Reading Renunciation

Elizabeth A. Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University and the author of several books, including The Origenist Controversy (Princeton). She is the past president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the North American Patristics Society. She is the coeditor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies.

• Acknowledgments xi Abbreviation List xv CHAPTER ONE Introduction 3 CHAPTER TWO Asceticism in Late Ancient Christianity 14 Reading for Asceticism CHAPTER THREE Reading in the Early Christian World 45 CHAPTER FOUR The Profits and Perils of Figurative Exegesis 70 CHAPTER FIVE Exegetical and Rhetorical Strategies for Ascetic Reading 104 CHAPTER SIX Three Models of Reading Renunciation 153 Rejection and Recuperation: The Old Dispensation and the New CHAPTER SEVEN From Reproduction to Defamilialization 177 CHAPTER EIGHT From Ritual to Askesis 204 CHAPTER NINE The Exegesis of Divorce 233 Reading Paul CHAPTER TEN I Corinthians 7 in Early Christian Exegesis 259 CHAPTER ELEVEN From Paul to the Pastorals 330 Afterword 371 Bibliograpky 375 Select Index of Biblical Passages 401 Select General Index 409

"This is a magisterial work... Reading Renunciation will stand the test of scholarly time and remain an essential work in the long tradition of patristic exegesis."--Richard Valantasis, Journal of Religion "[A] scholarly, conscientious and provoking study"--Philip Rousseau, Journal of Ecclesiastical History