EARLY CHRISTIAN SEX CHANGE. THE ASCETICAL CONTEXT OF ―BEING MADE MALE‖ IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Jenn... more EARLY CHRISTIAN SEX CHANGE. THE ASCETICAL CONTEXT OF ―BEING MADE MALE‖ IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Jennifer L. Henery, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2011 In nearly all of the accounts of the lives of holy women in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the Apocryphal Gospels, and the Acts of the Christian Martyrs eschatologically motivated enkrateia or martyrdom is imaged by women being made male. In these texts sex change imagery is most spectacular as it is manifested in a plethora of ways. Women change sex and become male by dressing like men, by transcending the gender roles of women and assuming the gender roles of men, by becoming physically or bodily male, and by simply being called men or male. Most scholars look to philosophy, heresy and sociology for an explanation of this transformational imagery and explain the imagery as the liberation of women from a patriarchal society or as indicative of the empowerment of women to teach and preach. What they fail to take into account is ...
EARLY CHRISTIAN SEX CHANGE. THE ASCETICAL CONTEXT OF ―BEING MADE MALE‖ IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Jenn... more EARLY CHRISTIAN SEX CHANGE. THE ASCETICAL CONTEXT OF ―BEING MADE MALE‖ IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Jennifer L. Henery, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2011 In nearly all of the accounts of the lives of holy women in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the Apocryphal Gospels, and the Acts of the Christian Martyrs eschatologically motivated enkrateia or martyrdom is imaged by women being made male. In these texts sex change imagery is most spectacular as it is manifested in a plethora of ways. Women change sex and become male by dressing like men, by transcending the gender roles of women and assuming the gender roles of men, by becoming physically or bodily male, and by simply being called men or male. Most scholars look to philosophy, heresy and sociology for an explanation of this transformational imagery and explain the imagery as the liberation of women from a patriarchal society or as indicative of the empowerment of women to teach and preach. What they fail to take into account is ...
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