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List of Contributors
No full textMarie-Claire Beaulieu is Associate Professor of Classics at Tufts University. She is the author of The Sea in the Greek Imagination (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)[email protected] Moshe Blidstein is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2017)[email protected] Miriam Blanco Ces..
General Conclusions
No full textIn the general conclusion, I discuss the consequences of the textual analyses for the overarching theme of the book—how purity and defilement are redefined in early Christianity to support the theology, demonology, and understanding of human nature found in second- and third-century communities, and to construct the identity of these communities. I compare different areas of purity discourse (sexuality, dietary laws, asceticism, baptism), and trace the historical development of purity concepts and ideas through the first three centuries of Christianity, underlining the unique place of Origen and of Jewish-Christian communities in this development.</p
Early Christian Attitudes Towards Death Defilement
No full textChapter 4 turns to an area in which the idea of purity was nominally rejected: purification from death defilement, commonly practiced throughout the ancient world. Christian writers spoke of death defilement in a polemic context, characterizing purification from contact with corpses and tombs as a Jewish preoccupation, which Christians should not practice. It is quite unclear, however, to what extent Christian death impurity practice was in fact different from that of pagans or Jews. A close reading of the texts in their historical contexts, especially the Didascalia Apostolorum, indicates that Christian purity discourse in this area is better understood as constructing Christian identity, rather than reflecting contemporary practice.</p
Vegetable Sacrifice Roman Empire
No full textAn MA thesis discussing the role of vegetal offerings in Roman religion, and the shift in attitudes towards them in the first centuries C
Loosing Vows and Oaths in the Roman Empire and Beyond: Authority and Interpretation
No full textAbstract:Vows, dedications and promissory oaths were an important category of language for people in the ancient Mediterranean. Using various formulae, people promised the gods (in the case of vows and dedications), or each other (in the case of oaths), that they would perform certain acts in the future, giving more than usual force to their words. The purpose of this article is to investigate the mechanics and hermeneutics of promises backed by divine power in the ancient Mediterranean.</jats:p
Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature
No full textThis book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.</p
Purity and Defilement in the Greco-Roman East and in Judaism
No full textThis chapter describes how purity and defilement were practiced and discussed in diverse cults throughout the Hellenistic and Roman Empires and in contemporary Judaism. There were several types of purity and defilement. The first, a “truce” impurity perception, was temporary and mundane, a defilement occurring when there was an obstruction to the normal order or when categories were mixed up. A second type, the “battle” impurity perception, followed exceptional actions, typically deliberate, such as murder or adultery. Here purification required both punishment by the community and ritual actions, such as sacrifice. A third type became more and more significant in the first centuries CE. This was the defilement of the individual by his or her evil actions and dispositions, conceptualized at times as a “defilement of the soul,” and its purification through asceticism, philosophy, or repentance. Though purity and defilement also featured in Greco-Roman religion, it received an unusually central role in Judaism.</p
Impure Mouths and Defiled Hearts: The Development of Deceit Impurity in Second Temple Judaism
No full textMany early Christian and late Second Temple texts describe deceit as impurity. In this article, I delineate the development of this discourse and argue that it derived its power from several characteristics: mixing deceit impurity with other types of moral impurity; an implicit link between the structures of defilement/purity and falsehood/truth; localization of impurity in specific body loci; demonization; and a connection with Greek discourses on sophists and magicians. Some of these features are present already in the earliest texts such as the Hebrew Bible, but others developed only in the Hellenistic period
The Pure Community, the Holy Sacrifice, and the Defilement of Sin
No full textChapter 6 turns to the internal ordering of the community through purity discourse concerning sin. It discusses the regulation of sin inside the borders of the pure community, focusing on the eucharist and on the conceptualization of repentance and penance as purification. Though in the first two centuries the eucharist had already become the sacred ritual representing the community, and was therefore guarded by purity restrictions, there was as yet no ritual system through which sinners could purify themselves and thus approach the eucharist. Some texts, such as the Didache, describe the eucharist as a sacrifice and the communal cohesion it requires as a pure state.</p
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