Sexuality In Early Christianity Research Articles

Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome by Anthony Corbeill

Reviewed by: Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome by Anthony Corbeill Benjamin H. Dunning Anthony Corbeill Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015 Pp. 216. $45.00. In Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome, classicist Anthony Corbeill delves into an aspect of gender and sexuality in antiquity that has received relatively little discussion, especially in early Christian studies: the role that grammatical gender—masculine, feminine, neuter—played for ancient people in organizing the world according to categories of sexual difference. Against the commonplace that “[t]he grammatical gender of inanimate objects . . . is a convenient linguistic convention, having no correspondence with any sort of imagined sexual characteristics of those objects in the real world” (1), Corbeill deftly demonstrates the degree to which rhetorically astute Latin speakers engaged the sexual connotations carried by grammatical gender, both shaping their speech in ways that exploited it and, in turn, producing speech always already shaped in accordance with its parameters. The larger story that the book recounts is a diachronic one, though told primarily from the perspective of Roman grammarians of the late Republic and the Empire such as Marcus Terentius Varro. Chapter One explores a problem that worried the Roman grammarians: instances of Latin nouns displaying variable or uncertain gender in texts of the received tradition. In most cases, ancient perceptions of the “nature” of a given noun (i.e., its natural sex) combined with indications from morphology and usage were enough to settle the matter. But in cases where ambiguity stubbornly persisted, the grammarians recurred to a fourth and more elusive category—auctoritas. Here, Corbeill argues, ancient Latin scholars imagined a time of primeval origins in which the gender of nouns was fluid and only came to be fixed via the wise authority of the ancestors (maiores). More contemporarily, that authority persisted in the work of the poets; thus [End Page 160] “certain poets, in particular Vergil . . . can use an uncommon gender of a noun without being accused of either ignorance or error” (38). Chapter Two explores this peculiar license of the poets in more detail, surveying a range of explanations, both ancient and modern, for the practice. Corbeill’s own proposal reinforces the previous chapter’s argument, suggesting that the poets themselves were “hoping to recall this era when genders of nouns had an inherent instability” (63)—and thereby to demonstrate a certain mastery in continuity with the more ancient ancestral authority. Chapter Three tests this hypothesis against a series of case studies. These are poetic passages (drawn from Plautus, Virgil, Catullus, and others) in which nouns are gendered in seemingly fluid or anomalous ways, evidence of “poetic exploitation” (101), so Corbeill argues, to specific semantic and other literary ends. By contrast, the remainder of the book posits a decided movement away from this earlier fluidity, charting instead a subsequent “calcification of gender boundaries” and with it “the development of a literally heterosexual worldview” (71). Chapter Four proposes an analogy to these changing attitudes towards grammatical gender—but one that “evolved in tandem” (133)—whereby archaic Roman deities of fluid or androgynous sexual status gave way (perhaps historically, but at least in the imagination of later ancient scholars) to strictly dichotomous sexed divinities. Chapter Five traces a similar narrative with respect to the figure of the hermaphrodite, this time one in which the fate of human sexual irregularity is to lose the prodigious status that it carried in the republic, becoming in the empire simply a legal problem to be managed and situated, one way or another, with respect to the increasingly rigid binary of male and female. Scholars of gender and sexuality in early Christianity will benefit from the uniquely positioned set of questions that Corbeill poses with respect to grammatical gender and its relationship to sexual difference across a range of registers (biological, social, literary, political), none of which, he compellingly shows, can be neatly separated. At the same time, things may not have been quite as straightforward throughout every corner of the ancient world as the book’s diachronic presentation could lead one to believe. Indeed, the very complexity of...

Real Women or Objects of Discourse? The Search for Early Christian Women

AbstractScholarly interest in gender and sexuality in early Christianity, which has typically been tied to an interest in women and women's roles, experiences, and influences, is a relatively new addition to the study of early church history. Women and women's issues entered the academy through the women's movement of the 1970s. Early on this scholarship was driven, in part, by a political or theological agenda that sought to empower women of the twentieth century by reconstructing the lives of their foremothers. Often the early studies of women in the church were optimistic that real, historical women could be found within our sources. Soon, however, scholars became more suspicious of the male‐authored texts and turned, instead, to study the social effect of discourses about women. Many scholars, however, are not yet ready to give up investigations of ancient women's lives. Thus the field of early Christian studies is developing a variety of methodologies that offer sophisticated readings of ancient male‐authored texts while still acknowledging the inherent difficulties involved in reconstructing women's lives in early Christian history.

