Overview

Thecla was one of the most venerated saints in late antiquity. One of her followers created the Life of Thecla as an act of devotion in the fifth century, rewriting the popular Acts of Thecla and transforming it into the heroic saga of a saint. Replete with long speeches, dramatic flourishes, and literary flamboyance, the Life of Thecla gives modern readers insight into the ways a gender-bending apostolic saint could be reframed and reimagined for later audiences. This first modern English translation of the Life explores its relationship with the earlier Acts as well as its place in fifth-century concerns about miracles, healing, sainthood, and sexuality.

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9781666746402

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Reviews

"""The Life of Thecla is essential reading for any who are interested in Saint Thecla, women in Christianity, or the history of the early church. By providing the first English translation of this work, Andrew Jacobs helps a new audience understand Thecla's prominence for many ancient Christians and sheds light on the social norms and religious practices of the fifth century."" --Susan E. Hylen, professor of New Testament, Emory University ""By offering the first modern English translation of the Life of Thecla, this volume fulfills a longstanding desideratum in the field of late antique Christianity. The elaborate introduction speaks to a broad audience by contextualizing the work in an accessible manner while offering a clear road into the Life's main themes and the abundant scholarship on the immensely popular figure of Thecla, her second-century Acts, her late antique cult, and later receptions of those."" --Julie Van Pelt, postdoctoral fellow, Ghent University ""Andrew Jacobs offers a major advance in our understanding of Thecla's literary and hagiographical afterlife. The authoritative introduction sets the compositional techniques of the Life of Thecla firmly within the context of elite rhetorical practices of the fifth century. The annotated translation is engaging and useful, demonstrating how thoroughly the Life fills interpretive gaps left open in the second-century Acts of Thecla. Recommended for all those who study early Christian narrative, martyrology, and hagiographical biography."" --Melissa Sellew, professor emerita of classical and Near Eastern religions and cultures, University of Minnesota ""Andrew Jacobs offers an erudite and accessible introduction to the late ancient Life of Thecla, a work that embodies the complex, border-crossing reception history of one of the Christian tradition's most important literary figures: Thecla of Iconium. His elegant translation is grounded in philological expertise and deep contextual understanding, and the publication in this series of Jacobs's learned introduction and fluent translation makes the text available for the first time to a wide audience of English readers."" --Elizabeth A. Castelli, professor of religion, Barnard College"

Author Information

Andrew S. Jacobs is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author or coeditor of a range of books on early Christianity, biblical interpretation, and culture in late antiquity, most recently Gospel Thrillers (2023).

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