Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity

jennifer wright knust

Early Christians used charges of adultery, incest, and lascivious behavior to demonize their opponents, police insiders, resist pagan rulers, and define what it meant to be a Christian. Christians frequently claimed that they, and they alone were sexually virtuous, comparing themselves to those marked as outsiders, especially non-believers and "heretics," who were said to be controlled by lust and unable to rein in their carnal desires. True or not, these charges allowed Christians to present themselves as different from and morally superior to those around them. Through careful, innovative readings, Jennifer Knust explores the writings of Paul, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and other early Christian authors who argued that Christ alone made self-mastery possible. Rejection of Christ led to both immoral sexual behavior and, ultimately, alienation and punishment from God. Knust considers how Christian writers participated in a long tradition of rhetorical invective, a rhetoric that was often employed to defend status and difference. Christians borrowed, deployed, and reconfigured classical rhetorical techniques, turning them against their rulers to undercut their moral and political authority. Knust also examines the use of accusations of licentiousness in conflicts between rival groups of Christians. Portraying rival sects as depraved allowed accusers to claim their own group as representative of "true Christianity." Knust's book also reveals the ways in which sexual slurs and their use in early Christian writings reflected cultural and gendered assumptions about what constituted purity, morality, and truth. In doing so, Abandoned to Lust highlights the complex interrelationships between sex, gender, and sexuality within the classical, biblical, and early-Christian traditions.

Genres religionhistorynonfiction

279 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17,2005

Series

Gender, Theory, and Religion

This edition

Format: 279 pages, Hardcover
Published: November 9, 2005 by Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231136624
ASIN: 0231136625
Language: English

About the author

jennifer wright knust

Jennifer Wright Knust is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Boston University. She came to BU from the College of the Holy Cross, where she taught Religious Studies for five years. At BU, she is appointed to the faculties of the School of Theology and the College of Arts and Sciences and is affiliated with the Religion Department, Judaic Studies, and the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Program.

A graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana, she earned her Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary (New York) and then served as an American Baptist pastor before returning to New York City to earn her Master of Philosophy and Doctorate of Religion from Columbia University. She has published widely on the New Testament, Christian history, ancient rhetoric, the transmission of the Gospels, and the interpretation of sacred texts by early Christian writers. Her recent publications include a study of sexualized name-calling among ancient writers (Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity, Columbia University Press 2005), an analysis of the transmission and reception of the story of the woman taken in adultery ("Early Christian Re-Writing and the History of the Pericope Adulterae," Journal of Early Christian Studies 2006), and a forthcoming volume on sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world (Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, edited with Zsuzsanna Varhélyi, Oxford University Press). She was inspired to write her most recent book, Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire, by her mother, who taught her that the Bible should never be used as a cover for cruelty and self-righteousness.

Professor Knust has been the recipient of a number of prizes and awards, including fellowships from the Association of Theological Schools-Henry Luce III Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Association of University Women. She has also participated in a number of specialized seminars and research projects, including the Summer Program in Advanced Palaeography at the American Academy in Rome and the Summer Program in Medieval Greek at the Gennadius Library, Athens. A recipient of various teaching awards, she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the New Testament, early Christianity, the history of the Bible, gender theory, women and religion, the Gospels, and ancient Greek.

Ordained by the American Baptist Churches, USA, Professor Knust remains an active member of the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain, where she directs the children's Sunday School, and maintains close ties to her home church, the First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Maine. Born in California, she has lived all over the country before landing (finally) in New York, Maine, and Massachusetts.

Together with her partner Stefan Knust, she has raised two wonderful sons, Axel and Leander.