Semeia 57: Discursive Formations, Ascetic Piety and the Interpretation of Early Christian Literature, Part I

From 1974 to 2002, the Society of Biblical Literature published "an experimental journal for biblical criticism", a scholarly collection of papers and monographs on selected topics. This edition, the 57th from 1992, focuses on discursive formations, aesthetic piety, and the interpretation of early Christian literature (Part one of a two-part sub-series). Included are monographs on "discourse of the self" at Qumran, cynic "parresia" and shameless asceticism, patronage and honor in noblewomen, continence and control in the Greco-Roman world, the language of power in the pastoral epistles, Clement of Alexandria's transformation of aesthetic discourse, allegory and asceticism in Gregory of Nyssa, and the body as desert in The Life of St. Anthony.