Athanasius Pulled Apart: Heresiology and the (Dis)membered (Fe)male Body

Abstract

In this article, I engage Athanasius of Alexandria's invocation of the infamous dismemberment of the unnamed woman found in Judg 19. By the fourth century, this story of gang rape-along with other preserved stories of sexual violence-found in Judges, were scattered throughout early Christian literature. Judges 19 holds a particularly troubling history in the late ancient context. The story of the rape and dismemberment of the unnamed woman in Judg 19 gave life to another story and typified a style of writing that I characterize in the article as a heresiology. The spectacle of Judges, along with other gruesome deaths of women, was one way in which heresiological discourse frames rhetorical arguments for writers like Athanasius of Alexandria. Here, I purposely draw our attention to how Athanasian orthodoxy became reliant on gender-based violence.