Overview

What do we know in our bodies? Jennifer A. Glancy uses this fundamental question to illuminate the cultural history of early Christianity. Studying representations in sources from Paul to Augustine, she traces the centrality of bodies to early Christian social dynamics and discourse.Glancy offers in-depth analyses of important texts, historical problems, and theological questions. How did Paul present his suspiciously marked body as a source of knowledge and power? How did the corporal conditioning of the Roman slaveholding system infiltrate-and deform-articulations of Christian sexual ethics, and create parallel systems of virtue for elite Christians and enslaved Christians? Early Christians imagined Mary's body at the moment she gave birth; what do these primitive images and narratives suggest about ancient-and modern-understandings of maternal epistemology?In an approach to cultural history informed by the writings of philosophical and sociological theorists of corporeality, including Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bourdieu, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Glancy shows that the cultural habituation of bodies caused Christians of the first centuries to replicate hierarchical patterns of social relations prevalent in the Roman Empire. These embodied patterns of relations are seemingly at odds with the good news of Christian preaching.Corporal Knowledge sheds light on the many ways in which social location is known in the body, and shows the significance of that insight for a cultural history of Christian origins. By framing questions about the function of corporal epistemology, Glancy offers new insights into bodies, identities, and early Christian understandings of what it means to be human.

Full Product Details

9780195328158

Table of Contents

Reviews

<br> This is a stunning and original contribution to studies of the body in religion and culture, encompassing an array of early Christian texts from Paul to Augustine. Utilizing a range of theorists who show how the body figures in the construction of identity, Glancy analyzes 'storytelling bodies.' This study of the traces left by bodiesfrom St. Paul's whippable back to the Virgin Mary's birthing bodyopens an insightful approach to discourse and social location. <br>--Patricia Cox Miller, W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion, Syracuse University <br><p><br> In Corporal Knowledge, Jennifer Glancy presents an entirely convincing set of close readings of ancient Christian texts, and also a sustained, deeply moving reflection on what can be known by and through bodies. Tracing narratives of bodies in pain and under torture, marked by battle scars and the degradations of slavery, and stretched open during childbirth, this stunning book plumbs the truths of flesh with rare insight and

<br> This is a stunning and original contribution to studies of the body in religion and culture, encompassing an array of early Christian texts from Paul to Augustine. Utilizing a range of theorists who show how the body figures in the construction of identity, Glancy analyzes 'storytelling bodies.' This study of the traces left by bodiesfrom St. Paul's whippable back to the Virgin Mary's birthing bodyopens an insightful approach to discourse and social location. <br>--Patricia Cox Miller, W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion, Syracuse University <br> In Corporal Knowledge, Jennifer Glancy presents an entirely convincing set of close readings of ancient Christian texts, and also a sustained, deeply moving reflection on what can be known by and through bodies. Tracing narratives of bodies in pain and under torture, marked by battle scars and the degradations of slavery, and stretched open during childbirth, this stunning book plumbs the truths of flesh with rare insight and c

This is a book that steadily gathers momentum and proves to be worthy of the glowing commendations found on the back cover. Timothy Carter, Journal for the Study of The New Testament

Author Information

Jennifer A. Glancy is George & Sallie Cutchin Camp Professor of Bible at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Slavery in Early Christianity and numerous articles exploring representations of gender and corporeality in the New Testament and other early Christian writings. She has served as the Catholic Biblical Association Visiting Professor at L'Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available