to religious authority, the ideals of masculinity as engendered by religious discourse, and alternative trajectories of being in the world, whether spiritually, relationally or sexually. Each of the texts is introduced by the editor and accompanied by bibliographies that make this the ideal tool for study.

Begotten, Not Made

Begotten, Not Made PDF Author: Virginia Burrus
Publisher: Figurae: Reading Medieval Cult
ISBN: 9780804739733
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The author argues that Nicene trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the late Roman period. She analyses works by the fourth-century bishops Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan and considers their opinions from a (feminist) theological and theoretical perspective.

Late Ancient Christianity

Late Ancient Christianity PDF Author: Virginia Burrus
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451419465
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The particular excitement of this volume lies in its focus on the everyday realities of Christians' lives in the era of Christian ascendancy and Roman decline. Popular fiction, childrearing and toys, rituals of inclusion, the beginning of veneration of saints and shunning of heretics, the ascetic impulse, food practices—all these and more lend color and texture to the story of a "people's" Christianity in this formative stage.

Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes

Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes PDF Author: Buket Kitapçı Bayrı
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900441584X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes: Moving Frontiers, Shifting Identities in the Land of Rome (13th-15th Centuries) focuses on the perceptions of geopolitical and cultural change, which was triggered by the arrival of Turkish Muslim groups into the territories of the Byzantine Empire at the end of the eleventh century, through intersecting stories transmitted in Turkish Muslim warrior epics and dervish vitas, and late Byzantine martyria. It examines the Byzantines’ encounters with the newcomers in a shared story-world, here called “land of Rome,” as well as its perception, changing geopolitical and cultural frontiers, and in relation to these changes, the shifts in identity of the people inhabiting this space. The study highlights the complex relationship between the character of specific places and the cultural identities of the people who inhabited them. See inside the book

Great Events in Religion [3 volumes]

Great Events in Religion [3 volumes] PDF Author: Florin Curta
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1514

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Book Description
This three-volume set presents fundamental information about the most important events in world religious history as well as substantive discussions of their significance and impact. This work offers readers a broad and thorough look at the greatest events in world religious history, covering a wide range of religions, time periods, and areas around the globe. The entries present authoritative information and informed viewpoints written by expert contributors that enable readers to easily learn about the chief events in religious history, help them to better understand the course of world history, and promote a greater respect for culturally diverse religious traditions. The first of the three volumes covers religion from the preliterary world through around AD 600; the second, the post-classical era from 600 to 1450; and the third, the modern era from 1450 to the present. Each volume begins with a substantive introduction that discusses the history of world religions during the period covered by the volume. The chronologically ordered entries overview each event, place it in historical context, and identify the reasons for its enduring significance.

Signs of Virginity

Signs of Virginity PDF Author: Michael Rosenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190845910
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Although the theme of bloodied nuptial sheets seems pervasive in western culture, its association with female virginity is uniquely tied to a brief passage in the book of Deuteronomy detailing the procedure for verifying a young woman's purity; it seldom, if ever, appears outside of Abrahamic traditions. In Signs of Virginity, Michael Rosenberg examines the history of virginity testing in Judaism and early Christianity, and the relationship of these tests to a culture that encourages male sexual violence. Deuteronomy's violent vision of virginity has held sway in Jewish and Christian circles more or less ever since. However, Rosenberg points to two authors-the rabbinic collective that produced the Babylonian Talmud and the early Christian thinker Augustine of Hippo-who, even as they perpetuate patriarchal assumptions about female virginity, nonetheless attempt to subvert the emphasis on sexual dominance bequeathed to them by Deuteronomy. Unlike the authors of earlier Rabbinic and Christian texts, who modified but fundamentally maintained and even extended the Deuteronomic ideal, the Babylonian Talmud and Augustine both construct alternative models of female virginity that, if taken seriously, would utterly reverse cultural ideals of masculinity. Indeed this vision of masculinity as fundamentally gentle, rather than characterized by brutal and violent sexual behavior, fits into a broader idealization of masculinity propagated by both authors, who reject what Augustine called a "lust for dominance" as a masculine ideal.