Making Christians : Clement of Alexander and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy

by: Buell, D.K.

Price: 45,78 EURO

1 copy in stock

Making Christians : Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy
Author:Denise Kimber Buell

Summary:How did second-century Christians vie with each other in seeking to produce an authoritative discourse of Christian identity? This book argues that many early Christians deployed the metaphors of procreation and kinship in the struggle over claims to represent the truth of Christian interpretation, practice and doctrine. In particular, the author examines the intriguing works of the influential theologian Clement of Alexandria for whom cultural assumptions about procreation and kinship played an important role in defining which Christians have the proper authority to teach and which kinds of knowledge are authentic

Contents:
Cover Page
Half-title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Origin Stories as Authorizing Discourse
Historiography and the Quest for Origins
Locating Clement
Reading Practices and Metaphor Analysis
The Symbolic Stakes of Procreation
Format of the Study
Chapter One: Tracing Procreation: The Origins of Origin Stories
Clement's Appeal to a Variety of Procreative Etiologies: Three Examples
What Is Not Found There
Conclusion
Chapter Two: The Social Force of Metaphors for Procreation Like a Farmer Sowing Seeds
Conclusion
Chapter Three: Sowing Knowledge: Procreation and Pedagogy
Teachers and Learners: Fathers and Sons
Philosophical Precedents
Learners as Sons Not Mothers
The Absent Mother
Engendering the Learner
Conclusion
Chapter Four: Defending Teaching Methods with Procreative Language
Suspicion of Texts
Planters and Waterers
Conclusion
Chapter Five: ""Few Are Like Their Fathers"": The Rhetoric of Genealogy and Intra-Christian Polemic
Producing Children, Pronouncing Dogma
Few Are Like Their Fathers: The Rhetoric of Sonship False Fathers
Loyalty to Other Superhuman Beings
Conclusion
Chapter Six: Allegiance to the ""True Father"": Kinship Metaphors as Border Discourse
Marking Internal and External Boundaries
Loyalty to Fathers According to the Flesh
Allegiance on Trial
Conclusion: A Note on Ethnicity and the Rhetoric of Kinship
Chapter Seven: A Rhetoric of Christian Unity: Christians as Children of the Father of All
Audience of and Occasion for the Paidagogos
Children and Infants
Conclusion
Chapter Eight: Paideia and the Paidagogos
Rhetorical Strategies of Paideia Conclusion: The Implications of Paideia
Chapter Nine: Perfect Children: Drinking the Logos-Milk of Christ
Perfect Rebirth
The First Interpretation: Milk as Food for the Perfect
The Second Interpretation: Drinking vs. Suckling
Transition (Paid 1.37.3)
The Third Interpretation: Blood, Milk, and Soul
Excursus: Is This Passage Referring to the Eucharist?
Conclusion: Why 1 Corinthians 3:2?
Chapter Ten: ""The Milk of the Father"": ""Only Those Who Suckle This Breast Are Truly Blessed
Blood: The Essence of Milk, Food, and Flesh
The Fourth Interpretation of 1 Cor 3:2 Etiologies of Lactation: Blood as the ousia of Milk
A Mystical Interpretation of the Logos
A ""More Common Interpretation"" of the Logos
Digestion: The Transformation of Food into Blood
The Equivalence of Liquid and Solid Foods
The Multivalent Logos
Etiologies of Procreation
Conclusion: Divine Maternity?
Conclusion: Reflections on the Future of Origin Stories
Select Bibliography
Index Of Ancient Passages Cited
General Index

xiv, 221 pages ; 24 cm

Making Christians : Clement of Alexander and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy

by: Buell, D.K.

• ISBN-13: 9780691059808 / 978-0-691-05980-8
• ISBN-03: 0691059802 / 0-691-05980-2
• Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1999

Price: 45,78 EURO

1 copy in stock