Anthropologies of Continuity: The Body and Soul in Tertullian, Perpetua, and Early Christianity

Abstract

The importance of the physical body in early Christianity did not always imply bodily resurrection was the means of achieving continuity after death. Much recent scholarship in this area has been influenced by modern categories and by the resurgence of the significance of the body in ancient anthropological discourse and of resurrection in early Christianity. However, modern categories neither reflect the anthropological constructs of antiquity, nor a sufficiently variegated spectrum of views espoused by early Christians. The present article corrects prevailing generalizing tendencies in scholarship and presents a more nuanced picture. This is achieved via an analysis of key texts from third-century North Africa: the writings of Tertullian and the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas . Important though it was, bodily resurrection was only one view of how material continuity could be achieved, even within texts traditionally denominated as “orthodox.”