Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought

264 Pages·2011·0.87 MB·English

by  Benjamin H. Dunning

Specters of Paul
DIVINATIONS: REREADING LATE ANCIENT RELIGION
SeriesEditors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
Specters of Paul
Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought
Benjamin H. Dunning
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of
review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced
in any form by any means without written permission from the
publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunning, Benjamin H.
Specters of Paul : sexual diiference in early Christian thought /
Benjamin H. Dunning.
p. cm.—(Divinations: rereading late ancient religion)
Includes bibliographical references (p. )and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4307-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Women—Religious aspects—Christianity—History of
doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. 2. Sex differences—Religious
aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Early church, ca.
30–600. 3. Bible. N.T. Epistles of Paul—Theology. I. Title.
BT704.D87 2011
233'.5—dc22 2010023081
For Bob
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This scene has never been read for what it is, for what is
at once sheltered and exposed in its metaphors: its family
metaphors. It is all about fathers and sons, about bastards
unaided by any public assistance, about glorious, legitimate
sons, about inheritance, sperm, sterility. Nothing is said of the
mother, but this will not be held against us. And if one looks
hard enough as in those pictures in which a second picture
faintly can be made out, one might be able to discern her
unstable form, drawn upside-down in the foliage, at the back
of the garden.
—Jacques Derrida, Dissemination
(with reference to Plato’s Phaedrus)
There was first the strangeness of Paul.
—Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves
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