Description
Book SynopsisDrawing insights from gender studies and the environmental humanities, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture analyzes how ancient Christians constructed the Christian body through its relations to demonic adversaries. Through case studies of New Testament texts, Gnostic treatises, and early Christian church fathers (e.g., Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian of Carthage), Travis W. Proctor notes that early followers of Jesus construed the demonic body in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways, as both embodied and bodiless, fattened and ethereal, heavenly and earthbound. Across this diversity of portrayals, however, demons consistently functioned as personifications of deviant bodily practices such as magical rituals, immoral sexual acts, gluttony, and pagan religious practices. This demonization served an exclusionary function whereby Christian writers marginalized fringe Christian groups by linking their ritual activities to demonic
Trade ReviewTravis Proctor's exciting and innovative book shows how early Christians diversely constructed the bodies of demons as a means of defining and limiting their own bodies and the bodies of their worshiping communities. It not only contributes significantly to New Testament and early Christian studies, but it also advances cutting-edge conversations in the humanities concerning religion and posthumanism. * David Brakke, Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History, The Ohio State University *
This theoretically informed treatment of demonic bodies draws our attention to the often-overlooked cosmic ecology in which early Christians were enmeshed. Proctor fleshes out the non-human actors who populated the Christian universe and offers an ecological reading that brims with relevance for our modern environmental thinking. * Candida Moss, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham *
Travis Proctor's Demonic Bodies is a fascinating and original work, one that will be of interest to many scholars of early Christian ideas on demons and the body. Its sophisticated analysis of numerous early Christian texts using the lens of disability, ecological, and post-humanist studies makes an important contribution to the field. His overarching argument that regardless of whether ancient thinkers argued for the incorporeality/immateriality of demons or for their embodiment, the development of their arguments were inseparable from their development of early Christian anthropologies is a compelling one. * Heidi Marx, Professor, University of Manitoba *
Demonic Bodies is exceptionally well researched and well written. I warmly recommend it to anyone interested in the cultural and religious history of the ancient world. * Nienke Vos, RBL 11/2023 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Evil Entanglements Chapter One: Disabled Demons Demonic Disembodiment in Second Temple Judaism and the Gospel of Mark Chapter Two: Bodiless Demons Ignatius of Antioch, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, and the Demonic Body of Jesus Chapter Three: Changeable Demons Demonic Polymorphy,
