Product Description

Early Christians used charges of adultery, incest, and lascivious behavior to demonize their opponents, police insiders, resist pagan rulers, and define what it meant to be a Christian. Christians frequently claimed that they, and they alone were sexually virtuous, comparing themselves to those marked as outsiders, especially non-believers and "heretics," who were said to be controlled by lust and unable to rein in their carnal desires. True or not, these charges allowed Christians to present themselves as different from and morally superior to those around them.

Through careful, innovative readings, Jennifer Knust explores the writings of Paul, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and other early Christian authors who argued that Christ alone made self-mastery possible. Rejection of Christ led to both immoral sexual behavior and, ultimately, alienation and punishment from God. Knust considers how Christian writers participated in a long tradition of rhetorical invective, a rhetoric that was often employed to defend status and difference. Christians borrowed, deployed, and reconfigured classical rhetorical techniques, turning them against their rulers to undercut their moral and political authority. Knust also examines the use of accusations of licentiousness in conflicts between rival groups of Christians. Portraying rival sects as depraved allowed accusers to claim their own group as representative of "true Christianity."

Knust's book also reveals the ways in which sexual slurs and their use in early Christian writings reflected cultural and gendered assumptions about what constituted purity, morality, and truth. In doing so, Abandoned to Lust highlights the complex interrelationships between sex, gender, and sexuality within the classical, biblical, and early-Christian traditions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1260467 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-17
• Released on: 2005-12-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review

"An original and provocative contribution to the ongoing study of rhetoric, identity, and power in the early Christian tradition." -- David M. Reis, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Jennifer Wright Knust has written a thoughtful and well-argued book... It deserves to be read." -- Review of Biblical Literature

"I highly recommend Knust's book." -- Gene G. James, University of Memphis, Dialogue & Alliance

"A careful and detailed study that deftly navigates a sizable number of early Christian texts." -- Benjamin Dunning, Journal of Religion

Review

"Accusations of sexual excess or deviance are a commonplace in political invective. Abandoned to Lust shows engagingly and in detail how such accusations were a mainstay in the early-Christian rhetorical toolbox, allowing Christian polemicists to create vivid and damning portraits of their opponents as slaves to their appetites and passions. Knust's book is a very important rhetorical analysis and cultural history of early Christianity, with critical implications for the study of religiously motivated polemics more broadly." -- Elizabeth Castelli
, Barnard College at Columbia University, author of Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making

About the Author

Jennifer Knust is assistant professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Boston University School of Theology.