Demonic bodies and the dark ecologies of early Christian culture /
"Drawing insights from gender studies and the environmental humanities, Demonic Bodies analyzes how ancient Christians constructed the Christian body through its relations to demonic adversaries. Case studies on New Testament texts, early Christian church fathers, and "Gnostic" writin...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2022]
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| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "Drawing insights from gender studies and the environmental humanities, Demonic Bodies analyzes how ancient Christians constructed the Christian body through its relations to demonic adversaries. Case studies on New Testament texts, early Christian church fathers, and "Gnostic" writings trace how early followers of Jesus construed the demonic body in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways, as both embodied and bodiless, "fattened" and ethereal, heavenly and earthbound. Across this diversity of portrayals, however, demons consistently functiond as personfications of "deviant" bodily practices such as "magical" rituals, immoral sexual acts, gluttony, and "pagan" religious practices. This demonization served an exclusionary function whereby Christian writers marginalized fringe Christian groups by linking their ritual activities to demonic modes of (dis)embodiment. Demonic Bodies demonstrates, therefore, that the formation of early Christian cultures was part of the shaping of broader Christian "ecosystems," which in turn informed Christian experiences of their own embodiment and community"-- |
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| Item Description: | Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Religious Studies, 2017, under the title: Rulers of the sea. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 271 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197581193 0197581196 9780197581179 019758117X 0197581188 9780197581186 |