Research Catalog

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.

Items in the Library & Off-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.

Subject

• Bible > Criticism, interpretation, etc. > History > Early church, ca. 30-600
• Bible
• Bible > Criticism, interpretation, etc. > History > Early Church, 30-600
• 30-600
• Asceticism > History > Early church, ca. 30-600
• 11.51 early Christianity
• Asceticism > Early church
• Ascetisme
• Vroege kerk
• Bijbel
• Asceticism > History > Early Church, 30-600
• Christian life > History > Early church, ca. 30-600

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