Book Review: II. Historical-Theological Studies: The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity

Book Review: II. Historical-Theological Studies: The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity; By Teresa Shaw; Minneapolis, Fortress, 1998. 298 pp. $27.00

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity; <i>By Teresa Shaw</i>; Minneapolis, Fortress, 1998. 298 pp. $27.00

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (review)

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (review)

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity. By Teresa M. Shaw. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. xii + 308 pp. $27.00 paper.

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity. By Teresa M. Shaw. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. xii + 308 pp. $27.00 paper.

The burden of the flesh: fasting and sexuality in early Christianity

The burden of the flesh: fasting and sexuality in early Christianity

Book Review: The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity

Book Review: The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity

The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity by Teresa M. Shaw

272BOOK reviews muminating and be very satisfied with both content and style. For that reason, the book will serve well as a college or seminary textbook. The second half of the book naturally turns to an examination of conversion within the early Christian tradition, from the first century to the fourth. And here I detect a significant change of mode. The material becomes more descriptive and less analytical. The author prefers to tell the stories of particular converts (in some cases, imaginary; in others, historical figures) rather than examine in any detail the phenomenon of conversion and its varied forms and manifestations in early Christianity. One looks in vain, even in the conclusion, for the sort of analysis of the subject so clearly laid out in the introduction and opening chapter of the book. There are only brief observations here and there. In particular, it was disappointing not to find a discussion of the changing role played by the initiatory rituals of Christianity in the Constantinian era, as they evolved from being primarily an outward expression of a profound change that was already taking place within the candidate to become instead highly theatrical means of inducing some such experience in candidates who were often not so highly motivated as their predecessors had been. One might also observe an apparent lack of acquaintance with the important work of Michel Dujarier on the early catechumenate, and note the presence of the occasional factual error, most notably the claim that at Jerusalem preparation for baptism began on Epiphany rather than at the beginning of Lent (p. 196). I am sure that very many readers (and teachers) will appreciate and enjoy the more biographical approach taken to the subject in this second half, but I believe that the shortcomings I have outlined detract from what could have been a much more profound and valuable study which Professor Finn is certainly capable of writing. Paul Bradshaw University ofNotre Dame The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity. By Teresa M. Shaw. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 298. $27.00 paperback .) Teresa Shaw explores a topic not always approached with either sympathy or style, and she offers both in abundance. The book is beautifully written, clear in its detail, and soundly structured. It is marked at every turn by shrewdness and respect. Neither her interest nor her approach is entirely novel. She has followed consciously and explicitly in the steps of Aline Rousselle, for example, and Peter Brown. What she adds to the debate, however, is more than polish. Her own words signal her breadth of reference: "Arguments concerning the effects of diet on the condition of the body and the soul interweave with eschatological book reviews273 images . . . , with instructions for the daily practice of female chastity and with the theological interpretation of creation, embodiment and gender" (p. 2). The insistent awareness, in particular, of human origins and final destiny colored every facet of early_Christian experience. As the author puts it, in perhaps the best part of her book, "Ascetic discipline looks back to the garden and forward to the kingdom" (p. 163). It is such a gathering of threads from practical (particularly medical) endeavor, from the formulae of faith, and from scriptural exegesis that gives the book its distinctive authority. While the focus is on fasting, one is reminded constantly of implications elsewhere. The range of Dr. Shaw's allusions (which reach back to Hesiod) is harnessed always to a clear-sighted understanding of enduring human anxieties. Herein lies her sympathy. Her patient and illuminating analysis of texts depends always on taking seriously the motives of those who wrote them. She has no wish to impose a modern sense of outrage or 'correctness' on ancient practice. While explanations remain strange to us, the urgent response to experience is instantly recognizable. Above all,Dr. Shaw rejects the glib assumption that we witness in this period the dethroning of classical rationalism. To appeal, however,to Hesiod,Plutarch, Galen, or Porphyry is not to deny that Christians gave a specific twist to long-standing traditions. Their apparent preoccupation with sex has absorbed scholars for some time; but here we have a firmer step forward...