Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Julia Kelto Lillis demonstrates that early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways.
Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this shift and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.
Virgin Territory Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity
Recommend to Your Library (PDF)
RightsLink
Rights and Permissions
The pandemic has created major supply chain challenges for publishers, manufacturers, warehousing facilities and shipping companies. Please allow for a minimum of 15 business days to receive your order. If you need your order sooner, consider purchasing from one of our retail partner links in the buying options. Thank you!
About the Book
Reviews
"Taking her cue from modern conceptions of virginity, Julia Kelto Lillis offers welcome correctives designed to stimulate discussion among scholars and a wider public. With a focus on the figure of Mary, Kelto Lillis lays out the territory of meanings associated with female virginity in the late ancient world to demonstrate that it meant many different things."—Susanna Elm, Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History, University of California, Berkeley"Virgin Territory provides detailed analyses of a wide variety of Christian and ancient Mediterranean texts across different discourses, all centered on bodily, sexual, and anatomical virginity. By covering such a large territory, Julia Kelto Lillis teases out numerous local maps, revealing how early Christian authors conveyed very different ideas about what virginity of the body and virginity of the soul are and how these individual conceptualizations changed over time."—Sissel Undheim, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen
Related Books
The Forge of Vision
David Morgan
Critical Christianity
Courtney Handman
From Idols to Icons
Robin M. Jensen
In Search of Soul
Alejandro Nava
Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry
Philip Hardie
The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez
Luis D. Leon
That Religion in Which All Men Agree
David G. Hackett
Controlling Contested Places
Christine Shepardson
Classifying Christians
Todd S. Berzon