Antiquitopia

I just finished reading Caroline Schroeder 's Monastic Bodies : Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe , which I recommend to anyone studying late antique Egypt, ancient monasticism, or uses the body as a critical lens of analysis.  I do not offer a comprehensive review here, but a series of impressions as I now step away from the book. There is, indeed, too little scholarship on Shenoute, and Caroline Schroeder, through some close analyses of key documents, draws out Shenoute's concept of the body. She relies upon much similar work done on the body and how it relates to larger groups (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger ; Peter Brown, The Body and Society ; Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body ) as well as Foucault's analyses on discipline and discourse (e.g., Discipline and Punish , and I believe some History of Sexuality was involved as well), as a broader lens by which to read Shenoute's writings. If I read Schroeder correctly, Shenoute makes a series of correspo...

In the New Testament, Jesus's body is the temple (John 2:19-22) and the community is a temple of the Holy Spirit (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:16f), but in Paul's articulation it is not always clear whether it is the individual or the community--some passages tend toward one or the other, but there is enough ambiguity. Augustine responds quite unequivocally which it is: both. Yet he takes the body/temple connection even further: For we are his temple, collectively, and has individuals. For he ocndescends to dwell in the union of all and in each person. He is as great in the individual as he is in the whole body of his worshippers, for he cannot be increased in bulk or diminished by partition. When we lift up our hearts to him, our heart is his altar. We propitiate him by our priest, his only-begotten Son. We sacrifice blood-stained victims to him when we fight for truth "as far as shedding our blood." We burn the sweetest incense for him, when we are in his sight on fire ...