Making of Fornication - Eros, Ethics, & Political R: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Hellenistic Culture and Society, Band 40). …

XV, 359 Seiten / p. Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langjährigem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - THIS PROVOCATIVE WORK provides a radical reassessment of the emergence and nature of Christian sexual morality, the dominant moral paradigm in Western society since late antiquity. While many scholars, including Michel Foucault, have found the basis of early Christian sexual restrictions in Greek ethics and political philosophy, Kathy L. Gaea demonstrates on compelling new grounds that it is misguided to regard Greek ethics and political theory—with their proposed reforms of eroticism, the family, and civic order—as the foundation of Christian sexual austerity. Rather, in this deeply informed and wide-ranging study, Gaea shows that early Christian goals to eradicate fornication were derived from the sexual rules and poetic norms of the Septuagint, or Greek Bible, and that early Christian writers adapted these rules and norms in ways that provide fascinating insights into the distinctive and largely non-philosophical character of Christian sexual morality. -- Writing with an authoritative command of both Greek philosophy and early Christian writings, Gaea investigates Plato, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul, and the patristic Christians Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Epiphanes, elucidating their ideas on sexual reform with precision, depth, and originality. Early Christian writers, she demonstrates, transformed all that they borrowed from Greek ethics and political philosophy to launch innovative programs against fornication that were inimical to Greek cultural mores, popular and philosophical alike. The Septuagint’s mandate to worship the Lord alone among all gods led to a Christian program to revolutionize Gentile sexual practices, which early Christians found virtually impossible to carry out without going to ex-tremes of sexual renunciation. -- Knowledgeable and broad in scope, this work of intellectual history and ethics cogently demonstrates why early Christian sexual restrictions took such repressive ascetic forms, and it casts a sobering light on what Christian sexual morality has meant for religious pluralism in Western culture, especially among women. ISBN 9780520235991